Cocktails and Scrabble

Let me begin by saying that thanks to facebook, it's easy to keep in touch with people.  My realtor being one of those people.  And since she and I seem to have a lot of common interests, we tend to "like" or comment on each other's posts.  So yesterday I was invited to her home where she was having a cocktails and scrabble girls night.  I was excited because I've been meaning to ask her out for drinks for months, but nervous because I wouldn't know anyone, and I've found I tend to be the youngest one and older (even by 5 years) women tend to take me less seriously.  But I had a blast!

We drank lemon drop martinis, then some white wine.  Our hostess had made roasted shrimp salad with toasted french bread, couscous salad, and mango cayenne cupcakes.  Another person brought some soup she had made the night before, spicy chilled cucumber avocado soup.  It was all so delicious!  And we played a mean game of scrabble.  Beforehand one woman had looked at me and said, "Have we met before."  I told her I honestly didn't know, since I've met so many new people lately.  After scrabble as we sat around chatting I mentioned my bad experience at PAZO here, and she lit up and said, "With the Swirlistas?"  Yes, apparently we're in a wine drinking group together, and that is where she recognized me from.  That day there had been 30+ of us in a loud couch area, so while we thought the other looked familiar, it was hard to place.  Turns out it was her first get together, so I encouraged her to come out again, because that was an odd one.  And our hostess seemed quite interested in a group all about going out for wine and food!  

Slowly but surely I am learning to ropes of meeting people here in the city.  My biggest hurdle has been explaining that right now I don't work.  I seem to get a lot of looks like "what do you mean you don't work?" or "wow, she must be boring and kinda dumb."  When I get the first I explain that right now I'm working at putting our home together and working on a novel.  To the latter I just want to slap them, but I restrain myself.  I don't even mention how boring I think their job sounds or more importantly how boring I find it that work is the only thing to talk about.  Last night was completely different.  No one asked.  If you didn't mention your job in a humorous story then no one asked, and no one spent a lot of time talking about work.  These women were interesting to me, because that is so rare.  Instead we discussed politics, the economy, art, food (we all are into our food), house maintenance, restaurants, shoes, etc.  I felt relaxed, and ended up having a great time.

My goal this year is to get out there more, make more effort to meet a bunch of people and enjoy socializing.  And I think lately I've been succeeding very well in that endeavor.  Nice, since it's about damn time.