The best new years eve ever...

Well, much much has happened since I last posted. Monkey has been home so I have been otherwise occupied. I will be posting a little bit out of order but there are things I want to share so I will come back to them in a later post. But first, a little about our New Years Eve.

To start, I was supposed to be performing with my salsa group on New Years Eve meaning that of course I would have been spending the evening at the salsa club... well, two days before the director calls me and says basically that we're (just my partner and I) not ready and will not be performing. I can't even tell how how many kinds of peeved off this made me. My whole office was even peeved off for me! I'm not going to rant about it here though, because that is not the point of this post.

You see, in retrospect, it ended up being a blessing. The first thing I did was a eat a big ol' piece of the pumpkin cheese cake that I made (more about that later). And a whole bunch of other stuff I'd been starving myself from to look good in my salsa costume, which I now didn't have to wear. Also, I didn't have to stress about finishing the rhinestoning on my costume.

And, instead of going to this salsa performance and not being able to eat, and not being able to drink until after midnight, stressing, having to go get a fake tan, etc etc etc.... I spent a day and a half scouring the internet and newspapers with the help of my very awesome work peeps and found a really fun masquerade at Hotel DeLuxe. A 20's style boutique hotel in Portland. It was SO MUCH FUN. I will briefly mention that there was a burlesque show, which was actually quite cute. They never get fully naked and they really only show anything for about 10 seconds. It's all about the little story they're telling and the tease. They performed to music from the evenings band the Stolen Sweets, a local 20's jazz band. Very good. Very fun group.

The best thing about the music is that is was danceable! We were able to foxtrot or single time swing to most of it. We even threw in a salsa at the end. We are very out of practice dancing together but the dance floor was small so we just stayed close and moseyed around in foxtrot patterns. Swing is always fun, even when it's been a while. We got several compliments from people in the crowd, including one of the singers in the band. So, all in all it was great fun. We got to dress up all fancy, we wore awesome masks that we found in a vintage store downtown (the masks weren't vintage, though), we got to dance, and drink, and relax, and laugh (a lot!). This is the first New Years Eve that I have gotten to spend with just Monkey and it was the BEST New Years Eve EVER!!!

Here is a little video. Sorry it's so dark. I fixed it a little but it didn't help much. I'll work on that later and re-upload.