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This picture is actually from last night. It's so rare that I get all dressed up and made up that I figured I ought to take a picture. Of course, you can't really tell from this picture, but I had eyeshadow on, and glitter and a dress with sparkles all over it! I've developed a tendency to overdress for all social events ever since I started working in labs. I wear jeans and t-shirts every day, so dressing up is kind of a refreshing change for me. But actually, I wasn't really overdressed last night...a lot of people I saw were all decked out to celebrate the big night.

The name of this page, 010100.html, looks like some sort of funky binary code.

I'm not feeling nearly so bad this morning as I thought I might. I'm still jet-lagged, so even though I went to bed at 3 a.m., I woke up again at 6. That's not why I expected to feel bad--that prediction results from the copious amounts of champagne I consumed last night. But, I guess I paced myself pretty well--my strategy is to drink heavily early in the evening, and then just coast on that and when I get to be almost sober, it's time to go home, drink 2 glasses of water, and go to bed.

I spent the evening with Andy, another college friend, Shin-Young, and Andy's roommate and the roommate's girlfriend from Slovakia, who is also living with them temporarily. We had dinner at Andy's cooked by the roommate's girlfriend who made us traditional Slovakian food. As I've mentioned here in the past, I'm not usually too crazy about Slavic cuisine, but this was actually pretty good, and the heavy food provided gave all of us an alcohol buffer.

In the middle of dinner, I suddenly realized that it was 9 p.m., so we all rushed over to the TV to see the ball drop in Times Square, but we were too late. It was 9:01. Oh well.

After dinner we headed over to a party given by a co-worker of Shin-Young's. The party was pretty mellow when we showed up, but I think we livened it up somewhat. Andy's roommate drank almost a whole fifth of vodka by himself and became progressively more drunken and belligerent as the evening went on. He insisted on being DJ, but carelessly spilled champagne on several CDs, and haphazardly threw aside those he didn't want to play. People were trying to dance, but he kept trying to put on things like Tom Petty (I have nothing against Tom Petty, but there is a time and a place for Mr. Petty's music, and this was not it).

He then decided to go dance (leaving me to handle the music) taking his shirt off and dancing provocatively with various women, knocking drinks over and ripping leaves off a houseplant. The rest of us were somewhat inebriated as well, but not so much that we didn't realize what an embarrassment he was being. Andy was trying to calm his roommate down, and someone asked me if the two of them were brothers. "No, but they went to private school together," I explained, "an all boys school" I added with a single raised eyebrow, by way of explanation. "Ohhhhh" she said.

Anyway, the roommate was getting to be totally out of control. We apologized profusely to the hostess, and then made a break for it. Once we got out into the hall of the building, we decided there was no way the roommate was going to make it down the stairs in his condition, so we decided to summon the elevator. I went to go press the button to summon it, but the roommate collapsed onto the floor and grabbed onto my ankle refusing to move. I was not amused and bent over and slapped him hard upside the head. He let go of my ankle.

We managed to hoist him into the elevator, and then out into the lobby of the building. But then as we were leaving he kicked the building's front door, shattering the glass. We all paused for a moment, unsure of what to do, but then decided to just focus on getting the roommate home. He was walking very unsteadily, leaning on Andy and his girlfriend for support.

The plan had been to walk to Shin-Young's car which was parked at her house several blocks away, and then she had volunteered to drive all of us home, but it didn't look like the roommate was going to make it. Plus, I don't think Shin-Young really wanted someone in his condition riding in her car.

But miraculously, a cab appeared (it's very hard to catch cabs in San Francisco on any night, but nearly impossible on holiday evenings). Shin-Young and I were walking ahead of the others and managed to flag it down and pushed Andy, his roommate and the roommate's girlfriend into it and sent them on their way.

Shin-Young then very kindly agreed to drive me home. We remarked on the surrealness of the evening, and how reminiscent it was of college. By the time you get to your late twenties, you don't expect to still have to carry your friends home from parties.