It’s the End of the Year and I Know it (and I Feel Fine!)

It’s December, the weather is finally cold and the heat in my apartment building is on so high that I’m thinking of turning on my air conditioner so I can sleep. Which can only mean one thing…Holiday Party Tour! The holidays are the best: everyone is in a great mood, there are parties every night and, for three wonderful weeks, drinking eggnog is socially acceptable. Just this week alone I attended four holiday parties, some associated with work, others with friends, and one that was actually just a dinner disguised as a Chanukah celebration, but I digress. Holiday parties are also a time to take stock of the past year and say all those emotionally awkward things you’ve stored up all year, with the hope that when the clock strikes 12 on December 31 everything you say will be erased like a scene from Groundhog Day.

I also like holiday parties because they kind of connect the dotes between the various people I know and allow me to accidentally reintroduce my friends to, say, their roommate, next door cubicle neighbor or ex-girlfriend (damn small world). Plus, it’s always nice to see that all it takes is a few drinks and some sushi for the most uptight guy in your office to start streaking naked across the floor or, or more accurately, hugging you a lot and awkwardly apologizing to you in the bathroom the following morning.

I also have special “tour” friends that I only seem to run into during holiday party season each year. But since I also tend to appear in a disproportionate number of pictures while on holiday party tour, according to, say, my Facebook photo gallery, these people are my best friends who I see every week. My favorite holiday tour friend is probably Jess a.k.a. “JFS,” who I’ve seen more in the past seven days than the past 7 months. Jess and I actually met at a holiday party in December of 2005 and spent a whirlwind three weeks on hoiday tour together, before she accidentally/drunkenly walked into a mirror after an Ivan Neville show and was forced to go to the emergency room (which was kind of like the Altamont of our friendship). We seem to reunite each December for a few sold out nights of holiday party shenanigans---if only so she can rub it into me that she thinks of me whenever she looks at the scar on her foot---but ‘tis the season for forgiveness, right?

In fact, I love holiday party tour so much I wish it had a summer counterpart timed around July 4^th or something. Luckily, my annual Hungover for the Holiday party has slowly been delayed to the point that if might actually take place around the time of my summer birthday, so maybe that will convince some other offices to delay their Christmas cheer until the summer months. At least my air conditioner will already be on…