1) So if you haven't heard much from me this week, it's because I've been home sick four days out of five. This is dreadful since it's the Christmas season and since the T*** & C****** horoscope says "You can make brilliant connections now, so speak up and reach out." Bleah!
2) Hosting Repeal Day last night with a cold was a wee bit of an adventure for me. Once upon a time, ladies could always use bouquets to keep from shaking hands or fend off embraces (and probably should again). You just keep both hands together grasping that bouquet and that's that. Gentlemen don't have that opportunity, and I felt inhospitable having to say "I've got a cold. Don't let me get my cooties on ya!"
3) The party was a success, as it often is, this time not least because there were four brand-new attendees of a Generation Younger Than Mine who had never been to the House before and really brought a nice energy. Certainly the party broke up later than in previous years!
3a) It should not surprise me that, as an any other party, everyone congregates near the bar. But the dining room is so much more elegant than the kitchen (the traditional location for a home speakeasy bar during Prohibition). But an hour into the party I went downstairs for round two and I counted 18 people squashed into that kitchen clearly having the time of their lives. Who am I to argue with that?
4) By special request for my portion of the program I repeated last year's (?) reading of drunk Agnes Gooch from Patrick Dennis's world-changing novel Auntie Mame, which was received kindly.
5) Smoked salmon macarons. Om nom nom.
6) Afterward my friend James and I dined at Mary Chung's - so soothing, even though we were one of two last parties before closing time.
7) After three large glasses of water and two small aspirin I fell into bed like a stone.
8) Now it's coffee in bed.