with the holidays upon us, it’s been a while since i posted. here’s what’s been going on:

» we had a holiday/housewarming party. tremendous fun, attended by ~30 of our friends at one point or another. we had it on saturday 12/1 from 5pm until ???. the ??? turned out to be about 1:30am. old friends actually schlepped to riverdale, and given the number of manhattan-centric friends we have this was no small feat and a testament to the strength of our friendships. we also had quite a few new friends from the building. food cooked by us, some catering from the garden gourmet and mike’s deli at arthur avenue, lots of wine and spirits, duck fart shots (jack daniels, bailey’s, kahlua) courtesy of our friend suzanne, great conversation, good music, and some spirited wii competition.

» kirk and i flew to tampa to visit my mother. she’s in assisted living in sun city center, and it was a quick in-and-out short weekend, so please all my florida friends, don’t get upset that i didn’t visit you! she’s doing well, and it was good to see her, my sister, and meet my nephew’s new s.o. sherry. they just bought a house together. i know how they feel!

» kirk and i saw “the belsnickel scrooge” at genesius theatre in reading we visited kirk’s parents for the holidays this past weekend. kirk has to work the day after christmas, so we’re just staying home for the holidays this year. but we did want to visit them, and we had tickets for the aforementioned show, so two birds with one stone. the show itself was marvelous — it’s a pennsylvania dutch adaptation of “a christmas carol”, complete with the belsnickel. the belsnickel only visits bad children and beats them with a stick. talk about negative reinforcement. anyway, it was lots of fun, even for a non-pennsylvania-dutch-person.

» the apartment is pretty much finished. kirk did the last bit of painting (mainly window frames, and the bathroom). someday soon we’ll have the tub refinished, and at some point we’ll just redo the whole bathroom, but the big projects are done. let the myriad small projects commence.

» we saw kiki and herb at carnegie hall. last time they were there, we had tickets and forgot to go. not this time. it was a good show, with old classics and new material. nothing’s ever going to touch small intimate joe’s pub shows with kiki climbing over the tables, but it was thrilling to see them on that stage nonetheless. saw old friends as well — our friend jared, the show’s producer; and john cameron mitchell. saw alan cumming as well — what a cutie.

» we saw the radio city christmas show. it’s the 75th anniversary, and they’ve beefed up the show considerably. it’s a rockettes-fest — they are everywhere in the show, much more than normally. lots of new numbers, all good, along with the classics you want to see. and they are selling fantastic souvenir martini glasses with rockettes’ legs instead of the stem. we see the show every year, but this year was special. if you have any inclination to go, it’s a must-see year.

» we sent out our annual holiday cards. this was my year to send them, and i wanted to ratchet down a bit due to last year’s “kirk and jamie sing holiday songs” extravaganza, which was great fun but very time-consuming. it was a simple but elegant card printed on silver paper. if you didn’t get a card for some reason, and you think i would have sent you one, let me know. and if your cd is not playing correctly, let us know. we’ve had some reports of cd-burnout (i think the ones you burn yourself don’t last as long), and we’re happy to replace your old copy.

that’s the major stuff. happy holidays, everyone.