Elation and celebration: Cake, champagne, and Bel-Aire Diner

The day before Mother's Day, in honor of a number of events—including a graduation, a new job, new roommates, and in order to bid farewell to an old roommate—MH and I hosted a small party in our apartment. It will probably be our only shindig, since MH is studying for the bar exam these days and me, well, I'm moving out of this city at the end of summer. I decided last month to accept the opportunity to pursue an MFA degree in Fiction…in Colorado.

Let me lay out how crazy this is for me. I'll be going from this:



To this:

It's nuts, yo! But I'm psyched. A change of pace and environment should be good for me—I've lived in New York City all my life, after all. I don't know what's going to become of this blog once I relocate, but hopefully it'll remain (or turn into) something interesting. But I make no promises; I haven't the faintest idea of what awaits me out there. Um, any Coloradoan readers lurking? I'd love to hear from you.

This is the bottle of champagne that AT left on my desk once I told her the news. Hooray.


Anyway, back to the party. Do you like our very dorkily decorated cake, above? (Yes, I am the dork.) That huge, moist, chocolate cake is from Costco, and it's pretty good, though also extremely sweet. We also had a bunch of other food for our guests: pigs in a blanket, which seemed to disappear in about five seconds flat every time I brought out more; palitaw rolled in sesame and coconut; roasted garlic to spread on homemade wheat bread; and roasted potatoes with a sweet chili-mayonnaise dip. There was also hummus, pita chips, crudite, pineapple, assorted pickles, two types of goat cheese, and brie.

Here's the full spread. It looks all neat, because I took this photo before most people had arrived.

With the clanking river of wine, beer, and alcohol that entered our door that night, it was inevitable that this party was destined to rock until the break of dawn. And aside from two visits from the cops, all went pretty much as expected, including the requisite few friends crashing out on our couch. The next day, after finally managing to rouse ourselves, we all hit up Bel-Aire Diner for some sustenance.

An omelette, toast, and home fries: the breakfast of hangovers. Nothing special, but it provided fuel. A good thing too, since once breakfast was over MH and I had to clean up the apartment in preparation for our parents coming over for dinner that night (more on that later).

Since I'm moving soon, I've started attempting to clear out my possessions. At the party I managed to give away a bunch of books, but this pile still remains. Books, anyone? If you're in the NYC area, get in touch.