A Turning Stone and a Tender Bender

If it's not my eternal laziness that keeps me from updating a week at a time, it's some sort of venial interruption. This past week a new stone was turned with Joe's 21st birthday. Although Joe and I have been drinking for years previous to each of our legality-introducing-celebrations (and gambling for just as long), a 21st birthday should never be overlooked or under-partied. This was no exception.

Unfortunately for Joe's birthday we had to skip Vegas as he is a mere student at this point, having been removed from poker for over a year now. He did receive a small lump of money for his birthday, but he had other priorities with which to allocate that cash. Us three apartment-ies are planning on going in December, so we knew he'd get to visit the sinful wonderland soon enough. But for the time being, there was drinking to be had.

On Tuesday night we managed to pull Darsky up here for the drinking extravaganza. I took off from work a little early and he met us at our place with beer in hand. As soon as he walked in the door we almost instantly set up a game of Bonedoneskis.

Unfortunately luck was on Darsky's side tonight, as he ended up taking a decent amount off of both me and the birthday boy. We eventually switched to PLO to get rid of some of the luck factor, where I managed to gain back a lot of my stack for a short amount of time before I missed a couple of huge draws. Towards the end of the game Steph and her friend Chelsea showed up and we decided to 3-way flip for the rest of my dwindling stack. I flopped huge, but Joe hit turn and river to swipe my cash and it was time for the night to begin.

We went downtown for dinner with the girls, where Joe enjoyed his first legal public beer at a local microbrewery. We had some decent food, a couple rounds of decent beer, and I footed the bill before we headed over to Q's to play some pool and to enjoy some more drinkage.

Our friend Amanda surprised Joe by coming out from the valley, when he had previously thought she wasn't coming down to celebrate until the weekend. She showed up at Q's and joined in on the birthday fun, but not before arguing with the waitress about what a Black Russian was. For the record, according to Wikipedia:

The Black Russian is a cocktail of vodka and coffee liqueur, sometimes topped up with Coca Cola. It is traditionally poured over crushed ice in an old-fashioned glass.

Joe was enjoying his drinking, and let it be known quite a few times that "Dude...this is fuckin fun man...seriously...this is fun..." After we shot pool for a while and lounged around, we decided to head over to a local Irish-pub-in-America, Dargan's. We've had some good times at Dargan's and it never seems to let us down in time of needing fun and drunkeness.

On the way there I had to take the girls back to their car, as they were going back to Ventura to retire for the night. Darsky, Joe, and Amanda all went ahead and enjoyed some Irish car bombs without me (those bastards), and when I returned the drinking continued. A few rounds of Green Label and beer made for a good time, some fun/awkward/interesting conversation, and of course more of Joe's increasingly drunken admittance that yes, this was indeed, fun.

I took the crew through Jack in the Box on the way home and as soon as we walked in the door we all started hungrily tearing through the wonderfully delicious yet bodily harmful food. We popped on Bob Saget's standup and I quit about halfway through, thanks to having to work only hours later.

Wednesday at work went just about how I expected it to, with me feeling like hell and scrounging around...until lunch. At noon I was treated to lunch and multiple rounds of beers at lunch, and it turned out being quite a day as the boss left early to attend to family business and I sat in front of my computer all day plugging away at Excel like I usually do. The plentiful beer at lunch helped me not a give a crap about the rest of the day, and the buzz tied in nicely with the previous night's drinks to send me through the rest of the day in a state of haze and easiness.

On Thursday Joe and I started the drinking way early, and by six o'clock we'd cleaned through another case-worth of beer. We consumed more alcohol before Steph came out, and again we drank the night away. Work the next day was about the laziest Friday one could ask for.

Coming into the week, I knew that Joe's 21st birthday would lead to a continual stream of alcoholic celebration, and I was dead on. The goal of the week was to find that delicate balance of drinking regularly while keeping mind enough to handle yourself at work. I refer to weeks like these (and yes, I've definitely had them before) as tender benders, for it takes a bit of care to pull off smoothly.

As for Friday, the drinking began early and continued as we hit up another bar after dinner. We ran into some fairly odd and interesting people downtown, and managed to pass off a random home-made rap audio CD to a scared yet curious couple. I was then supposed to go down to Ventura for the night to drink with Steph and her roommates, but ended up passing out until about 1 o'clock in the morning.

I had yet to get a good night's sleep since Monday, and it turned me into a walking zombie by Friday. Mike, Amanda, and Joe's brother and sister and their respective girlfriend and boyfriend were coming up that night and Saturday afternoon, but I couldn't hang with them that night. I recharged my batteries with a few hours of impenetrable shuteye and took off late. When I arrived everyone was sleeping, and Steph and I passed out rather quickly.

I drove back up to Santa Barbara on Saturday afternoon, and arrived to a couple stories of the previous night's inebriated horseplay. Once Tina (Joe's sister) and Ben (her boyfriend) arrived, we all headed out to lunch downtown to let the day's festivities of booze begin yet again. We ate at another place on State and had multiple rounds of margaritas and beer, and three of us raced to the bottom of a $25 bucket of alcohol.

We had some good food and again, shared a lot of funny stories and had an all around great time. We hit up the store to load up on a $160 worth of alcohol before returning back to our place to drink the night away. We accomplished our goal.

We ended up playing some N64 and some Halo2 before things really got rowdy. Steph showed up later in the night to join us, and by that time the eight of us were on our way to crazy drunk. We were playing guitar and singing when Steph had let me know she arrived, but there was no parking so she ended up having to park quite a bit aways. No fear...there was eight of us who loved picking people up, and we had a guitar. To the sidewalk!

We all took off in our haze singing loudly while Joe lead the group playing the guitar on the entire walk. On our crazy walk we sang a song about reacharounds, I freestyled a little bit, and by the end of the night Joe had been hurrican-rana'd inside our apartment, we shotgunned almost an entire case of beer, we built a waterbottle trampoline on Sunny's bed, and the pizza delivery guy drank a beer.

It was a blast and an amazing time was had by all. In the morning I made breakfast for everyone while we drank mimosas, and after we watched Grandma's Boy everyone took off. Joe and I spent the rest of Sunday being dead and watching movies while eating Taco Bell. Towards the end of the night we decided to play a Sit N Go marathon on FT, which ended at about 3AM.

As soon as we got up on Monday afternoon we cleaned the entire place, went to lunch, and eventually came back to couch up the rest of the day. Steph came out, we watched another movie, and hit the sack pretty early.

All in all, it was an amazingly fun week and I'm thinking of taking a break from drinking for a few days. It probably won't happen, but it's a thought.

Until next time.