well, since you asked...

i'll tell you all about my night! last night, that is. you see, i had gotten an invitation to a very exclusive event - the new york city marathon volunteers' dinner at bryant park grill. not even all the volunteers are invited; apparently, they do the invitations by lottery. which is stupid, since i barely did anything and left early, but hey, i'm not complaining. free food, free booze... i was there. i went, fully prepared to know no one there (they had specified on the invitation that spouses could not be accommodated, much to the wife's and my disappointment), but expecting everyone else to be in more or less the same boat. they weren't. when i arrived, the waiters and i seemed to be the only people under 50, and everyone else seemed to know someone. some kind, lonely old man engaged me in a brief conversation that covered the standard topics of manhattan rent, the merits and downsides of outer boroughs (he lives in astoria, so i didn't divulge my true feelings), and the red sox bullpen. although i was relieved to no longer seem like a creepy friendless weirdo leering at the crowd, i was also bored with him and seized the opportunity when he wandered toward the bar. at one point, i decided to leave if the situation didn't improve, but just then, i found a pocket of youth and leeched onto them like the parasite i sometimes am (big shout-out to my new nonprofit friends!). they were very friendly, and adopted me as one of their own. i dined with them over a mediocre (but free!) buffet dinner and (free!) champagne, and we danced to the electric slide. in what felt like a very grown-up social exchange, they gave me their business cards and i invited them to our weekly dinner as a token of my gratitude. i found out today that, in a shining example of instant karma, one of them won an item in the raffle (you go, jessica!).

tonight: harry's!