Bad Karma

I think that I believe in Karma. I’m not sure how this fits into Christianity, but it works for me. Some of our Armenian friends may think that free will would override Karma, and not like the concept. I suspect that our Calvinist friends would think that Karma may take away from the divine Justice of God, and not like the concept. But for now, I’m going to chalk one up for the Hindus, and find a way to merge Karma into my belief system.

So tonight, I was out in downtown Greenville again, just goofing around. I was at this Irish Pub sort of place called Connolly’s. Fun place. It had a decent act playing – two guys on acoustic who were pretty talented. I just wanted to drink Guinness at the bar and listen to music. The place started to fill up around 11. And up to the bar come two women, a blonde in her late 20’s and a brunette in her 30’s (being kind). The blonde was probably a 5 or so. Not unattractive, though a little dumpy. The brunette was probably a 5, too, but that was mainly because she was older. Twelve years ago, she probably could’ve been a contender. But that was then, and this is now.

They order a Jaeger Bombs, and proceed to down them. I peek over and see the blonde pay for the drinks after digging through the purse, and finding an assortment of bills all crumpled up. Right then, I knew that they were going to start trolling for drinks. When you show up at the bar with little cash, you’re relying on the kindness of strangers. So they just talk for a bit, and the blonde starts dancing around, semi-purposefully bumping into me with her butt. Yep. I was the first attempt. She asks for a light, which I do not have, but it did give her an opening to start talking me up. I find out that she’s Tonya, and her friend is Angie. Great. Somehow, Tonya let it slip that she had a boyfriend. Ding-ding! Dirty women trolling for drinks. Chalk one up for the radar.

So Tonya’s trying to convince me to do shots with them (on my ticket, of course). I’m asking where her boyfriend is. Turns out the gals just went out, and the boyfriend is still at home. Great. So there were two reasons that I wasn’t going to buy her a shot. The first is that I had no interest in her because she wasn’t very attractive. The second is that I’m not in the habit of buying drinks for strangers w/ boyfriends. I decided to be nice and focus on the 2nd reasons, rather than the first.

I explained that I thought that it was bad Karma to buy drinks for some dude’s girlfriend. If I had a girlfriend, I wouldn’t want her trolling the bar for drinks. I think that’s a reasonable policy. Of course, her reply was that she didn’t believe in Karma, that he wouldn’t care, and that it would be okay because she wouldn’t have to make out with me or anything. Which let me play a little bit of the other reason at her. “So why would I buy you a shot if we aren’t going to make out?” She didn’t have a good answer for that one. Basically, I just decided to put my foot down. I had no intention of buying some girl a drink who I knew I wasn’t going to get any action with. It’s one thing for someone to be buying girls drinks if he thinks that he has a shot at her. It’s another for me to be buying some chick who wasn’t all that hot drinks when I don’t even want to take a shot at her.

Of course, this just seems to be the modus operandi for at least a handful of women at every bar. They just stroll in there, expecting guys to be falling over themselves for the chance to buy them a drink. Screw that. There are plenty of other jabrones who will buy those women drinks. I don’t need to be one of those jabrones. And sure enough, a few minutes after Tonya knew that I wasn’t going to buy her a drink, she buys herself a drink, pounds it, and turns to the guy to the other side of her and starts talking. Within 5 minutes, she and Angie were drinking on some poor schmuck’s tab. I got to listen to the band in peace while I sipped on my 2nd Guinness.

The rest of the night was pretty plain. Two more bars w/ bands. One was a pretty standard bar (called The Gathering Place) with a rock band playing (decent), and the other was a dive (called The Bait Shop) with a blues band playing (mediocre, but fun). I capped off the night at a sushi/sake bar, called Wasabi. Excellent snack to end the night – great value at that place. An order of Uni (sea urchin) actually contained two pieces. The order of salmon roe had quite a bit of roe on there. And one of their specialty rolls, the Texas Rainbow Roll was huge – would have filled me up by itself. This huge roll was a Spider Roll about 3 inches in diameter, topped off with a number of slices of salmon, whitefish, tuna, and avocado. Actually, I ended up eating a little too much, as there really was enough for two there.

Well, Saturday figures to be pretty laid back. I’ll probably wash my car and clean out the inside of it. I’ll also probably do a little more running, and may even take a few laps in the pool again. And I’ll do one last load of laundry and pack up the car. I’m going to take off first thing on Sunday morning, and hopefully will be back in Champaign by 6pm. I think that instead of the southern route that I took to get here, I’ll go back to my more customary Knoxville-Lexington-Louisville-Indy-Champaign sequence. With any luck I’ll be able to move in on Sunday night, instead of having to wait until Monday morning. Until then.

-Chairman