Elayne Riggs' Journal (for Leah)

Thursday, November 30, 2006

Pen-Elayne Party Plans Cancelled

Okay, lesson learned. Next time I want to give a party, I'll go back to the way I did things before I had a blog and send out personal invitations via email instead of just making a repeated announcement here. I apologize to anyone just now finding out that my 49th birthday party was to be this coming Saturday, December 2. It has now been cancelled due to lack of response. (Not the birthday, just the party. I hope to still be turning 49 as scheduled.)

However, as Robin is fond of saying, everything happens for a reason. Due to some welcome extra work he's gotten from Marvel he hasn't been able to attend to as much housecleaning as we would have wanted done in prep for a full-blown affair, and I've been too worn out by Thanksgiving cooking and general exhaustion to properly plan in terms of shopping and so forth. And in any case, Leah is coming up on Saturday and we'll be trying out the new toy Rob got me for my birthday/our anniversary/the holidays, a GPS thingie for the car. I'm thinking of trying it out on the short trip over the GW Bridge to Mitsuwa Marketplace, as Leah says she now makes a terrific miso soup and I want her to teach me. Learning a new skill on one's birthday is always a good thing!

Meanwhile, if you're in the NYC area on December 2, here's a couple other events to attend:

• For my political bloggy friends, the Nineteenth Annual Independent and Small Press Book Fair given by the Small Press Center has an afternoon event (from 2 to 3 PM) called "The Rise of the Progressive Blogosphere and the Future of American Politics" featuring Lindsay Beyerstein and Bill Scher which sounds interesting.

• And for my comic industry friends, at 7 PM there's a release party for World War 3 Illustrated's new issue, #37, at MoCCA.

In the end, it's not important that nobody local responded to my party invitation. What is important is that we all remember our time here on this earth is way too brief. I'm just glad I've made it to another year, especially considering my hospitalization so soon after my 48th birthday last year. I've lost too many friends in 2006 - first Bill-Dale Marcinko, then Brian Converse, then Hilda Terry, now Dave Cockrum - to take anyone for granted any more. It's more important than ever, while we're all still here and still vital, to maintain our in-person relationships with each other, to break out of our online-only cocoons and BE with each other. In this season of togetherness, that's one of the greatest gifts of all.

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