Friday Night!

 

"Gin Suite #3: An Installation" Glass, wood, alcohol. 2005.

A fine Friday night after a frustrating and unsatisfying week at work. A good selection of olives, some superlative gin, and music blaring in the background.

(listening to Johann Ludwig Krebs's Toccata and Fugue in A Minor)

I had a thoroughly enjoyable holiday. I had a quiet Christmas at home (although I felt some pangs of longing for my sister's house full of gluttony and family), and a quiet week at work when most of the world was off. New Year's weekend was a very enjoyable 4-day weekend in Washington,D.C., once New Year's itself was over. Perhaps I'm just a grumpy old asshole, but I'm never letting myself be dragged to a party organized by my wife's old college friends again. It's happened twice now, and here are the common denominators:

1)Lots of driving
2)Deafeningly loud music that I don't care for
3)Cigarette smoke
4)Bars that are absolutely packed with drunk college kids trying to get into each other's pants
5)Trying to make conversation, over all that noise, with people I don't know
6)Sleeping on a floor
7)Hanging around, bored and hung over, while people talk about shoes, who went home with whom, and who fell down the steps.

Before I go any further, I must beg my wife's forgiveness for sounding like an arrogant, judgmental asshole. She clearly expected these parties, especially the New Year's party, to be more satisfying than they were. These are her friends, and I don't want to sound totally disrespectful. However, she has admitted that she doesn't live in that noisy college world anymore. Most of her friends still do, to varying degrees. I am a husband, and I will attend my obligatory social functions. I would like to limit them, from now on, however, to grownup functions.

When that was over, we checked into a hotel on Connecticut Avenue. We loafed around a bit and rid ourselves of the last of our hangovers. We had Thai food at Thaiphoon just down the street, and I had some very fine Crispy Duck. Spicy and good.

(Franz Liszt's Prelude and Fugue on the name of Bach)

The following day was spent walking around the National Mall and visiting museums. D.C. is a good town for walking, at least the part we were in. Driving, however, is hell. Incomprehensible streets. Every intersection has a few extra possible directions to get lost in. Anyway, it was nice for us to walk. We walked past the Inauguration bleachers being built next to the White House. We visited the National Holocaust Museum. Stunning. Well-done. Sobering. We saw the Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery. We looked at airplanes and space ships in the Air and Space Museum. We had overpriced McDonald's food there, too.
By then, we were tired. We walked back to the hotel and relaxed. I walked down the street and got us Chinese food, and we washed it down with a bottle of Mumm Cuvee Napa Blanc de Noirs that I had bought several weeks earlier. Very nice.

We checked out the next morning (and the coffee in the lobby of the Churchill Hotel is pretty good, I must point out) and got the hell out of town. We stopped at IKEA in Potomac Mills and had a good time. It's the closest one to us, and nerdy homebodies like us love that kind of shit. We got a coffee table to replace the ghetto-steamer-trunk-topped-with-glass coffee table that we had prior to that.

And so, here we are. Work is busy again, and it sucks. Paychecks are sucked up by bills as soon as they arrive. But this gin is really excellent. Hendrick's. I recommend it.