I had to do two things that make me nervous on Saturday.
I had to give a little speech for work.  I talk to people for work all the time, yak, yak, yak, that is %90 of what I do, but standing in front of a crowd of people and talking still makes me nervous as hell.   We also had to jump in and do a little skit (don't ask me why at 44 I do work that requires me to do skits, I can't really come up with a clear answer.) on the fly, sans rehearsal and I think I did great.
For a nervous person, that hates being in front of people I did great.
So there.
If the public speaking wasn't enough to jangle my nerves, I had to attend a party with Mark.
Boy do I hate parties, and this was a doozie.
It was at a bar!
If there is one thing I hate more than a party, it's going to a bar.
The only saving grace was a fellow way dorkier than me.
A boyfriend of one of the inner circle people, that I had never laid eyes on before.
It turns out he had been dating this woman for 10 years, but like me hates parties and bars and rarely goes out.  We chatted for most of the time we were there and I was delighted to learn that in addition to hating parties, he loved John Prine, Quadrophenia and that he was a closet Jimmy Buffet fan. Outstanding.
We had a gay old time talking about music and our mutual hatred of social situations, it was not a terrible evening after all.