The Dessert Room

Thursday night we went to Megan's office holiday party. It was a nice affair, in a semi-fancy location in Dupont Circle full of food, drink, dancing, and mingling with colleagues and friends.

The evening started off with Meg and I coordinating our departure times to arrive at the party at approximately the same time. This was all and good, and although we "arrived" at similar times, the problem was, when I got there, I still had to find a parking spot.

This literally took half an hour.

Dupont Circle is the neighborhood that Meg and I moved out of a year and a half ago, and I feel like some sort of old-timer crack-pot when I catch myself thinking thoughts (let alone actually uttering them) like:

"My God! Parking has gotten so much worse!" or
"Back when we were living here, sure, you had to drive around a little but I could usually find a spot in 10 or 15 minutes."

Alas, my parking karma was abscent. I was getting to the point where I wanted to just drive home. Cities are wonderful places to live for pedestrians, but not so friendly on the suburb-living, car-driving chumps like me now.

I had been to this party many times before.

A Little Backstory

Megan's current employer is my former-employer, and oddly enough, it's Megan's former employer, too.

Sounds confusing, huh?

DC is a small, incestuous place sometimes.

Meg and I met at our first jobs out of college. And while I certainly wouldn't recommend dating someone who has an office right next to your own, it somehow worked out for us. I guess we knew it was a risk worth taking. Ahhh, young research assistants in love...

I was there for almost 7 years, and Meg was there for 3 or more before traveling to Japan and then holding a few jobs back here in DC. Last year she took a job back with our former employer.

It is always nice going back there to visit with friends, and the holiday party is something that I usually look forward to.

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But somehow I had forgotten how things were arranged. All I knew was that I was getting stressed out looking for parking and giving myself pep talks about how I'm not going to break my my no-sweets challenge that I've set for myself.

After getting in there, saying hello to a bunch of people, and finding Megan, I was able to get some food (the scallops wrapped in bacon were Awesome). We mingled, caught up with some old friends, met some of Meg's new co-workers, and was having a nice time.

Then the time of the night came when... people started talking about dessert.

The desserts at this function are spread out on a table that I would guess (from memory) is about 20 feet long. The table and spread is so big, it actually gets a room of its own. I would be in a conversation with someone, and then they'd say: "Well, I haven't made a trip through the dessert room, yet, so..." and then off they'd go. Or other's would venture out of the dessert room with a plate full of goodies, and rave about all that was up for offer.

I came to realize what a blessing it was to have these delectibles off in a room of their own. My goal for the evening became exponentially easier:

Simply (at all costs) STAY OUT OF THE DESSERT ROOM.

Outta sight, outta mind (except for the people straying out of that room with cookies and cakes on their plates and raving about it). I think they should actually make a rule that if you want to eat dessert, you should have to enter the dessert room, choose as many items as you'd like, you can even go back for seconds (or thirds!), but you must consume your dessert IN THE DESSERT ROOM. Please, there are diabetics out in the other room, fighting urges.

I am happy to report, I was successful.

As the evening wore on, dancing steps up, drink tickets are transferred in a "grey market", and young research assistants are dancing with senior researchers. I have flashbacks of being young and the plans we used to make regarding which bar we'd be heading out to after the party, and I feel old and any urge to dance I might have had is completely drained out and I turned into a wallflower.

Awkward

Meg likes to dance. In fact, when we were first courting many moons ago, we danced and danced at a string of holiday parties that eventually lead to us "getting together."

I wouldn't call myself "a dancer" per se, but there are times when I like to get out there and cut-the-rug. I don't know what the exact requirements are, but there is some settings or group of people that instill a fun urge to dance in me, and other times/places that simple do not.

Holiday parties are never places that make me want to dance. Although, there was a time, I suppose when that wasn't true (see two paragraphs above). I think more specifically, OFFICE holiday parties are places where I never feel like dancing.

It's an awkward place to be -- I hate being a wallflower, but I also hate being coerced to dance when the mood isn't there.

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Aside from driving around for almost a half hour looking for a parking spot and the awkward dancing/nostalgia/wallflower experience, it was a very nice evening and another successful avoidence of sweets. I'm starting to feel like I'm coming down the home stretch of holiday parties (aka, the (last?) temptation of sweets, the dessert gauntlet, the smorgasbord of cakes and cookies). It's only been a few weeks since I've been off sweets and already I've found myself calculating *exactly* when my next A1c test will be (first week of February).

But!

I have noticed a significant improvement in my overall blood sugar readings, which I think I can attribute to the lack of sweets entering my mouth. My averages have fallen by about 10 mg/dl and my standard deviations have consistently been below 60.

So, overall, I'm pretty please.