Vodka Redux

So, yeah, again with the vodka on a Friday night. I am developing quite the routine! Went to a house party last night, thrown at the group house of a friend of a friend. Two girlfriends from the gallery where I used to work were there, and I went with my friend Poppy and my high school friend recently back to the area. (She needs a pseudonym since I seem to be writing about her frequently, so I will call her Mantis, for no particular reason.) Also since it was a bring-everyone-you-want type of thing, I invited my college friend Azalea, and she brought a bunch of her friends, including her ex-boyfriend who I haven't seen since senior year of college.

Everyone started off as strangers to each other, but after spending three hours on the stoop smoking, and fighting our way through the crowded kitchen to get to the booze, and gossiping and laughing, we were just a big group of BFF. I love it when you get random friends together and they hit it off. I always feel a little nervous about doing it - you know, will this friend talk too much about her ex and annoy that one? Or will that one make an off-color joke and offend my super-PC friend? That kind of stuff. But it was all good.

I started off drinking plastic cups of vodka and cranberry juice, because cranberry juice is healthy. And I care about that kind of crap, obviously. But at one point when I went for a refill, I put the ice and vodka in, turned to the mixers, and the juice was gone. So I had a glass full of pink vodka, and I was drunk enough by then that this situation just, like, totally confounded me. Mantis went to college in New York, which made her super-knowledgeable about the drinking, so I interrupted the cute guy hitting on her (yikes - sorry, random guy) and requested her help. She managed to fix me up by dumping a whole bunch of mysterious fizzy lime juice in, which was delicious, and I now have a new favorite vodka drink.

Mantis lives in the burbs, so she came home with me and slept on the sofa to avoid the drive home. I had forgotten to turn my alarm off so it woke us up about four hours later, at 7am. Oops.

Now I have just gotten home from art class. We finished our first portrait project and I am cautiously happy about mine, which feels great. I still have a few background pieces to fill in on my own without the model, and then I'll have a better idea of how well it works, but I have to say, I think I got the model's face to look pretty good. The features do not look exactly like hers, but then neither does the flesh tone resemble Goldfish crackers, like my last painting did.

Now it is rainy and freezing, like 50 degrees. I think I will make some coffee and watch my Cheers DVD from Netflix now. Have a good Saturday night!