Oh lord, woncha buy me a night on the town

Good New Year. Except that it's raining. But I had a good time, and I'm all sorts of happy with how things turned out. There had been a lot of confusion over whether Jill was coming into the city, and maybe she was working, but maybe not, and finally I made other plans, and then Jill got miffed, and I didn't know how to fix that, but it all worked out.
But let's talk about the surreal part first. Yesterday morning I got a phone call from a Connecticut number. It turned out to be my uncle. Or ex-uncle, really, my aunt divorced him a while ago. And he wanted to know if I would like to go to a Jets-Raiders game. AHAHAHahahahahahahahaha. *pause* I said yes. Through going to 3 Cal-Stanford games, I discovered that while football is mainly still large men tryng to fall on each other, there is also an incredible amount of strategy and talent involved. Last year I watched some games with ET, because he was such a big football nut and I like watching things with people who are really into whatever it is (this is, incidentally, how I watched a lot of WWE last year, also with ET). Anyway, it was fun. I was kind of high up, directly behind an endzone, and the Raiders lost. Which kind of sucks because I was text messaging Brian, and he was rooting for the Jets, so I bet him 5 bucks that the Raiders would win. Oops. Oh well. It was a good time, and not as awkward as I feared. And I even got a ride back into the city.
For New Years, I went and got sushi with Tenaya and Cory and their boyfriends, Alex and Nate, respectively, and Tenaya's friend/roommate Emily. It just occured to me that Nate must be short for Nathan, which brings up and interesting coincidence. I have two cousins, brothers, named Alex and Nathan. In high school, I dated an Alex, who was good friends with a Nathan. Those names seem to like showing up together. Anyway- we went to this place in the East Village (? I think), I for get the name, but they had a great deal of if you ordered 20 dollars worth of sushi, or more, it was half off. So we went to fucking town. I wish I had kep tthe list, but it was nuts, and I was the one writing it down, while around me people are saying "Did you put down a fighting roll already? Did we want that?" "Which one did you get? The orange dragon, or the golden dragon?" "Should we get two spider rolls instead of the two futomaki?" We ended up with 16 or 17 different rolls. Awesome. And we demolished them in about 10 minutes. People had different strategies. I was in the pick and eat school, while Tenaya was in the stockpile, then eat school. I was the only one not bothering with wasabi and soy sauce.
After that feast, we went wandering, with Cory pointing out places that we needed to go. We went into the Sunrise Mart, which is this little japanese market on the second floor that has everything japanese you could ever want. Our general destination was a sake bar called Decibel, but it was only 9, and we were pretty flexxible about when we got there, so we looked around for a while. Right next to Decibel was a place called Max Brenner, Chocolate By The Bald Man. We stared at the people who were makins s'mores over an elegant little flame for a bit.
Decibel was good. They played all sorts of music, it was sort of a world tour. We got two bottles of sake to all share. The first one I wasn't so big on, but it was okay. It was certainly better than the sake I'd had previously. The second was really good. I think the description was "Crisp, dry, and fruity" It had a little bit of licorice taste in it. I drank a lot, but never really went into drunk somehow. I think it helped that we snacked all through it, with mochi and edamame. We all raised our glasses for a countdown (which was pretty funny, because no one knew when it quite was, who the hell knows if the seconds on your watch are right, and cell phones don't do seconds. We kind of went off other people cheering) and teh couples kissed and Emily and I got kisses on the cheek. We left there at about 1, or a little before, and went to wander the streets. During the first bottle of sake, I got pretty tired-tipsy, but after the second, and the plum wine and soda, and the on-the-house shot of cheap sake, I was in full wander the streets mode. It's one of the few nights of the year that you can be totally obnoxious and it's socially acceptable. We sang (badly and loudly) an Aardvark song (to the tune of that famous waltz, whose name I'm forgetting- It starts with an A, aardwark! aardvark! It ends with a k, aardvark! aardvark! etc) and Big Rock Candy Mountain, and Oh Lord Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes Benz. It was all sorts of fun. Towards 2, we stopped and got pizza, and then headed for the subway. Getting home took for-fucking-ever. And there were cops everywhere when I transfered trains at Times Square. but I got home eventually, at a little after 3, and collapsed onto my couch, and fell asleep listening to the rain. All in all, good and satisfying.

Upon later reflection, I totally forgot to record any actual impressions. Alex was pretty cool. The last time I met him, he was pretty stressedout because his car was getting towed. He was much more relaxed this time. Tenaya can be kind of bossy, and a handful, but he was really good with her. They both seem really silly and happy together, so that's good. She has not always had the best taste in guys. I've known her since 3rd grade, and kept in pretty good contact after I stopped going to school with her, so I've seen most of them. Until 9th grade (when I transferred schools) every guy that I liked, liked and/or dated her. Which made me really jealous at the time, but in hindsight, none of them were worthwhile, really, so I got to live vicariously, without having to actually go through it. I have so gotten off the point.
I also read everyones palms at the sake bar. I don't really know anything, other than what the three main lines are supposed to represent, and so I was just looking at those and guessing. BUt it was prettty good fun, and Emily said that what I said matched up to her experience, and the what other people have told her, so go me. It was really nice to hang out with a group of people. Very rarely am I in a big happy no-real-favoritism group. There were couples, but everyone hung out with everybody, and no one paid more attention to just one person or anything (though some people did get kissed more). It was really nice. I read something recently in which some one said that she believes that whatever happens on New Years eve-midnight will kind of continue/be a theme of the year. By that thought, my 2007 is going to have lots of good friends and hanging out. I like this.