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