Skipping past Writober and Nanoblomo . . ? Shit, I dunno. I'm as bored as you are.
Drinking
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Unless I’m Killed by Pickled Particulates
So, some friends of ours are getting married and, during the pre-wedding planning party (yes, the bride is very organized), we found out that the reception location (her parents’ yard) was gonna need some cleaning/attention. Volunteering for cleanup duties was strongly encouraged. The first* cleanup event was Saturday. It was real work, but fun. And hot.
The highlight had to be the part where we found three full-size coolers buried beneath junk in the outdoor storage area. Coolers jam-packed with liquor and wine. As the bride’s father tells it, their older daughter was drinking all their booze so he put it all in coolers and hid them outside. Twenty years ago. And then forgot about them. That’s how I came to be in possession of some aged-in-glass-bottles quantities of Jack Daniels (1.75 liters!) and Crown Royal. I’ll be hoping this isn’t my last post ever over a tasty Crown and Ginger.
* There will inevitably be others . . . based on what’s left to be done.
Drinking • Weekends • (3) Comments closed • Permalink
Thursday, December 21, 2006
The Same Could be True in Your Everyday Life. As it is in Mine.
As the Shopping Days ‘Til Christmas tick down to ZERO, and you’re trying to score gifts for friends before a party the next night, on your lunch break, you’ll invariably find yourself in a liquor store.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
When I Said, “I Picked Up Some Wine,” I Meant THIS
I realize that you weren’t there (for the most part), the Internets. I don’t wanna make you jealous, but . . . well, we were in Atlanta this past weekend. For a “very special pre-Thanksgiving” thing at C-dub’s. And we had the best turkey ever. I know, I’m so sorry for rubbing your proverbial face in it, the Internets.
Anyway, as the picture below might suggest, there was some drinking.
I’m kinda pissed because as I was uploading some pictures to Flickr, I accidentally kicked a power switch and turned my computer off, losing some of the descriptive commentary on the photos. Just rest assured: When CW finished off a bottle of grape vodka, there were two unopened bottles waiting in the wings.
So, I’m over this “blogging-way-after-the-fact” nonsense. Tomorrow’s the for-real Thanksgiving™. Followed by an overnight trip to the beach. Are you psyched? Yeah, me neither.
Drinking • Roadtripping • (0) Comments closed • Permalink
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
Day Four: Motivational
Y’see, I’d wanted to write about this thing that happened with my job, but we’re smarter than that (and, also, the situation came to an anticlimactic conclusion). And then I’d wanted to write about this book I finished reading skimming and how the whole thing seems like a self-congratulatory, calculated publicity stab (no, it wasn’t OJ’s new book about how things COULD have gone had he actually killed his estranged wife and her friend). And then I’d wanted to write about our going to Atlanta this weekend—how it’s not a Meetup, really, but we’ll get to see a handful of our bloggy friends for a few hours drinks (okay, LOTS of drinks). And THEN I felt like I should mention that I’m, inexplicably, LOSING to Patricia in our Steelers vs. Cowboys bet on which team would do better this season (two words, ‘Boys: Start Bledsoe).
Mostly, though, I just felt I should write. Just write.
Drinking • Roadtripping • Sports • The Media • Weekends • (2) Comments closed • Permalink
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
The Longest Day
My Saturdays have a fairly familiar pattern. That’s the day I usually spend taking my mom out for groceries, which doubles as mom’s time with Mia. Sometimes, there are other activities mixed in as well. This past Saturday was overflowing, and I had the whole day planned as an orchestrated pilgrimage around the Greater Tallahassee MSA.
You see, Michelle was out of town with the Girls, so it was me and Mia all day. Besides the grocery-shopping with mom, there was a play date planned with her step-cousin in Woodville and a cookout that evening at Mr. Glory Hole’s. Plus, I was gonna swing by the office to do a couple things.
I’m actually amazed that the whole day went “as planned.” I’d asked in advance to borrow Michelle’s shitty-ass Digital Elph to document the Day in the Life I had laid out. So click on our lovely daughter to begin the Flickr tour.
I didn’t include many of the pictures from the Glory Hole cookout because, well, they weren’t that interesting. Y’know, not as interesting as a blurry shot of my wife text-calling me a “whore.”
And I chose not to do a Stats for this weekend, but I can summarize by saying that I drank WAY too much (not even a full cow-sized steak and an Anna Nicole Smith-sized breast of chicken was gonna soak THAT shit up). And I may have needed to lie down on the floor for, I dunno, 45 minutes or so to keep it real. I seriously haven’t had a drink since. Actually, I think I’m still hungover.
Or, more likely, I deserve the “Sign of the ‘P’.”
Drinking • Weekends • (1) Comments closed • Permalink
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Crossroads
When it comes to summarizing an entertaining and/or eventful night, one should probably sit down to blog that shit when one’s still drunk. That’s why this blog is so boring. Even to me. I’m never capturing the moment. Unless I’m in the moment. Which I almost never am.
So, Michelle was gone for most of the weekend. And it really is purely coincidental that I spent a lot of the weekend making discoveries and assessments about my life. You were warned:
- In the realm of sports-bar trivia, I know an average amount about the career of Oliver Stone. But I might have something of an edge in music trivia, demonstrated the following night when I missed the entire first round of a game, swept into the lead while the competition (literally) sat out, and then held on for victory despite the final-round country-music question.
- Red Bull works. I’d never had one, but faced with four beers on top of a no-carb dinner, and another whistle stop remaining on my Saturday Night Tour of Liver Damage, I decided to give it a whirl. I’m sure it doesn’t hold a candle to the meth-jolt that is Chaser, but it did the job.
- I’ve been in talks about possibly playing some adult-recreation soccer later this year. Not sure how I’d work that in with my current band schedule (and Michelle’s), but we’ll see.
- I’m getting fairly obsessive about my untapped reservoir of poetic talent (a shallow reservoir, but a reservoir nonetheless). I’m almost to the point where I’m thinking of scheduling daily writing time. Maybe I need to bust out the exercises again. Because scribbling down three lines of obscurity after arriving home drunk at 1 a.m. isn’t filling my notebook with the Good Stuff.
Drinking • Weekends • (2) Comments closed • Permalink
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
The Meetup. The Bi-Mon-Sci-Fi-Con. The Embiggening. The Dorkfest. Oh My God, I Hate You!
No matter how we refer to this past weekend, all of those present will remember it for the rest of their blogging lives. Or at least until the next time. If they can remember it at all. (In-laws who may be reading should probably skip to the very end where there’s a link to several pictures of your beautiful daughters.)
Several bloggers are big on the cameras and picture-taking, so there is no shortage of photographic documentation of the event. Hell, I even got in on the action with the wife’s Digital Elph. Here are some things I took pictures of:
- There’s an obligatory photograph from the drive up. This particular shot is of Michelle . . . driving. I’d gotten the camera out as we were passing through Sasser, Georgia, in the hope of seeing a second sign to photograph . . . other than the first sign, which had prompted me to get out the camera. I also took a photograph of myself, which, not-so-coincidentally, is not linked here nor on my Flickr site.
- A group shot of bloggers milling about outside the Three Dollar Café. Julia was demonstrating her favorite booze-diving preparation. Ah, Chaser. Estella is playing with hers, I think. Maybe giving it a shake. Or perhaps it’s empty and she’s trying to find another. Which she will surely need. At 3 a.m. When she is still awake. And drinking.
- After the restaurant on Friday, we drove back to CW’s for some after-dinner cocktails. Which, for some people, lasted until a couple hours before breakfast. I snapped this picture as the Party Van was pulling up the driveway. Ah, Styro. Is that the Cocaine Werewolf face she’s making?
- On the evening of the Main Event, Julia staged an experiment using Mentos and Diet Coke. In the cul-de-sac.
Yeah, that’s about it for the pictures I did take. How about the pictures I didn’t take:
- I thought I’d taken some pictures at our Three Dollar Café dinner. Where we were seated on the outside patio at separate pairs of tables. I certainly didn’t take a picture of the wet celery that Styro threw at me. Nor did I shoot a picture of Mark throwing a hunk of bread back (and hitting someplace between Styro and Patricia).
- After dinner, at CW’s, we gathered in the basement to view the Amazing Race clip that, reportedly, is the reason that “any of us are friends.” The oft-watched clip was the genesis for Styro’s “Ohmygod . . . I HATE you” t-shirts. That I have in two colors. But did not photograph.
- There was a moment that I walked out onto the porch and into a discussion about Cleveland Steamers and Chilidogs and Hot Carls and Rusty Trombones. Even mentioning the Dirty Sanchez and Angry Dragon couldn’t take things to the next level. Still there were some nice bewildered looks that could have been photographed.
- Also on the porch, later, in perhaps the only semi-serious moment of the weekend, I sat in on a discussion of race relations with Mark and Styro. I think I tried contribute but I was stammering. Probably from the seriousness.
- The most anticipated (and, thus, underwhelming) event of the Meetup was Asshole / President. We spent an inordinate amount of time arguing about and changing the rules. There was a moment when Styro and I were going back and forth. She stared me down and said, “I will punch you in the fucking face.” I wish I had a picture of the look on her face when she said that.
- Moments later, she was doing the “You’ll never see these again” quote from some movie and she pulled up her shirt and flashed the table. I think Estella got the brunt of it.
- Downstairs, we discovered Michelle and K singing “I Want it That Way.” And then Styro and Estella took on some anal-themed classics like “Mickey” (“You take me by the heart when you fuck me in the ass”) and “Jack and Diane” (“Oh yeah, life goes on, long after the thrill of the chilidog is gone”).
- Michelle spent a great deal of time playing Guitar Hero on the Playstation. Despite being (or, perhaps, because) able to play guitar, I sucked at this game very much. But Michelle was loving it. So much so that I almost had to drag her out of the house.
It was a very, very fun time. Many of the things I didn’t photograph, someone else did. There are tons of them here.
Drinking • Roadtripping • Weekends • (11) Comments closed • Permalink
Friday, April 28, 2006
It Begins
We made it to Atlanta. I’d been convinced that something was going to come up, that Mia was going to get sick or something, and we wouldn’t be able to come. But we’re here.
We haven’t actually MET any of the other bloggers yet, but we’ve been texting one another like crazy. Probably a bit of foreshadowing that all the girls in the Party Van convened at a bar in the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. As I type, it’s almost 5:30 and we’ve heard reports that they only JUST got the van, so they’ll have an interesting slog through the Friday-night traffic as they inch their way to CW’s house in the northern outer ‘burbs.
Fortune has been smiling on us, though, because as we were coming into the area, we caught up with an ambulance with its sirens blaring. And followed it for about 25 miles into downtown Atlanta. As Michelle said, “We’re making the most of an unfortunate situation. Turning tragedy into something positive.”
Confession time:
-- In honor of my metrosexual attire for the evening, I need to spend the appropriate amount of time on the hair. Because I just got it cut a couple days ago, and I’m not sure how it’s gonna work out.
-- I have a new laptop. I bought it with my bonus check. Before you gasp, it’s an almost-entry-level model that I got a very substantial instant rebate* on. But now I’ll be able to live-blog the Meetup . . . if CW replaced his router.
-- My fly is open.
* When we got our Dell desktop a couple years ago, we had a $100 mail-in rebate that got fucked up somehow and I vowed to never rely on that kind of rebate as a “savings.” I think “instant” has a nicer ring anyway, don’t you?
Drinking • Roadtripping • Weekends • (0) Comments closed • Permalink
Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Coming To
I’d be exaggerating if I said that it’s taken me this long to sober up from Saturday night. But it did take me a large portion of all day Sunday. I don’t think I had that much to drink. I mean, Christ, I posted about the night before going to bed and there are hardly any glaring typos/misspellings.* But that might say more about the simplicity and ease-of-use of the blogging nest that Patricia has built for me than my perceived alcohol tolerance.
I’m not sure, but this might be my last real post before leaving for Atlanta Friday morning. I’d love to promise that I’ll post every day, multiple times per day, but you and I know that’s not gonna happen. Sometime, I’ll experiment with trying to post once per day, but that would require me to remember more of the funny stuff that I see and hear . . . and/or post about the people I work with. Which, considering my supervisor is probably reading this, would require me to post only the uplifting aspects of my job. So, I won’t really be posting about work. Which is sad, because I work with some interesting characters.
*sigh*
* Some things I left out of my summary**: Prof. Tom was going beer-for-beer with Mr. Glory Hole, and he was the designated driver for the pair of them. And as crazily out-of-it Mr. GH seemed that night, Michelle reports that he was at work very early the next morning (a Sunday).
** “Knockers?” Seriously? And writing about peeing? I must be really adept at using the computer under the influence. Because I was. I’m not sure I can “bring it” like that in Atlanta, either, Styro.
Drinking • Weekends • (5) Comments closed • Permalink
Friday, April 14, 2006
The Black Moss
I never posted about the Pirate Birthday Party from last weekend. Long story short, Ms. Jazz Hands was throwing a party for her 30th birthday at her family’s broke-ass beach shack. There was a pirate-treasure hunt, a bonfire, lots of eats, and the omnipresent, ever-flowing alcohol. Because the house was small and broken and full of lots of people and dogs and (most likely) bugs, Michelle thought we’d sleep in a tent. Which worked out nicely. I think.
Here’s the “set” on Flickr:
Just click around. Snark away.
Today’s Good Friday. Or, as I’m calling it, the STEALTH HOLIDAY. See, I’d planned to take off today for another bout of selfish relaxation. And then I got the memo from Mia’s preschool that they’d be closed today. My sincere wish is that today is like a normal Saturday, tomorrow is like what today SHOULD have been, and Sunday . . . well, we’ll see when we get there.
Drinking • Roadtripping • (4) Comments closed • Permalink
Monday, April 10, 2006
Beer Before Liquor . . . Eat a Dick
In the course of my long and distinguished drinking “career,” I’ve never been a believer in the whole “Beer before liquor, never sicker; liquor before beer, never fear” rule(s). I much prefer “Never too much of one thing,” or “All things in moderation . . . as opposed to, say, mixed together in a funnel.”
The pirate / birthday adventure was a good time. More on that later (with PICTURES as we found our camera).
No, see, I’m here to put forth a drinking theory. You understand that part of the problem with people getting sick from drinking tequila is that, besides drinking a lake of it, tequila has a very specific taste. Like rum or gin. Vodka (and Everclear) don’t, which is why I can still drink those comfortably even though they’ve rocked me in the past. But what if you mixed your alcohols in such a way that the flavors / auras cancelled one-another out? How do you think 2 ½ Junebugs, two Red Stripes, a Bacardi Limon concoction, and an indeterminate whiskey and Seven would go down? I’ll tell you: Surprisingly well. Seriously, I might have been generous with the ice on those drinks, but I had no discernable hangover the next morning and no lingering flavors.
Atlanta? Bring it.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: This is what’s wrong with my drinking career . . . I can’t even get the Golden Rule right. Thanks, my commenting friends. I had it right, but typed it wrong.)