In Which Our Heroine Does a Little Drinking and Blogging
Ah, drink. Now, I'm not a huge drinker. If for no other reason than I do take a bunch of medication, so I tend to get drunk pretty quickly (on the converse side, it does clear my system quickly as well). Generally, this translates into two words. Cheap. Date. But tonight we just had alcohol thrown at us, so I became an even cheaper date, and now I'm typing a bit buzzedlike.

Anyway, tonight was one of those fun evenings where things come together. I had dinner plans with Matt. I always enjoy my dinners with Matt. We were trying to sort out the wheres and the whens, and he e-mailed me to say "I'm going to be late because I promised my friends I would go get CDs autographed at Virgin Megastore by Dar Williams, although I don't know who she is, or what she even looks like. It starts at 6 and I won't even get there until 6:45, so I hope I don't miss her. But I can meet you after that. Is that ok?" I flipped. *Not* because it was going to be a problem if he was late, but rather because I am a big fan of Dar's, and had never seen her perform live. And I could most certainly be at Virgin by 6, seeing as I was already at the library, grinding away. So we rescheduled curry into tapas, and he would meet me at the store, and I would pick up the CDs for his friends and get in line and wait.
The CDs were on sale, and since I bought five (three for his friends, one for me, and one for Lolo who is an even bigger Dar fan than I am.), and it was double punch Wednesday (do big stores even do this sort of thing? I guess they do) I get a free CD out of the deal. And I went upstairs and started waiting with the rest of the crowd. The crowd was interesting. She has a big lesbian following, and the more overt ones were certainly present and accounted for. The majority of the guys there were there with their girlfriends, and there was one very odd looking guy who to me seemed like he might cross the line from "fan" to obsessive. For starters, he was the only person in the whole place wearing a Dar Williams t-shirt. Secondly, the minute she mentioned taking a request, he started out shouting anyone in the place. Thirdly, there was just a vibe. Maybe it was the digital camera, the dyed hair, the pancake makeup. I dunno. But anyway, there I was with the crowd, standing in between some bookshelves to get a good view. Unfortunately, I was standing in front of the shelf that said "erotic", so that was my view. "Erotic" to the left, Dar Williams to the right. When you really need a camera, you never have one.

The performance was good. She's fun live. Apparently it is ok to be left for a woman named Marigold, because you just know that she's nice, has a good pancake recipie, and isn't that much of a threat, unlike say someone named Genivieve or some other multisyllabic French name. Thus sayeth Dar. And the music was great. But then the line was made for the signing. I lucked out, and was relatively near the front. But I lucked out. I was straight behind odd guy, who seemed to be about to wet himself due to the fact that he was going to meet Dar. Luckily, this is about the time Matt turned up to wait with me in line. I could hand off the three CDs for his friends to him, so I didn't look so obsessive myself. Watched while odd guy got his photo taken with Dar, who took it in stride. And then for us a Bit of signing, life was fun.

Then Matt and I headed to Tapeo for dinner. Some sangria, which is always good, but the food was even better than I remembered. Even more fun was the fact that the waiter kept flirting with Matt, and Matt kept flirting with the waiter. Everyone was having fun, and then dessert came. Matt and I opted not to have coffee, or an aperatif, and to split a dessert, since we were full from all the tapas. But this is when the flirting came in. Our waiter turned up with two coffees, a liquer for me (I forget what it is called, but it is Spanish, and has 43 herbs in it. You can drink it straight, which we tried and liked, or over ice with milk, which we also tried and loved.) and an extra slice of chocolate flourless cake. Holy Hannah! Flirting with waiters, good. I think Matt and I shall return there again! But the sangria, the chocolate, the liqure? I"m a little giddy. So I'm going to bed to try to sober up before my 8am doctor's appointment. The last time I turned up bruised, this time hungover. He's going to start to ask even MORE questions.
Love,
Anne

Then we went