wait for it to crash and burn

Irish Matt is in town for the week, and I just got home from dinner with him. Long-time readers can guess what that means -- I had a cocktail and half a bottle of wine, in addition to a three-course appetizer/dinner/dessert meal. Since I'm no longer living the profligate expat lifestyle, it hurt a bit more that I had to pay for it myself, but seeing Matt was obviously well worth it!

I had to be at work for that stupid seven a.m. meeting, which I was annoyed about -- but I was amused when I found out that the participant who forced my manager to calendar the meeting actually wanted to have it *this weekend*, and my manager pushed back. I've never had a meeting on a weekend before, and if this had happened this weekend, I would have been furious, since it was pretty much pointless anyway. But, I got a lot done today before leaving the office at three to beat traffic, and then working at home for an hour before running down to Union Square to meet up with Matt.

We decided on the Cheesecake Factory on top of Macy's because it was close by and offered lots of choices; surprisingly, even though it was 5:30pm on a Monday, the place was packed, and we had to wait for a table before finally being seated on the terrace outside. It was lovely (to use an Irish word) despite the chill, since there were heat lamps and a nice view of the skyline. We spent a couple of hours catching up over drinks, which was quite nice; I feel v. lucky that I see Matt a couple of times a year, and I hope that continues. After dinner, we walked in the same general direction so that I could catch my bus, and stopped to impetuously buy Matt a new jacket before parting ways. Both of us are taking Friday off and so we may have lunch -- which, if it's true to our alcoholic form, may scratch some of my productivity on Friday afternoon, but I'm looking forward to it nonetheless.

Now, though, even though it's 9pm and I'm still a bit tipsy, I think I'm going to try to go to bed; I have to get up super early to do the stuff for tomorrow that I should have done tonight, and I won't be able to do it unless I get some sleep. Goodnight!