social hour

Last night, the gals from bookclub got together for a Christmas party/baby shower/social gathering at San Chez. At first, I was feeling tired and anti-social, but with this group, it's impossible to stay that way for long.

What I enjoy most about our group is the overall diversity and dynamics of the women. The Books & Cooks contain a devout Christian, A devout Non-Christian, and a couple of Catholics. Some are single women, some are married with children and some are married, no children. We are tall, short, dark-haired, light haired and come from different backgrounds. One thing that all the women have in common is that they are intelligent, educated people. The conversations at our meetings can involve anything from politics to hair color, and I love them for that.

A group with dynamics such as ours is hard to ignore, and last night we managed to quickly become the entertainment for the mezzanine section of the restaurant. It's a bookclub tradition to have some sort of minor catastrophe occur at a meeting. Whether it be dog/mineral spirit incidents, major dog flatulation or wine spilling on new furniture, we manage to produce a (later) laughable situation. This time the incident to speak of evolved when a certain napkin placed in a bread basket made friends with a nearby candle. For some reason, none of us reacted, we just noticed that the lights were brighter and there was a nice warmth emanating from the table. I think I casually pointed out the fire, and Stacey screamed while a waiter non-chalantly walked by and dumped a pitcher of water on said basket - as if he were working on an assembly line - it was so automatic. The waitress then explained that this was the third time they had performed such a fire-fighting duty that night.

Between the fire, the gift exchanges, and our general livelihood, we managed to draw the attention and even applause of the other patrons in the restuarant. In a good way. I swear.