Dear Urban Diplomat: My friends moved twice in a year. Do I have to buy them two house-warming presents?

Housewarming parties are a transaction: guests enjoy cocktails, canapés and gossiping about the prescriptions they spied in the medicine cabinet, while the hosts score IKEA dishes, cacti and other items they’ll eventually sell at a yard sale. The whole point is to fill a new, empty shell of a house with stuff. Unless everything from your friends’ last apartment washed away in The Flood, they shouldn’t expect, let alone require, a second round of booty. Go easy on the free food and drink so as not to draw your hosts’ attention to the ­perceived gift deficit—unless, of course, you’ve had enough of this burdensome couple, in which case, bring a Tupperware and take your canapés to go.