Cheers!

At Holidailies the writing prompt is "Holiday parties - do you throw one? Do you attend them? What would the very best holiday party be?"  Well, parties. My first thought goes to...you guessed it...the libations.

When we lived in our house we had a large kitchen and a 500 square foot room attached for entertaining and a living room/dining room and small room next to the kitchen for setting up a bar or food, too. We had a lot of parties. Not too many Christmas ones, but a few. We haven't had anything elaborate in our little apartment and as it becomes more and more overcome with books and other things I wonder if I ever will have many people over. In our old house we could shut off a room or even two, lock the dog(s) and all the unread papers, stray books and messes in there and have fifty or more people in for snacks and drinks.

We held some New Year's Day recovery parties where we served up black-eyed peas and sausage and Bloody Marys and such. We served taco buffets, giant slabs of smoked salmon, etc. It all runs together. But no more.

We still go to parties. Big ones held at clubs and little dinner parties and big ones held at large luxurious homes decorated to the nines. And we drink. Both of us if we are not driving. FFP drives if we go out at night so....

I don't think the holidays influence my drinking, though. Year in and year out I'm pretty much a five or six drink a week person. (I hear people always underestimate their drinking. So do what you will with that.) I often don't drink if we stay home. If we do go out to dinner, I usually drink. If we go to a party I usually drink. If I drink a Manhattan I often take a picture of it and post it on facebook. I don't usually post pictures of glasses of wine, other cocktails I might try or the very occasional after dinner drink.

If I live to be 100 (or for my boomer generation whatever the appropriate old age is to amaze people) then I'm going to say, when asked to what I attribute my longevity:

• Onions
• Garlic
• Staying away from the doctors
• Walking
• Drinking almost every day
• Not doing the same thing every day

Yep, holiday parties mean drinking to me whether it's your party or mine. A club we belong to even throws a party at noon on December 23. The Bloody Marys are free. I break my 'no alcohol before five' rule to drink a couple. But in general, I don't drink any more during the holiday time than usual. Now whether that's good or bad is hard to say. I'll try to decide while you set me up again.

Note on the picture: this liquor store is three blocks from us. We don't usually shop there because there are three other liquor stores within walking distance. Maybe more. This one has the simple stuff, though, that you might need. A couple of others have fancy brands and good wines. The deli downstairs has wine and beer. The Whole Foods has a huge wine selection and 'beer alley.' We don't buy all that much in these places because we do a lot of our drinking out at parties or bars or restaurants.