Halloween Parties for Grown Ups

This weekend is when all the adults get to have their Halloween parties. The clubs and condo party rooms will be full of people in costumes, eating spooky snacks and having lots of fun. Downtown will be especially interesting this weekend, with just about everyone local going out in costume and only the out of towners still in street clothes.

Halloween is actually Thursday night, and next weekend will be too late for grown ups parties. I am glad that I can go out and have some fun with my friends this weekend and then stay home to pass out candy to the kids on Thursday night.

Wearing Green and Drinking Beer

This weekend is all about Saint Patrick’s Day. Here in Nashville we love any holiday that gives us an excuse to drink beer, so this is a big deal for downtown bars and restaurants. On top of the holiday, we have the SEC basketball playoffs here this weekend, with a huge number of extra partiers to accommodate.

I heard some big numbers on the news about how the downtown bars and restaurants can only actually seat something 75,000 people on a weekend, but with the basketball game there are going to be more like 100,000 people looking for fun and refreshments on Friday and Saturday nights. With all these extra people, Nashville decided to have a big street party and rope off a few blocks downtown to allowing drinking on the street – a very rare thing for our proper southern city!

To be honest, I do not drink much beer. I tend to not want the hassle of watching my intake and fretting about driving home without the risk of trouble with cops. And second, I don’t want all the extra calories. Third, I only like beer that is ice cold. I don’t want to hold a bottle in my hand and just sip on it for an hour with the heat from my hand raising the temperature of the beer. I don’t like drinking from a bottle anyway. I like a glass – and not plastic, I mean a real glass.

Sorry if I sound so finicky, but I have learned what I like and what I don’t like and I will certainly seek out the things that I like if I have that option. Maybe once in a while I might be at the boss’s house for a backyard barbecue and have to drink a beer from a red Solo cup, but most of the time I will be seated in a sports bar or a stadium suite and enjoy an ice cold beer served in a glass along with the peanuts or Chex Mix and a good baseball game or hockey game underway.

Big Party Weekend in Washington DC

Tonight starts one of the biggest party weekends for Washington DC – the Inauguration! I actually know people who are going to one of the Inauguration Balls and loaned one of my girlfriends a gown to wear. How funny to think that my dress is going places that I cannot!

I wanted to know what is going on besides the Inauguration Balls, which are just party of all the festivities in DC, and found a complete schedule of the inauguration events, with names of the celebrities and performers on the ABC News web site.

While surfing around some other sites, I found a playlist of songs by the scheduled singers and bands on Spotify. I think that was a good idea to put together and will check it out next time I’m on Spotify – probably sometime late Saturday, while my dress is dancing with the stars in Washington, DC.

Rainy and Cold New Year’s Eve

Well, everyone that I know was planning to go downtown and party on the riverfront tonight. But the weather forecast is for cold temperatures and 80% chance of rain. I don’t think that sounds very appealing to me, so maybe I’ll cancel on the downtown party.

If I stay home and watch the New Year’s Eve show, I can have some little finger foods and wine. In fact, I think I have a bottle of champagne in the back of the refrigerator. So I can have my own little party right here and not worry about being cold and wet on the first hour of the new year.

Christmas Traditions Can Differ a Lot

When I was a kid, we had Christmas on just one day – Christmas Day – and it was a very busy day for us. We always woke up early and tore into the presents under our tree in the living room. Then we had brunch, got dressed up and visited my Grandmother at her house. We always took gifts to her house for her and she always had gifts for us waiting under her tree. We visited for a couple of hours and then left her house and went to my other grandparent’s house for a huge family party.

I am amazed to learn that many people open their gifts on Christmas Eve rather than Christmas morning. Some families hang stockings and some don’t. Some families don’t even have Santa come visit – I think that is sad. Even when the kids are grown, everyone still likes to get a little gift from Santa!