Sasha Is a Monster

ZOMG.

So, when I booked my ticket to Arizona for the holidays, I didn’t think any of my friends would be around for New Years. I was fully planning to spend the evening curled up in bed with my mom watching movies and eating cereal. That is not what happened. It turned out that tons of my friends were already in town, and they all had awesome things planned, and then my friend Courtney decided to drive in from San Diego at the last minute, and somehow we ended up attending everybody’s NYE event tonight. It was awesome. I swear — the events you don’t really plan for are ALWAYS the most fun.

Courtney and I and our other BFF Kate spent the afternoon at the mall, and I found my dress and accessories right off the bat. I also found a riding hat, and I was like, “Courtney, I’m going to wear this riding hat all night,” and she was like, “Whatever, Sasha,” and you know what? I wore that riding hat all night. And then we were waiting in line for the dressing room at Banana Republic and we were talking about where on earth we could get Leo a tuxedo for tonight (because he had to look nice for all the parties!), and this random lady in line overheard and was like, “You guys should go upstairs to the Build-a-Bear store.” GENIUS. Leo got a perfect little tux for $5. We also went to MAC and got totally ridiculous eyelashes, because you have to have totally ridiculous eyelashes if it’s going to be New Year’s.

We got dressed at Courtney’s and then left for our first party of the night: Our friend Saranden has an annual NYE party with a different theme each year. This year the theme was “homelessness.” We arrived around 9 pm. This party was in the north part of Tempe.

We left Saranden’s around 9:45 and headed to our friend Brian’s party. Brian lives in northeast Scottsdale. There we met up with our friends Liz and Lewis, who we’ve known since basically kindergarten, and got caught up on each other’s lives. We also took a picture together, which we’re certain our parents will fawn over.

We left Brian’s around 10:45 and headed to meet up with Kate and some other friends at the W, which is in downtown Scottsdale. It was built recently, and neither of us had ever been. The scene was very LA. In fact, most of Scottsdale is starting to feel more and more like Los Angeles. Scottsdale used to be a slightly different scene from SoCal, but it’s becoming a total clone, which I personally think is kind of disappointing. I liked that my hometown had its own flavor. Oh, who am I kidding? I liked that my hometown didn’t have hipsters.

Kate’s friend Ashley had a table at the W, and they were playing great music, so we hung out there to ring in the New Year. We looked for guys to kiss at midnight — and several offered — but they were all total douchebags, so we just kissed each other on the cheek instead. Waaaay better than kissing a Scottsdale douchebag.

A few minutes after midnight, we packed up and headed to the night’s next destination: The Vig in East Phoenix. I’m not even sure why we migrated there — although the bartender was way hot — but we thought they’d serve food and they didn’t, so we left pretty quickly.

Kate’s sister was at a house party in Paradise Valley with a bunch of girls we’d gone to high school with, and rumor had it there was food there, so we headed to the last destination of the night, where we arrived around 1:15 am.

They did have food, and we scarfed it down, while Leo was passed around the party like the little prince that he is. A little after 2 am, we finally decided we’d had enough reveling, and we headed home.

In conclusion: Over the course of five hours, we were at five different New Year’s parties with completely different crowds in completely different parts of The Valley. It was kind of like the Ultimate Arizona New Year’s. It was such a blast. Mostly, though, I’m really grateful that I got to ring in 2009 with some of the most important people in my life: the friends who have been there for me since I was five years old. I’m such a lucky girl to have them still in my life today.

I have a feeling it’s gonna be a great year.