Sunday night stuff

Got back from a weekend out of town to find a happy message on my machine (as opposed to the usual irate ramblings from Mastercard)--my book The Rules of Love (the one that is also a RITA finalist this year) is a Bookseller's Best finalist!!! I just love the little jolt some external validation can give. :) Saw a fab-oo Betsey Johnson dress at the mall last week that would look excellent at the awards ceremony, if I could just find enough change behind my sofa pillows...

So, I spent a couple of days with one of my oldest, bestest friends, who I affectionately call Kay-Kay, or Kayter, though she now goes by her much more dignified first name of Laura. We've known each other since we were freshmen in high school, and I have to stay on her good side because she knows waaaay too much about me. Stuff that no one cares about now, but someday when I marry Prince William and win the Pulitzer Prize, could be valuable to US Weekly. We had a great time. Her boyfriend Bill made chocolatinis (I must congratulate the rare genius who first came up with the idea of putting chocolate and booze together in one glass. Sheer brilliance). We had cottage pie at a faux-Brit pub, watched dumb movies, and looked through old yearbooks and photo albums.

I recommend people do the nostalgia thing only after the chocolatinis and Guiness, or your drink of choice. It turns the situation into one of even higher hilarity and lessens the sting of remembering your youthful fashion/dating/social life mistakes. For instance, my yearbook is chock-full of guys with mullets and girls with foot-high mall bangs. These were slip-ups I somehow avoided, but I did have a perm that made my usually stick-straight hair look strangely triangular. Kay had shockingly large glasses and sometimes borrowed her mother's clothes (the horror!). Ah, the folly of youth.

And then there are the autographs from people we no longer remember at all, urging us to keep in touch, don't get into trouble over the summer, and "stay sweet", and fondly recalling antics in AP English. I was completely unable to recall the name of my junior prom date, so Bill dubbed him Dude Sorenson, for no apparant reason, but it's as good a name as any. (My senior prom date, BTW, was named Chris, just in case you were wondering).

Ahhhh--good times. Kind of. The bad hair thing sucked, but we did have some rockin' times in English class when Mrs. Vandergriff left the room. :)

So, here's a pic of senior prom. Kay is in the teal dress and (natch) big glasses. I'm in the middle in black (I have somehow never again been able to achieve cleavage like that). And my other oldest, bestest friend, Anne, is in the green dress. Anne and I met when we were 12 years old, but, very sadly for me and the many other people who loved her, she passed away last year. She has missed the high school fashion curse here, though, and looks great. I hope she'd like to be remembered this way.

And, since I don't want Kay to think I'm a complete pooh-head for posting old pics of high school in a public forum, here is also one of more recent vintage. Bill, Kay, and moi on a trip to Seattle last spring.