(no subject)

[butterflydreaming]

9am on the first day of 2005, and I've been drinking tea. We've been using the cups from the Japanese tea set that my sister gave me a decade ago, and I'd forgotten how comfortably they fit in my hands. These are the little bowl-shaped kind, rather than the crumpled cylinders. I was mistaken about having to work this morning, so I get to laze about with messy hair and stay in my pajamas.

This is the 4th or 5th year that my friends and I have done a quiet and cozy celebration where we are not even required to stay awake until the clock changes. (But of course we did.) We don't drink (majority rule on that one), but that balances out for me with the all-evening buffet of New Foods. This year featured fruits. None of us had ever eaten sapote before, and I had to explain to L and D how to eat a kumquat. We still have most of a crate left of Fuji apples, one of which I am eating even as I type this, that are divine.

To go with the anime theme (Gravitation, Spiral, and Twelve Kingdoms/Juuni Kokki) we had much more than pocky from the snack aisle at Uwajimaya. My favorites were the chocolate snacks that look just like straw mushrooms, a dark chocolate cap with a stem made of biscuit. We guessed at contents while shopping, since none of us can really read the packages, but did so with much success. Our group is rather small -- we're strictly sub -- but I don't think anyone of us would mind expanding the gathering. Any takers for next year?

It might sound incredibly low-key, maybe even downright dull, to many of you, but it's nice. I wouldn't trade good company & conversation for a loud room full of strangers, standing around in heels, and having the perilous drive home afterward. My New Year's is a sleep-over, so no one has to worry if the ones driving home will get there without incident. No one spends the night puking, or the next morning hung over. I like it.

This year, it was a little harder for me to make the choice. scarletbronte invited me to her New Year's party, and repeated the invitation went we got together for sushi last Wednesday, and the temptation was mighty. I'm in the throes of "new friend" eagerness to be with the tribe, and I know that it would also have been fun. There is a real appeal to having an occasion to dress up, and I enjoy drinks with a merry group, and observing people who may not realize that they are being watched. Thinking that I would have an early morning on the time clock helped the decision.

But I have no regrets. This is how the turning of the calendar year should be spent, I think. Communal sleeping is hard to beat. And the voices in the other room, right now, are making me immensely happy. I'd better go join them.