December 9, 2006: The Christmas Party

Today is the big day. The Nicklin Christmas Party is one of the major events of the year. Dominica and I slept in this morning just a little. Neither of us has had much of a chance to get any sleep for the past several nights so we were very appreciative of the chance to get not a full night’s sleep but close to it.

We hung out for a little while and then John, Adam, Dominica, Frankie and I went out to run party errands. Our first order of business was breakfast. Well, not really breakfast. It was actually a Mexican lunch at Chevy’s at just thirty minutes until noon. But the food was good and we had a good time. I really like their fresh tortillas there and the corn bready thing that they make. I got fish tacos like I normally do at these places these days. I am not sure when it happened but all of a sudden one day I started loving grilled fish tacos.

We had a lot of errands to run. The big one for me was to find a waistcoat or cumberbun for my tuxedo. We tried a tux place but they didn’t have anything that would work very well. We ended up hitting Nordstroms and that cost a fortune but I got some really awesome stuff including a sterling silver studs and cufflinks set and a silk bowtie – a real one that you tie. I am excited as I have always used fake bowties but I think that they are silly.

It was about three in the afternoon when we got back to the house and we had a little break before the final block of errands for the party. Big parties take a lot of work. So we relaxed for about two hours and then Dominica and Adam started getting ready for the party while John and I ran out to do the last round of errands. Just some quick stuff like picking up the food that had been ordered.

When we got to the shop, Heavenly Ham (no, seriously) that we were picking all of the food up from we discovered that they had closed! This was a LOT of food that we were supposed to be getting from there. Stuff that had been prepared long ahead of time. Apparently the person who had taken the order and done the scheduling hadn’t realized that the date fell on a Saturday and that they close extra early on Saturdays, at five o’clock. So now we were in a real panic. John and I spent almost two hours running all over Annapolis trying to find enough food for the party. We hit a couple of grocery stores, the Annapolis fish market and a few other places trying to get everything that we needed. We got back to the house just in time to scramble in the attempt to get ready for the party. We were both quite late actually getting to it and Adam had to run out to do more errands for food that we had ordered but were not able to pick up until the party was underway.

The party was a big success and everyone seemed to have a really good time. Dominica and I were stragglers as always and didn’t turn in until around four in the morning but there were plenty of people still going when we went to bed.

Leave a comment