"Nexhmije Pagarusha Totally Rocks," I Says.

The lethal Hungarian water bottle. "Drink Raki and You'll Feel Like Grappa the Whole Next Day!"

Happy birthday to my sister, Seona.

After a very, very stormy day - the kind that I love so much where umbrellas blow inside-out and your pant legs get all soaked and stuff is blowing off sides of buildings, I met my friend Lisa where she lives by the Chelsea Hotel. We went to Stuyvesant Town in Alphabet City to an Illegal Sublet I'm Getting Kicked Out party given by her Albanian friend Petrit.

If this were a drinking game and "Albania" was the drinking word, I would have been snozzled before I ever met Lisa tonight. I found that I like so say "Albania" as much for the way it feels as for its randomness and seeming insignificance in my life up to this point. I did a quick Wiki on "Albania" before I left the house just in case I felt uncomfortable at the party and could say something like "Wow, those were some powerful words President Topi said on the 15th Anniversary of the Pogradeci Orphans Association on Thursday." It never came up. In fact I forgot President Topi's name as soon as I said good bye to Lisa's Albanian doorman and got into the cab to head to the party. Already I could not swing a cat but run into an Albanian in my new, more aware, life that was unfolding.

The party was fun and full of loads of meatballs, olives, garlic and cleavage. What one would expect. I was desperate for something to drink and there was a plastic bottle of fruit-flavored water from Hungary on the table. I soon found it contained homemade Raki, or Albanian grappa, that would soon be the drink of choice should there be any national song singing. I put my coat on the bed in the designated combined "coat and smoking room" and let it marinate for the hours I was at the party. A good time was had by all and I met a Lebanese woman and her Scottish husband. She is a writer too. I say too because I have now decided I am a blogger. With an international readership ( Shout out to my cousin Fidelma in Dublin for making that possible!). We talked the way writers do and then I got up to get some cheese since I couldn't figure out what else to do as all the people I knew were smoking in the coat room.

We met a woman named Albana who was from Albania. Lisa and I decided since we had flubbed answers to the two questions of the night: 1. How did you two meet? and 2. Are you a couple? We would steal this woman's story and combine it with the story of the boy/girl Albanian cousins whom we met. So for the remainder of the night we were Patrick and Lisa, cousins from the Republic of Lisa just this side of Albania and I now lived in Queens with a car and drove her around. It seemed to satisfy.

I had a nice time and it was a pleasure to meet a people who gave Mother Teresa and John Belushi to the world.