Date Night

Calm down, don't let the title fool you. You know I did not actually have a date last night. :)



No, last night I took myself out on a date. Turns out I know how to show me a good time.



First, I took myself to dinner and enjoyed my food and a glass of wine while reading my current train book (Clear and Present Danger). It was a little like those women in the movies who have just been divorced or something, for whatever reason they always seem to show them eating alone in restaurants with a book. I kind of liked it, because it meant I didn't have to cook. Anyway, it was nice to just be able to take an hour to sit quietly after work, have a glass of wine, read, not be on the train with people crowded all over the place, and not to just be sitting at home where the stuff I really should be doing is staring me in the face and taunting me.



Next I took myself shopping. For Christmas I got a gift card to Sephora, which pleased me to no end. Despite how infrequently I actually go to the trouble of putting makeup on my face, I love it. I love looking at it, buying it, playing around with it, and I actually do like wearing it, I just generally don't put that much effort into my appearance for work (cue my mom shaking her head and wondering where it all went wrong with me). I'm trying to get better at that in the new year, one of my decisions was to actually try and look like I give a crap. Maybe something new and different will happen if I don't look like a scary pasty nightmare all the time. :) And you can take my word for it because I don't have photographic evidence, but I am actually wearing makeup today.


After dinner and shopping, I took myself to the theatre! The ACTUAL theatre! I saw Rent, featuring some top 10 American Idol guy from a few seasons ago as Collins and the first ever winner of South African Idol as Roger (they were both very good, as was the rest of the cast, and in fact I now have a little mini crush on the guy who played Roger). It was a fantastic show! I love going to the theatre, I really love musicals, and I especially love Rent though this was the first time I'd actually seen the play (one of my friends played the soundtrack nonstop in high school, and I own the movie version). I decided a couple of days ago that there are always these things I want to do and/or see: shows, events in the city, games of whatever variety, etc - but I never do them because most of the time I can't find anyone to go with and then I end up bummed out because I didn't do it. It occurred to me that this is a silly thing. There is absolutely nothing stopping me from doing fun things by myself, and as a matter of fact a reasonable way to meet people who like the same things I like is to actually do those things, whether I'm by myself or not, right? I go to movies by myself all the time. So from now on, I'm just gonna do whatever it is I want to do, with or without a buddy. Last night was the first run at it, and I have to say I think I'll put it in the win column as far as fun evenings go.

As an added bonus there were lots of hilarious people sitting around me (another thing, I treated me to some excellent seats in the pit - third row from the stage, not too shabby and not as expensive as I would have thought). There was this one pair sitting right next to me who were clearly on a date and before the show started the girl was explaining to the guy how she was a classically trained singer and when she was in college she was almost in this extremely fabulous a cappella group but it would have interfered with soccer so she didn't do it and she has such a good ear that she just can't even stomach it when people are off key. She just can't stand to listen to it! Then she started crying about thirty seconds into the show (when it was definitely not sad yet), which was sort of weird. Maybe someone was off key or something. :)

Anyway, the only downside to this whole taking myself out on the town thing is that I didn't get home until after 11:30, which is very late for a school night! There are lots more shows coming to Boston in the next few months, I may have to start planning my next theatre adventure....