Our team is going to unite with our San Francisco counterparts the last week of November for a “glamping” team-bonding retreat. What this means is that we will all be driving about 1.5 hours south of the city to a retreat camp, and sharing bedrooms with about four beds each.

As soon as all three of us learned this in the New York office, we looked over our monitors at each other and grimaced a bit. We’re city people. We like our own spaces, the limited amounts that we have. The idea of sharing a room with anyone not a close friend or Chris makes me a bit uneasy, especially now that I am in my thirties. I embrace my alone time and my time away from “outside people,” as my mother says.

This just means that in my single night hotel stays between the glamping outing, I will be savoring my room even more now.

And the day after having our friends over for dinner and too much drinking, I have woken up with massive body aches. This is just a sign I am getting older and cannot recover the way I used to.

Or maybe this is a sign that I should have followed my doctor’s instructions to stay away from alcohol, especially in the evenings, two weeks after I stopped taking antacids and Tums for my laryngopharyngeal reflux. My body is rebelling against all this alcohol, and now it’s making me feel decrepit and achy everywhere.

I’m a sneaky friend. I will never, ever serve you food that I know you are allergic to. If you are pescatarian, I will never give you food that has chicken broth or pork bits in it. If you are deathly allergic to crustaceans, there’s no way I’d sneak it into the food I serve you because I don’t really want anyone dying or dialing 911 while at my apartment.

But if you claim to dislike something when I know there’s a strong possibility you would like it, especially when it’s made a certain way, I’m probably going to try to serve it to you. Why? Do you know how many people everyday utter statements like “I don’t usually like <lamb or insert some other food they think is gross>, but I had it at <fill in the restaurant name>, and it was soooo good!” Isn’t that a sign that you probably could like it if it was prepared a certain way?

So I made banh cuon, a Vietnamese steamed rice crepe traditionally filled with minced pork, shrimp, wood ear mushrooms, and shiitake mushrooms tonight — a very laborious dish that takes a lot of time and preparation, and I decided, what the hell, I’m going to keep in the shrimp even though my friend coming tonight says she refuses to eat it. When I described all the dishes at the table, I left out the fact that this dish had minced shrimp (she’s probably going to read this blog post now and call me out on my trickery). I felt a little guilty, but I did it anyway.

So she served herself, and she ate it. And she went back for seconds and thirds. And then she raved to me afterwards and even after she left via text how amazing the food was.

She just happily devoured shrimp. I wonder if she had any clue or inkling. I’m wondering if I should tell her this, or if I should just keep it a secret.

In our new building at this time of year, they allow units to volunteer and sign up to give out candy to kiddies who will be trick-or-treating on Halloween afternoon or evening. So I decided to volunteer our apartment. I bought two different types of Kit Kats and a bag of variety M&Ms for the kids. And I told Chris that I want us to re-use our his-and-her matching banana costumes from five years ago so that we can greet the kids in our own costumes. He didn’t seem to be a fan of this.

In my adult life, given I have lived in New York City for all of it other than the years in college, I’ve never really had the joy of greeting trick-or-treaters, reveling in their interesting costumes, and handing out candy to them in their enthusiastic states. I feel like this is an “adult” thing to do to participate in our building’s activity. Now, I just need to get Chris to participate, too.