I'd been anticipating having a quiet evening at home with my friends inside the computer. Instead, I wound up over at trystan_laryssa and dustraven's, with their old roommate (who I'm sure I used to have a nickname for) and his wife and their kids, and figment0 besides.

I brought pomegranates and butterbeer, in the cream soda and buttershots assemble-it-yourself form. We played Harry Potter Scene It, then Apples to Apples. There was great hilarity over the latter, especially after the last remaining awake kid conked out. I won "clean" with "girl scouts" (judge: dustraven) and "dirty" with "car bomb" (judge: figment0) but failed to bag "fuzzy" with "cheesecake" (the sort that's been left at the back of the refrigerator too long, and what was I supposed to play, Canada, Death Valley, or Israel?). The rest of the group voted that trystan_laryssa and I had to be separated, as we were getting too high a percentage of each other's apples.

[Poll #643557]
Is it customary to decide that the green apples that a person holds are a description of them? Our crew tonight seemed to find it customary to break out into song at pseudo-random intervals, like when someone said "dead" (we went through bits of "Dead Man's Party" and then TMBG's "Dead" the second time it came up) or when Bangkok got discussed (not much between despair and ecstasy). We did that last year too, however, not playing that game, so I think it's just the group. At some point I'd like to play the game in reverse, with green apples dealt out and red apples as the challenge. We'd run out of apples more quickly that way, but still fun for all.

Midnight was a bit of a scramble, as we were rather all in game. Champagne was poured. The guys got the TV on at 6 seconds until midnight, and I wound up clinking my cellphone against glasses (I'd been looking at the time on it). I demonstrated my Secret Weapon about hanging around with smokers when we went outside: incense. The dude gave me a light. After dustraven and trystan_laryssa had their New Year's Kiss, I snagged a little bit of a smooch from her. figment0 got a peck on the cheek. Someone was letting off fireworks, people were banging on pots and pans, and someone touched off something that went fucking BOOM in rather a scary bit of noise, such that half the people present thought it had been gunfire until physical evidence in the form of we'd seen light over the trees and intervening buildings pointed out that it had to have been a far-too-large firework going off far too low, because muzzle flash is evidently neither that bright nor that high. The kid slept through it all.

The requisite car alarms were set off. It's not a fireworks display until someone's car alarm goes off; the more car alarms the better the fireworks. Is "car alarms" an Apples to Apples card? If it's not, it should be a write-in.

After we were done outside, we went back inside and finished up the game. trystan_laryssa won; she'd wound up with the best of a number of bad rounds and reached ten first.

figment0 dropped me off home. I was staggering and weaving by that point: the energy was wearing off and the booze was wearing on. Two glasses of butterbeer and a fifth of a small glass of champagne doesn't sound like a lot, but it is if you're me, which I am; it also is on that much of not supper. Heck, it was rather a lot of not breakfast and not lunch either, because I was running out to the store to get carrots for breakfast (at 6 pm) when I called trystan_laryssa, and then I wound up chatting a little, not eating breakfast, and closing down the computer and leaving. Horror of horrors: I think I Forgot to Eat Real Food. And given that I was off visiting Guide Dog Aunt, who cooks better than I do and keeps Actual Food on hand, I may well be among the few who lost weight over the holiday season.

How do you get pomegranate out of a cat? I have pomegranate on my fingers. I sent pomegranate home with the girls. I don't think the cats got into the pomegranate. I cleared dishes out from the clean dish washer into the cupboards and then from the sink into the dirty dish washer.

I want to try out the rubber ice mold that I think will work for chocolate. Someday soon.

I unexpectedly ran into smmc while grocery shopping. At a distance, I mistook her for trystan_laryssa with an unfamiliar tall, be-hatted entourage, but it turned out that she was someone completely different, someone I may have met in person but it's not entirely clear where, or perhaps (likely) we haven't. We chatted and caught up on stuff in any case.

On the way home, it finally registered that the entourage reminded me of someone I used to be acquainted with back in Fairbanks, one of the Games of Adventure (duct tape sword) guys.

It's a small world, even when you turn out not to know the person you just ran into.