Um, hi.

So about that post from last night? I’m not actually a drunk twenty-year-old. Although you may have mistaken me for one if you had seen me giggling at the computer while I typed. I was going to take down the post, but you know what? It sort of amuses me, so I’ll let it stay.

It was so good to be out last night, after spending so much time lately staying in. It isn’t unusual for The Husband and me to be fairly antisocial during the month of January. After the madness of the holidays, which we spend in California, running around trying to see everyone that we haven’t seen in the last six months or even a year, and coming home to spend a quiet New Year and anniversary together, disappearing into the Land of Two just happens naturally. This January we were particularly reclusive, with both of us having deadlines for work on the 31^st, and at least one of us always seeming to have a cold. We went out to dinner a couple of times when we were too tired to cook, and we saw movies when we thought our coughing and sniffling were minimal enough to avoid offending other movie-goers, and the rest of the time we just moved between home and our offices.

But the deadlines have passed and we are mostly rid of our colds, so last night we went out with friends for First Fridays at the galleries of Dupont Circle. First Fridays happens the first Friday (I know!) of every month. The galleries open their new exhibits and serve free wine and cheese to anyone who stops in. The Husband and I have probably attended a dozen times in the four years we’ve lived here, visiting a few galleries and then heading over to a nearby restaurant for more substantial food. Last night we went to the galleries with a friend from grad school, and then were met at a restaurant by another friend.

We made it to two galleries before I got impatient. The Kathleen Ewing Gallery had some beautiful nature photographs, including some black-and-white shots of the Utah desert that reminded me of Ansel Adams, and some close-ups of flowers that one could almost mistake for Georgia O’Keeffe paintings. I couldn’t get excited about the main exhibit there—it simply wasn’t the sort of thing that draws me in. We also went to the Washington Printmakers Gallery, which The Husband and I always make a point of visiting during First Fridays, partly because we know one of the artists there, but also because we love so much of the art. While some of it isn’t really my style, I am nearly always intrigued by the techniques, and I am impressed by the variety of art that can be produced through printmaking.

After two galleries, I found myself urging The Husband and our friend on to Rosemary’s Thyme, a bistro with good food that offers half-priced bottles of wine before 7:30. We sat for several hours, enjoying a couple of bottles of wine (one was the Liberty School syrah, which I highly recommend, although I am not a wine connoisseur, or even a somewhat well-informed wine snob, so you might not want to pay any attention to me on that one), eating some Turkish appetizers, which were delicious, and some pasta dishes, which I probably wouldn’t order again. Oh, and there were a couple of slices of Godiva chocolate cheesecake, which actually had a sort of cinnamon flavor to them, which I loved and which The Husband could have done without. We ate and we drank and we gossiped and WE SAT OUTSIDE IN FEBRUARY because oh my god the weather, it was beautiful.

After a month of acting like a hermit, it felt good to visit with friends, to laugh and talk and be social. I had four or five glasses of wine over the course of probably three hours, which was enough to make my head spin as I attempted to step onto an escalator into the Metro station at the end of the night and to make me think that blogging was a FANTASTIC idea when I got home and to leave me feeling rather hungover for much of today. Because, yes, I have the tolerance of a seven-year-old.

Good times.