A couple days after the party, we all received an email from him with a link to a surprise video he'd edited together with all the clandestine hula hooping video he'd shot. It. Is. Amazing. My favorite part is the highlight reel of everyone throwing their hands up and leaning that starts around the 1:45 minute mark (right after Siege does the "white man's overbite") and just keeps getting better. (PS - Make sure you check out Ellen's sideways "tit-sway" at 2:14. Amazing.)
On the way to the airport, we stopped off at a restaurant on the harbor to have lunch with June. June was the woman my grandfather dated after his wife Connie died. She was like second grandma to me for a couple years when I was a kid. My grandfather died in 1988 when I was eleven and we kind of lost touch with her after that. I hadn't seen her twenty years and it was fantastic to catch up with her and her husband.
...my dad took us next door to see Bruce's condo. He'd already done a bunch of work to "Brucify" the place. Check out the MEGACOUCH he put in the living room. It's the only couch I've seen where sitting isn't an option. You can ONLY lay on the thing. It's basically like having a leather bed in your living room.
...and took the golf cart out onto the empty course for some eagerly anticipated High-Speed Drunk Driving on the Totally Empty Golf Course (highly recommended, btw) and watched the sunset. Haha. Yay, Christmas in Florida!
....and on the passenger side it says "Stephanie." Awwww. My mom drove this golf cart, my dad and I went into the garage next door and grabbed my Uncle Bruce's golf cart!
Meredith thought she'd be okay sans crutches, but right when we got off the plane she reinjured it pretty badly and it swelled right back up. After we'd finished our latkes, we ran out to the store to pick up ANOTHER pair of crutches. (Which was no big deal because crutches are WAY easier to find near a retirement village in Florida than they are in the East Village.)
Despite having severely injured her ankle at my company's holiday party the previous week, Meredith insisted her ankle was fine, and elected to leave her crutches at our place and packed super-light with just one bag.
Aziza and Mer on the dance floor. This is the last picture of Meredith that I have from this party. A couple of minutes later, she demanded my co-worker Alex dip her on the dance floor and Meredith fell and SLAMMED her ankle against the corner of a step that was on the edge of the recessed dance floor! It really hurt so she decided to take a cab home. (She totally forgot that's she'd left her WALLET and KEYS in my jacket and went through HELL trying to get home on her own. My cell phone was in my jacket in the coat check room and I didn't find all this out until the next morning. Bad, drunk boyfriend for not accompanying her home!)
OMG. Back in the day, Leigh used to be out late every single weeknight in the Lower East Side - so much so that she became friends with some of the garbage men that had that route and they used to give her and her roommate Jessica rides home to make sure they got home safely. Haha. We got out of Lawrence's party and when a garbage truck passed us, Leigh hailed it like a taxi AND THE GUY STOPPED. Hahaha. Let's hear it for free rides!
I can't really drink until it's dark out (I don't know why!). But luckily, it was already dark outside at 5pm in December, plus The Annex doesn't have any windows (it's like a casino in there) so we all started getting our drinky drink on. Mer and Leigh.
Later that night, Meredith's friends Josh and Blair came down from LA to visit. They met at camp in high school and hadn't seen each other in YEARS. Good times!
...gets a THUMBS DOWN from Meredith (he said meta-ironically through a poorly framed and out-of-focus digital picture he'd carelessly shot from the hip).
On Saturday night, Catrinel came over for dinner. For dessert, we decided to open up one of the MayDay Emergency Food Ration bars to see what it tasted like! (Verdict: Like a really dry, dense, crumbly lemon tart mixed with spackle.)
Then Meredith and Lisa spent a whole bunch of time styling the hair of a doll that they purchased at our corner bodega when we stopped for treats and snacks on the way home.
Back at our place, the ladies decided to get crafty and make things out of those little plastic beads that you iron. Meredith made an adorable little mouse on a yellow square and Lisa made...
On Sunday morning the dishwasher overflowed with suds because someone put the wrong kind of detergent in there! I love Meredith's expression in this photo.
