I woke up around 7am so that I could catch an 8:30am bus into uptown. I mentioned previously that Karyn and Bryan bought me a cooking class at the Kitchen Window as a gift for my birthday last month. It was “A Tour Through Kristkindlmarkt” — we made many German cookies and I drank a couple dainty mugs of Gluehwein. The instructor had brought her German mother and a friend of the family’s, Heike. I practiced my German with her a little bit while we made Schokoladelebkuchen. And I took pictures of complete strangers!

Afterwards I walked over to Karyn and Bryan’s apartment (since they only live about a block from Calhoun Square). I ate some lunch, stole Karyn’s car to do some shopping at Target, then we were on our way to pick up Kristi and head to a holiday party at my aunt Laurie’s house. It began very delightfully as I discovered that my cousin Jamie had created Rapt Pickles (or pickle logs or pickle dogs or pickle wraps or whatever you want to call them, I prefer rapt, but not wrapped).

There was an amazing amount of food and plenty of wine and loads of gifts. We played a game to exchange and steal all of the gifts. I went home with a candle and that’s okay. There was a gift in a Marshall Field’s bag that I had been eyeing since before the game, but it’s popularity really skyrocketed and it was stolen from me at least four times (but I found out later that it was a teal cow cookie jar and I just don’t think that would mesh with my feng shui). After that I had a meager pile.

We left around 9pm and Karyn dropped Kristi and me off at our house. We took a few moments to regroup, then headed over to Kristi’s coworker Johnny’s house for a very different holiday party. Johnny was spinning records all night and there was a little bit of madness with the mistletoe and a puppy named Bandit, but overall it was a fun time. Loads of dancing! I love to dance. In fact, I was so busy dancing that I handed my camera over to another photographer, who caught me being sassy.

Ok, so that’s not a very good picture of me, but does sass ever show up well on film? Maybe it does. Not when wine is involved.

Kristi and I left around midnight to meet some other party-goers at Drink in Uptown. Kristi and I wandered around a very crowded Drink and decided that it was no good. However, since we were already paying for parking, we deserved a drink somewhere. We went around the corner to William’s, where Kristi got bumped around.

Then we were done and we went home. Today is very quiet. I’ve already listened to two movies. In a couple hours, Karyn is serving dinner. So that’ll be a good excuse to change out of my pajamas and leave the house.