For little black dresses!
Though, for me, my dress isn’t so ‘little’. While I definitely feel somewhat ‘better’ about myself (considering I’m 19lbs down on what I was earlier this year), I am still not feeling good about myself. When Col mentioned his office Christmas party, I’ll admit, it was the first place my head went – I have nothing to wear. Plus, I don’t want to shop for something to wear because I don’t intend on being this size for a substantial period of time.
My second thought was, I won’t know anyone there. If it had been an SSA Christmas party, I’d have been all over that, as any number of our friends would have been in attendance. However, with SLB, the company is so huge in Houston, they have a large number of offices, a LOT of employees, we can’t all have the same Christmas party, and all our friends are fragmented.
We haven’t ever considered going to a single Christmas party, in the five and a half years that Col and I have been together and, going on the high frequency of transfers at the moment, we may not even be in Houston next year, so we thought we may as well do it once, just to say we’ve done it.
Thankfully, Joanne and Mark and Emily and Luke were both signed up to go (and, as I later found out, Lori and David were there as well) – I say thankfully, because if it wasn’t for them, I’d probably have talked Col into bailing on the shindig and we’d have been home by 9pm!
As it turned out, we had quite the dandy evening in the Sugar Land Marriott – aside from the fact that the music was so loud we had to scream to be heard and we all left hoarse, with sore throats!
The food was OK, it was a buffet style and it wasn’t very hot, but it was OK. By the time the guys hit up the dessert table it was practically picked clean, but the gingerbread muffins were delicious – that I know for sure 🙂
The night was most certainly made a good one by the presence of our friends. Lately, I’ve come to realize, that in a transient life such as ours, surrounding yourself with ‘good people’ is not only important, but essential to ‘surviving’ through the trials of life. It’s also important to treasure those people, because in our world, they can be yanked away in a heartbeat – or, as many of our friends have been recently, in only five weeks.
Houston has lost some good people lately, and our friendship circle is slowly diminishing. This saddens me, but I know we’ll keep in touch, and I know that many of us will meet up again in the future.
For now, however, I’ll hug my friends just a little tighter (and more frequently!) and I’ll take all the pictures I can (until they get seriously bored with my camera being shoved in their faces) so we can document our good times together!