I have a very important warning about champagne.  No, I am not going to warn you about the possibility of its giving you a headache, nor about the dangerous trajectory a popped cork might take, nor about your likelihood of engaging in silly chat while drinking the bubbly.  Oh, no.  This is far more serious. See, champagne effing EXPLODES.

Should you chance to drop a bottle of champagne carelessly from your kitchen counter, and should that bottle chance to land on the hard tile floor, it is probably going to explode all over the place and the glass shrapnel is probably going to fly at extremely high speeds in all directions, probably cutting the shit out of you if it chances to  fly in your direction.

The best way to prevent this from happening is to arrange, somehow, for the dropped champagne bottle to land on your toe.  This will turn your toe black and blue and possibly even break it, but the bottle will survive.  How do I know this? Because I dropped a grocery bag containing two bottles of champagne.  The one that fell on my toe was saved, while the other one exploded, causing little bits of shrapnel to whiz across the top of my other foot, cutting up the tops of my toes.

So, a quick tally: One intact bottle of champage, one exploded bottle, one black-and-blue toe, three sliced-and-diced toes.

Luckily, I had the intact bottle of champagne to bring to my birthday party.  That and the magic party punch made by my friend who hosted (her birthday was 12/12, too), helped ease my pain. After a few drinks and a few cupcakes, I was feeling nothing but love.   It was a champagne adventure!  And The Continental wasn’t even involved.

But seriously, though, I had a great birthday party.  It’s amazing how many people I know born on or around my birthday (I guess parents in the 1970s were really, um, busy in March) (Oh, god, why did I think about that? Ewwww).  It was so fun to share the night with my friend S. and to have all our friends there to ring in a new year.   The thirties just keep getting better and better.  Two years ago I declared that this was going to be The Decade of Awesome, and I still think I was right.

In other news, I am officially done with work for fall semester, so I am getting ready to enjoy the relaxing holiday break. I plan to be sitting under the tree in my snowflake pajamas, drinking soy nog, reading for fun, and maybe (just maybe) putting in a little bit of time on some small scholarly endeavors.  The only thing that could improve on this scenario would be for it to snow.  C’mon, Alabama, make my Christmas wish come true!