Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Ready for the Weekend

Why is it that I never watch MTV except when that new Jessica Simpson video is on? Gosh, she's awesome. Say what you want about being in a sissy boy band, but who would Nick Lachey be hitched to otherwise?

And in an unrelated news, I'm about to take a cold shower.

Pretty much done packing TFS. One more car load of loose stuff gets stashed away tomorrow morning (okay, afternoon), and then I get myself cleaned up and changed to fly out of here at 5:50 pm to head to NY and my little family reunion. Should be interesting. Haven't seen these folks in a while.

The weekend should be fun. Get in Wednesday night, and crash at my uncle's place in NJ. Thursday is open during the day - dinner with the family that evening somewhere. Maybe I can convince Marshal to go with me out to Queens to catch a Mets game. I'm going to throw out the idea of watching Wedding Crashers that night. Friday is going to be casual. Sleep in, drive out to the hotel where the wedding is at, and work out and go for a swim. Get changed for the wedding, which doesn't start until 6. After that, I'll be working on bridesmaids, and hope for the best. I think that Saturday, there'll be some sort of BBQ or something that's put on by the groom's parents for both sides of the family. I think that I'll be expected to go, though I'd rather go wander around in the city. Sunday will be my day to wander around the city (particularly the Met), before catching up with my parents and heading back to my uncle's place to crash. Flight on Monday is bright and early.

Hopefully, I'll throw in an update at some point.

-Chairman

Monday, August 01, 2005

Adventures in Babysitting

You know that a night will be amusing when it starts off with your buddy saying saying, in a slurred voice, something like:

"Okay. If anything happens... there's an insurance card in my wallet."

Damn skippy. So I was out with GQ, Becca, JP, and some others listening to this fun band (oldies and blues, brass section and a fun lead vocal) and playing some poker. Once again, I played good poker, until the end where I got a little frisky and ended up losing most of my profits. Being up 2 bucks isn't as nice as being up 12, but hey, it's still being up.
So I head back to the apartment, and I was flipping around on the internet when when my cell phone goes off at 2:35. My first thought? "Crap, this had better not be OD..." My second thought? I wonder who's drunk dialing me.

Of course, it was CJ. And that was when the night really started.

"Dude. Sorry that I'm calling real late, but I'm really drunk... and I think that I might die."

Nice. That's always a fun way to start off a conversation. So I ask him real quick about what happened. Basically, a few too many drinks in too little time. Only about 8 drinks in the last hour and a half, all on a lack of sleep and a long shift. So, he was drunk, but not "about to die" drunk. Apparently, he had tried to make a run at Maura, but had that effort nipped in the bud when he found out that she already had a boyfriend. I think that was followed by a run at drunkeness, aided by Powers Irish Whisky, Jaeger bombs, and straight rum.

So, I figure that my job is to get him to drink a lot of water, pop a few Vitamin I, and get some food in his body to soak up some acid. Not too difficult, so I also bring over a load of laundry. So, it's about 3am, and I'm doing laundry while CJ is going bulimic on me.

"Dude, I think that I have to make myself puke..."

Of course, I know that he didn't have enough to drink so that he would need a stomach pump or anything. So, I just kept making him drink from his Nalgene, while I fired up a small DiGiorno in the oven. So, I'm sitting there, waiting on laundry, reading one of the McEvoy poker books (pretty rudimentary stuff - not particularly helpful for decent players, but great for beginners), while CJ zones out and babbles something every few minutes.

Eventually, we get him sobered up and we actually had a nice chat about life, where we went wrong, and about some potential ideas about the upcoming year. We look up at the clock, and it's 7, and I go,

"You know what? You know what I'm thinking? Let's see if Cracker Barrel is serving chicken and dumplings."

Unfortunately, they were not, but the parking lot was sort of full. Who's up for breakfast at 7? Old people, that's who. Them, and respectable people. Not people who have been up all night warding off a drunken death. Not people who show up in gym shorts, a cut-off t-shirt, and a baseball cap. Not people who are wearing a white t-shirt with a little vomit stain. Not people who needed an Axe spray-down just to not smell like a wino. Generally, not us.

Of course, we got a few stares, but hey, we were awesome, and we knew it. But we didn't get the chicken and dumplings that we wanted. Oh well. A nice slice of country ham, followed by sleeping until 4:30 in the afternoon was pretty awesome, though.

But anyway, it's more moving... took one more carload over to Kyle's, and got to chill w/ Darren for a while afterwards. Probably another carload, but a light one. Just a little bit of kitchen stuff left, and I need to figure out what clothes I need for the next couple weeks. Everything else gets packed, not to be opened until TFS 2 opens it's doors on the 15th. So it'll be a little work, and a little more packing. Tomorrow will be some cleaning, and then ready to move the last load of stuff over. Maybe some poker at night. Off to NY on Wednesday... Who knows when this'll get updated.

But until then.

-Chairman