Happy New Year! I hope 2004 is a very, very good year in every way for all of you.

This has been such a hectic week. Tuesday I rushed out at lunchtime to buy a bra to wear with my NYE dress�used the V_ictoria�s Secret gift certificate that The Irishman gave me for my birthday. As I stood in line to pay, I savored the irony of using his gift certificate to buy a sexy bra to wear with Gemini . . . niiiiiiice. The bra I bought is nothing short of engineering genius. It creates cleavage, and is comfortable! It is my friend.

After that I looked for a little evening bag at H_&M but didn�t find one I liked, which caused me to panic until I found this online and called the store to ask them to hold one for me. It is perfect, and is another friend of mine.

Tuesday night my friend Lisa, her husband, and their daughter came over for dinner. It was so great to see them! Their daughter goes to a Jewish day school, and it sounds wonderful. I feel like I must find a way to work that out for J. I think it would be a very, very good thing for all of us.

Wednesday was a frantically busy day at work, with my phone ringing constantly as I tried to fax dozens of thirty-plus-page documents and iron out one snag after another. Gemini called and offered to transport me to W_ater Tower Place so I could pick up my evening bag at lunchtime. So nice! I got the bag, and my stockings (shimmery!), and we grabbed some lunch before he took me back to work. The afternoon was even MORE chaotic than the morning, and I finally left the office around 4:30. I sprinted to S_tate Street to try to locate some jewelry (which I did!) and then raced home.

I walked in the door at 6:15 and Gemini arrived shortly after 7. He looked very, very handsome in his tuxedo, but he was so frazzled that it took him about ten minutes to notice that I looked nice. That annoyed me, frankly. Then we had this little exchange:

Schmance: �Man oh man, what a rough day!�

Gemini: �Hey, you�re telling ME.�

Schmance, icily: �I wasn�t talking about YOUR day.�

Rrrrrrowr.

We arrived at the hotel, happy nevertheless and looking forward to the evening, and then everything started going downhill. Our reservation was somehow messed up, and they had seated the first six members of our eight-person party at a table for six. Gemini and I cooled our heels for 20 minutes in the lobby before everything was straightened out and everyone was re-seated at a larger table. At the table, we ordered drinks that never arrived. We ate our salads and finally went to the bar to fetch our own drinks, which involved standing in line for ten minutes, and then the drinks were awful. My vodka martini was mostly vermouth, ick. Then we waited over an hour for our entrees, as we watched the tables around us finish dessert and leave.

After dinner we found out that there were two one-seater restrooms upstairs for the women. You read that correctly: two toilets.

We finally proceeded to the actual party, which was spread out through three or four ballrooms. The music was ear-splittingly loud, and every room was packed. There was at least one bar in every room, but there were so many people that we couldn�t even get close to the bars, and the music was so loud that the bartenders couldn�t hear what people were ordering. After waiting twenty minutes in line for a drink, I was completely fed up. This was not the party I expected, and Gemini was similarly disappointed. I felt terrible for him, because the tickets had cost him $195 per person, and for that all we�d gotten was a decent dinner and one (drinkable) drink each.

Ultimately we located the publisher of the magazine that throws the party, and told him how dissatisfied we were with the service at this party. We told him about the unacceptably long wait for our entrees, about having to fetch our own drinks at a �VIP� dinner, about the waiters sweating bullets because the dining room was so obviously understaffed, and about the bartenders who had apparently never tended bar before. He was very nice and got us a table in the P_alm Court, which is a lovely room where a jazz combo was playing and people were seated on banquettes and loveseats around low tables. It is the room where afternoon tea is served, and it is very elegant and romantic at night. (I have to add that the powder room is a thing of beauty. It has a long row of immaculate little rooms, each with a toilet and a sink and a place to sit down and primp in front of a mirror. I loved it there and did not want to leave.) People were dancing and the volume of the music allowed us to actually talk to each other. The bartender bought Gemini a drink. We agreed that THIS was what we had been expecting all along from a party at the D_rake Hotel, wondered if we have simply turned into old fogeys, and laughed about the meat market that was the actual party. We had a couple of drinks and chatted with a friendly group at the next table. At about 12:30 we went back to the big party, which had emptied out considerably. We were finally able to walk up to a bar, only to find that the bartenders were drunk and beginning to run out of liquor even though the party was to continue until two o�clock.

We danced for a while�now that there was room on the dance floor to actually dance�picking our way through the discarded napkins and plastic cups and trying not to get trampled by the wild-eyed drunks. Finally we gave up and were at my place by about two o�clock, where we had our own little out-of-this-world party (wink, wink) and snuggled up to go to sleep.

I guess the positive spin on our NYE experience is that even though the party was crappy, we laughed it off and were happy to be together. I�m seeing glimmers of the pre-crisis Gemini, the Gemini who is very loving and a lot of fun. Being with him feels a lot less scary now. I said less scary. Today I feel like I might be able to relax and trust him again one day. I said might.

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