office_party epitome of incomprehensibility Maybe this is just some effect of my vagina dripping blood, but last night I found myself ranting against against last year's tutoring-centre office party, to an audience of one bemused father and brother. "They didn't have DESSERT! Who throws a party with food and doesn't have dessert? Sure, they had extra drinks, but alcohol doesn't taste good. I'm not being childish - it doesn't! If you're going to be properly hedonistic, why don't you consume something that actually tastes good, like sugar?" This was partly tongue-in-cheek - gustibus non est disputandus or something - but I remember being genuinely bummed last year that they didn't have dessert. So that's another reason I don't want to go to this year's, which is tomorrow. Mainly I'd rather hang out longer with the sociolinguistics prof and her two former TAs. But I said I'd just have supper with them and show up at the office around 8. Oh, boo hoo. Suffer more creatively, Kirsten. Fear of public speaking and now grumpiness about office parties?? It's been done. 221201 ... e_o_i Obvious solution: I brought dessert. I was standing in line at Cocobun, a bakery chain that has both fast-food and fancier things, clutching a bag of thin Japanese cookies, when I decided to splurge on a box of macarons too. The one I had? Unimpressive. But the actual party was actually enjoyable, and that was because of music. Melodie, friend of someone there, got out a ukelele and sang Persian songs, her voice sweet and flexible and surprising. I didn't recognize the songs, but B. and the Iranian crowd did. But I enjoyed the recognition in others' eyes, the way you laugh at an in-joke you're not in on because the enjoyment it causes in others seems worthwhile. Melodie is French, not Persian, and the Farsi speakers were impressed by her accent. And it's not as if words were the only thing; the singing was what impressed me. And the reason I wasn't a ball of stress, like a more-or-less sphere of elastics made for bouncing? Dinner with the Sociolinguistics gang was cancelled and I could finish my German homework. 221204 what's it to you? who go blather from