I'm kinda busy
Sorry I cannot hear you I'm kinda busy
Our friend P is turning 33 today, so she threw a fancy birthday party at a hotel downtown last night. When I heard it would be P's birthday and that we were invited to get drinks, I was excited to go, but when I found out it was at The Andaluz I was suddenly intimidated and kind of sick to my stomach, and I really wanted to back out. What the hell can I wear to the Hotel Andaluz?! I thought of ditching out, but we had napped all afternoon so that we'd be able to go party with them, and I really had been looking forward to the party. (But at a BAR! Not the freaking Andaluz!)
After tearing my entire wardrobe apart, I ended up wearing stuff I wear all the time, and we actually had a pretty good time. When you walk in to Hotel Andaluz, it's all high ceilings, flagstones and labyrinthian hallways. It's not like a Hilton or Mariott where they're snobby but there is a front desk and you can tell it's a business; this place is like a museum. At my last job I went there to promote and I was so nervous I was like, sweating. You have to follow all these weird signs to get to the reception desk and when you get there it's like this cozy office where you sit down with someone, not just a desk where you walk up and get a key card from someone getting paid by the hour-- it's CLASSY. They spend TIME with you, they're like your personal hotel-experience therapist or something.
Anyway: when we walked in, the Salsa band was so loud I kind of wanted to hide someplace, but we plunged in to the ballroom anyway. I figured we'd find someone who could tell us where our party was, but we saw P across the room and went over there. Turns out private parties can just rent a little booth kind of room off to the side of the dance floor where you have the privilege of sitting on comfy furniture and having waitstaff stop by every half hour or so. The service was terrible, but good enough that everyone was drunk by the time we arrived. We said our hellos and introductions were made, then we stood around for a moment wondering how we actually get drinks.
One of my clients is a good friend of P's, and I thought it would be kind of awkward to party together, but it turned out to be fine. We've worked together out of my old apartment enough that there wasn't really any kind of weird boundary stuff about separating the personal from the professional, and it's been long enough since he'd come in that it wasn't like "shit, now you're gonna feel weird coming back next week," plus everyone was drunk anyway. I got a $10 mojito which came out in a weird stem glass and wasn't very potent (how do you muddle the mint in a little stem glass? I beseech thee...) and we sat around for the first half the party chatting with P's partner M, and M's brother V. P kept coming around and trying to drag everyone out on the dance floor. I tried to be all like "Ohh poor me, I've got my period and I'm crampy and I don't want to dance" but really my Salsa's just rusty and my period never bothers me past the first day. She was unsympathetic since she'd just started hers too, so I finally demurred and then ended up providing a brief Salsa lesson to get her to leave us alone. It only served to confirm that we need a Latin Ballroom lesson. Everyone else on the dance floor were like, professionals. I introduced the idea of a dance class to everyone else at the party and there was a surprising amount of enthusiasm: enough people wanted to go with us that I left promising to research where we can get a group discount or something, and that might actually happen.
So we had fun despite my nervousness, and after a short walk back to our illegal parking spot we cruised home where immediately Telephone was playing in my head again and I didn't sleep for two more hours.
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