Cocktails and Cookies

Have you ever eaten so much you just wanted to die to escape the pain?

Well, that was me on Friday night. I went to a holiday cocktail and cookie party featuring both yummy drinks and treats. Jim and Molly hosted the affair in their very grown up apartment, and all the guests brought homemade cookies to share! Okay, everybody brought homemade cookies except me. Unless you consider that bakery on Stockton and Vallejo to be my home. No, I didn't think so.

Anyway, there were so many good cookies, as well as savory snacks, that I couldn't help but overindulge. In every way. After mixing myself a sour apple martini (one of the more festive cocktails, if you ask me), I dove into the hors d'oeuvres. Only after I was sufficiently sated on chicken skewers, crudites and meatballs did I take the plunge and start on the cookies. There was no coming back after that. Don't worry, I talked to people, too. I hadn't seen Denise and Paul, my connection to the party, since the big fake band performance, so it was good to catch up with them, as well as many of their friends I have met only once or twice before. It was also nice to see Jim and Molly, who are a total power couple. Molly runs marathons, Jim does Iron Man competitions, and Jim's iPod provided a fantastic soundtrack for the evening.

You know it's a good night when you have all the sour apple martinis you can drink and all the cookies you can eat while "Not Too Soon" by the Throwing Muses and "I Confess" by the English Beat tumble from the sound system.

We all got to take cookies home, too. I happily filled my bag with goodies, but in an effort to stop the madness, I took my cookies to work yesterday to make sure someone who wasn't me ate them all. I must add that Paul told me his chocolate chip cookies were the best he'd ever made, and while I can't say I'd ever eaten his chocolate chip cookies before, these were pretty darn good. Nestle would be very proud.

After a night like that, one would think I would have eaten nothing but carrot sticks and rice cakes yesterday, but not so much. After work I met Jack at a Vietnamese restaurant in the Mission called Sunflower. We had fresh spring rolls, shaken beef and garlic vegetables, and the portions were far from small. Yummy. Afterward we met Emily and her boyfriend at the 500 Club. Wendy and Camilla were supposed to join us, but they didn't make it. However, on the way there, we ran into my friends Patrick and Mary, who were, coincidentally, headed for the very same bar. So we chatted with them and Kevin and Judy over drinks while the melodious tones of the Clash, the Go-Go's, the Beach Boys, Iggy Pop, Smokey Robinson, the Beatles, the Replacements and X filled the room.

I programmed the jukebox, in case you hadn't guessed.

After a weekend like this, I really do need to eat nothing but carrot sticks and rice cakes, but that probably won't happen. I swear, if I didn't exercise so much, I would probably weigh 400 pounds. It's a good thing I'm so addicted to endorphins.