Shabbat Rant... Seuda Possibilites

The Shabbat meal situation has been bothering me for a while. I was not sure what about it was bothering me until today. Back up... Since moving out of my parents' home, until moving to Jerusalem, every Shabbat (save for 4 weekends in 6 years) I found myself packed up spending Shabbat somewhere else ie not in my apartment. {ok,5 times in bklyn I slept in my apartment and ate somewhere else - I don't think that counts...} Sometimes that "somewhere else was NCSY Shabbatonim, but if there was no Shabbaton, or oneg to run, I would be at a family's house, with a family meal, and a family feeling. In New York these families were either friends of mine who were married, my friend's parents homes, or my cousins place. I stayed far away from the "NY single scene", scared away by the numerous horror stories that I'd heard. {i'm not sure if that was good thing or bad, but moving along...} After first moving to Israel I continued to go away for Shabbatot, however there is a different twist here. I do not have friends who are married here, and I do not have friends whose parents live here, so I found myself going to either my parents' friends, or to people I do not know. Both of those are fine choices, except for one major part. I am not friends with anyone who lives at the homes. That means every week I am starting from scratch with either "what have you been up in the last 6 years" or "so tell us about yourself". Neither of these questions leaves me for lack of what to say, however after weeks in a row of this I find myself hating going to people for Shabbat. Upon moving to Katamon, I started staying home for the first time since moving out of my parents' home. I enjoy it. I enjoy the company of single people, I enjoy the discussions, I enjoy having guests, I enjoy meeting new people and I enjoy the Friday night charade of shmoozing after davvening with the "where are you going" conversation starter... What I don't like is that some of the meals end up being 20+ people with 15 converstions going on simultaneously, and it feels a little like Shabbat meal is an excuse for a party with a prereq that you must be sitting...

This Shabbat we made Friday night dinner. Jessica invited two married couples, a friend of hers, and I had two ppl come, one of whom brought a friend. There was - for the most part - only one conversation at a time. Shabbat lunch I ate a newly married couple's place with 7 other guests... also one conversation. The factor that made those meals work was there was someone leading the meal. It was not a free for all. Seuda Shilisheet was given by a friend for whoever heard about it, and included not only the 25+ people who fit around the table...but also the 15+ people
who found their space on the couch. Nice group of people, and very Purim party feeling. I realized that was it. For shaloshudos (for lack of a better spelling...), that was great. For Purim it was great. For Friday night or Shabbat day it was not ok. For the last couple of weeks I knew something was bothering me about the meal situation, but I couldn't put my finger on it exactly. I thought it was the lack of Torah, aside from the d'var Torah I would make someone give - but it's more then that. It's the lack of a feeling of a cohesive group. Neither last night's or today's conversation focused on Torah...but the d'var Torah was not a seperate entity to the meal. It wasn't stop everything it's d'var Torah time - it was more of a so, does anyone have anything on the Parsha/Purim... part of the group discussion.
Now that I have the answer to what has been bothering me, I have to figure out if it is fixable or if I should simply roll with the knowledge that when I make meals I can try and roll them in the direction I would like.

In completely other news... I have been invited to 2 seudas for Purim tomorrow. A co-worker invited me to her place, I was really excited about that one, because I would get to meet a whole slew of new people, being that she is in a completely different crowd then I'm in. I accepted and offered to bring dessert. Then confusion struck late last week. The guys from "cute guys' apartment" called and invited my roommate and myself to their place for seuda {don't get too excited...with 15 other people...} If that's not great enough, Friday night one of the cute guys I saw at an oneg I went to asked if I was almost ready to leave, cuz he'd walk me home... score! Then he asked if I got the message from my roommate that we were invited, and then asked if I was going to make it "cuz I know your roommate is coming late". If that wasn't great enough, he called tonight to ask if I'd bring dessert... Ok, so now i'm bringing desert to two seudas...one that starts at 2 {guys}, and one at 2:30 {co-worker}. I will probably go to the guys on time, and show up at the girls arounbd 3:30...how wrong is that? Or, I could go to the guys at 2, leave - go to the girls, stay for 1/2 hour and then return to guys... Oh the possibilites....