all night on the ferry

finally, it's final, done and done. ben and i have signed our new lease (!). sometime tomorrow we will obtain the key to our new apartment (!!) to which we will officially move, with the help of our various families, on saturday (!!!). it's all terribly exciting and i would be even more thrilled except i had to go straight back to work after the lease-signing and couldn't even knock back a couple of cocktails to celebrate.

on the subject of cocktails, last night i had three excellent retro ones courtesy of a Vintage Drink book and my hostess's well-stocked bar. three of us were at the hostess's house to play pinochle -- or rather to learn how, since three out of four of us were pinochle illiterate.

everything about the evening was charmingly retro: the hostess's queens townhouse dates back to my favorite decade, the 1870s, and has fireplaces in every room like watermarks to prove it. fittingly, she furnished her parlor with an antique love-seat, and i got to perch on the love-seat as we played on her slightly rickety but genuine card-table. covered with green felt and everything!

on each corner of the card-table, there was an indented cup holder for our cocktails. our hostess has a tradition for pinochle night in which the guests pick three or four different drinks to mix. all of ours were resounding successes, even the algonquin, a mixture of rye, vermouth, and pineapple juice that i lobbied for based on the name. it went excellently with pizza.

slowly but surely, i am fulfilling my goal of mixing with polite society. my first poetry workshop this past saturday also got me out among people. and yoga.