Which is better? A bunch of short posts or one long rambly post with aaaaaaaall the photos?

Do you know what I don’t like about my style of blogging in the recent past? I love photography, obviously, and lots of pictures are good. Still, when my posts turn into a series of photos with one-line descriptions under each one that strain to segway to each other, it reminds me of boring vacation slideshows.  Gah!

Does anyone remember home slideshows? When I was little, I remember going to someone’s house with my parents and sitting on the floor in the dark while the host flipped through their projected vacation slides onto a cleared-off wall.  It was usually very dull, and the photography was awful in the late seventies to early eighties—lots of pictures of people standing against walls with red eyes and glare or faces centered in the middle and miles of space above their heads or maybe some landmark that is as boring as toast. And here is the Grand Canyon, and here is a picture of a lake.  The host would linger on some slides longer than others and skip through the interesting ones really fast.  Ooops! Didn’t mean to share that photo of Aunt Priscilla in her bathing suit!  Maybe there were snacks. There certainly wasn’t alcohol.

But I digress. Too much meta-talk.

Today, you get a short (actually long) post about going to my friend Tamie’s speakeasy in her house. If you ever meet Tamie (who you will have to call Tamara because I’m the only one allowed to use her original childhood nickname), you will know why she has a speakeasy in her house. Tamie is a theatre tech teacher, and everything is about props and sets. Every room in her home has a theme. It’s over the top and fantastic. Her living room has sliding bookcase walls that overlap each other. There is a dragon head mounted to her fireplace and a rumor of a fog machine inside it so that its nose steams. Sometimes, it’s Christmas all year around, and even better, it’s spooky Christmas with lots of flickering battery-operated candles that can change colors with an app. Her cats have their own Asian-themed room with catwalks and cubbies mounted to the wall.  Of course, the walls are painted with murals.

When I moved in with my parents in January, I joked to Tamie that I might have to set up a speakeasy in my closet because my parents don’t drink, and I didn’t want them to know about my occasional debauchery. It turns out my parents don’t mind if I have a glass of wine now and then, AND Tamie set up a speakeasy in her house for me instead! How cool is that? It’s more of a craft room for her, but on “Book Club” night, she turns it into a lively little party room just for us!

A bookshelf desk opens, and inside are shelves with lights, fancy glasses, and bottles. There is also a light turquoise mini fridge and a pink microwave (swoon!). She serves all kinds of snacks, which she is famous for. Tamie is the queen of girl dinner. Then we put records on the record player and pretend we are back in the twenties. Wait, we are in the twenties!

Anyway, it’s super fun. I decided to take “Book Club” up a notch and dress up in a flamboyant mumu, crazy glasses, and all the jewelry I own. My cousin Jacob borrowed my gold velvet fedora, and we were ready to paint the town. Except the town was just us staying in and streaming silly songs on YouTube for each other on the speakeasy television, getting drunk, and then falling asleep and spending the night.

I love this kind of entertainment. Getting old has brought me so much freedom. I don’t care what I look like. I have more confidence than I’ve ever had, which is so funny since I think I look worse than I ever have. But who cares? Nobody! All that matters is that friends get together and have a good time. Maybe my parents did the same thing with their boring vacation slide shows!