dinner's at 5
why I am team #geriatricdinner
Floor Time
/flôr tīm/
noun
the 15-60 minute time period spent laying on the floor in the middle of the work day, typically as a relief from the soul-sucking reality of corporate America.
Happy New Year, team! I hope you had a restful and rejuvenating holiday and are feeling energized for 2024—I know I am.
On the business side, I put together a business plan I’m very jazzed about and feel is attainable. I looked into educational opportunities, booked travel, and had a long get-together with my mentor (hi Abby, love ya!) where I talked her ear off about my professional wins and woes, while she—as usual—gave me fantastic insight and advice while actively potty-training her little one. Women are superheroes!!
On the personal side, I spent my holiday exactly as I described it to you in the last Floor Time of 2023, watching “Harry Potter” and “White Christmas” on repeat, reading a ton, hiking and visiting breweries with friends, and letting Klaus have a little taste of what it’s like to have a backyard at your daily disposal.
While time in the California suburbs was slow and restorative, I am SO ready to be back home in NYC. Though I very much plan for 2024 to embody fresh energy, I’m looking at my calendar and realizing that there is one trend that has carried over from 2023 that I am fully accepting as my new personality trait, and that is: ✨ having dinner before 6 ✨
But Clarice, that’s ludicrous! Many of us work until 6 at least!
Hear me out. The trend of eating before 6PM started as an accident. Last-minute plans would come together (a squeezed-in date night on a busy week, buying a concert ticket from a friend who could no longer make the show, a canceled 4PM meeting resulting in a shorter work day, etc.) so I would set Resy notifications and almost always snag one—with the smaaall caveat that it would require taking the pre-dinner rush reservations at 5PM or 5:30PM.
It’s gotten so out of hand that Resy legitimately sent this to me in my 2023 round-up. At the time I was all, how embarrassing! And now I’m all, embrace it. fear it.
I understand that eating at 5PM is perhaps neither desirable nor feasible for everyone, but if you do find yourself once again unable to snag a primetime Lilia reservation, I cannot recommend the early bird approach enough. Benefits include:
Less crowded restaurant 🤝 more attentive servers
Eating either with or before your first beveragino of the day aka no more drinking on an empty stomach (we’re too old for that)
Having a whole evening free to make it to a Broadway show, a comedy set, a house party, or whatever it is the cool kids do these days
Better digestion and therefore better sleep!
So whether you read this and think, Clarice is a loooserrr, or run to Resy to see what 5PMs are avail this week, I hope that while leaving things behind in 2023, you find some habits in 2024 that you want to keep and maybe even lean into. And on that note, I got a dinner date at 5PM this Monday I gotta get an outfit for. L8er!
Something I Thought of in the Shower
If I had one superpower it would absolutely, undoubtedly be the ability to teleport (aka not having to sit on a plane, train, or car every time I need to travel). That said, there’s something about being at the airport and grabbing an overpriced brewski with friends that holds a special place in my heart…so I don’t actually think I’d always abuse this superpower. Part of the fun of travel is the anticipation, right??
Something Pretty
My best friend hosted the New Year’s Eve pregame to end all pregames and it would be a shame to not show off her stunning cooking skills (as well as our friend Annie’s tablescape decorating skills). More at-home friend dinners in 2024, please.
Something To Laugh About
First gems of the year! I had a lot of scrolling time during my loaf weeks, so please enjoy:
This is me everytime I go to my parents’ house for the holidays because I’m a CLOWN.
If you also have this shoot committed to memory, we can be friends.
This is saying a lot coming from me, frequently referred to as a “human furnace.” But my mother be how she be.
I watched this at like 5AM on my east coast jetlag and it made it all the more funny.
Something for Clarice
Hey! This newsletter is free and I intend to keep it that way. That said, if you love it and want to show your appreciation, buy me a coffee :)
By the way…I’m reading this.
Over the break I got suuuper into the regency romances (Lady’s Guide to Scandal and the first two novels in the League of Extraordinary Women series), and it helped break my reading jam and get me back into sitting down with a good book. I’m picking up Remarkably Bright Creatures, which I’ve heard mixed reviews about but will give a go.
Also to follow up on Yellowface from last Floor Time, know that I finished it and it was very meh for me. I would say I don’t understand the hype it’s getting but I also really do (textbook Reese’s Book Club pick—a book that teaches people who have never experienced racism about racism). I don’t want to dock R.F. Kuang for what she put out into the world but as an Asian person I personally didn’t find it groundbreaking or that interesting. I also found the protagonist to be absolutely insufferable, and it was hard to get past that.
Have a lovely weekend, readers! There were murmurs of snow in New York City this weekend so you know that I’ll have a nose glued to the window as I eat my geriatric dinner and wait for that first flurry.
Til’ next time, early birds. Your friend,
Clarice
Also wasn’t a fan of yellowface haha