Friday, October 28, 2011

Wow. OK, so something funny happened to me yesterday.

T. invited me to a party at the Irish Embassy. It was a masquerade ball, vaguely Halloween-ish but not full-body costumes and stuff, domino masks were provided if someone didn't bring a mask of their own, but there was a contest for the best mask. I happened to dress up as the V For Vendetta version of Guy Fawkes last year, so I pulled that mask down and brought it with me. (It was pointed out to me after I suited up that it's also used by Anonymous, which I'd call serendipitous.)

Once I got to the embassy, though, it occurred to me that there might be a problem with this. Simply put, Guy Fawkes Day is an English holiday focused on burning Catholics in effigy! OK, obviously there's more to it than that and no one thinks of it like that today, but still, suddenly I wondered whether I would be welcome at the Irish Embassy wearing it. For the first couple hours it seemed like I was getting more attention than I would have expected, and at one point a staffer at the embassy came up to me to see my nametag. (I wasn't wearing one, but T. actually was invited, so that was good enough.)

As it turned out, though, I was very welcome indeed. The attention was positive. The staffer who checked me for a nametag? A judge for the best mask contest. There were two categories, one for the best single mask and one for the best couple, and I won the prize for best single mask. I went home with a bottle of Tullamore Dew whiskey, and that's only part of the prize; I'm also expecting a phone call about a ticket to some kind of gala. I'm not sure if I'll even go - never been, it's a tuxedo affair and I don't own one, I only won one ticket and I'm not sure I'd go solo - but still, just winning was pretty cool. Definitely didn't expect it with a leftover Guy/V mask.