Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Four day weekends are always a good thing. But, sometimes they get a little long. I don't have classes on Friday, so life is good.

Thursday kicked off with inviting some friends up to Strega, the new bar that opened up on the sixth floor of the new condo complex down at the end of second street. It's a great place, good ambiance, good drinks, and comfortable seating. They actually stock Cachaça, and they can make a decent caipirinha. I was shocked. I had a caipirinha while waiting for CJ to arrive.

I wound up waiting for about a half hour, because CJ somehow got lost. Not sure how he puled that one off, it's on top of the only building taller that three stories other than Reser and Gill. It's kind of like not being able to pick me out of a crowd of midgets. However he made it eventually, and brought his girlfriend, and our mutual friend Brian.

We got another round of drinks, and I had a Gin and Tonic, while CJ ordered something with Strega's special liqueur, which tastes like a liquefied alcoholic breadstick. We talked for a couple of hours about work, the future, spectacular bike accidents, spectacular rafting accidents, injuries, and other things. Maybe I'll write about some of those later on.

Another round of drinks came in, and I had a Vodka Martini. It was the Vodka Martini from Hell! First off, Strega has huge cocktail glasses, double size. Second, it's alcohol and more alcohol, pretty much just four straight shots of Vodka and Vermouth. To top it off, the bartender didn't add enough ice to the mix, so it wasn't cold enough. It was just brutal. I struggled to put it down, and gnawed on the olive like it was going to save my life. It was rough, and things went downhill from there.

Someone got the bright idea to swing the conversation to politics right before we left. We proceeded to spend the next hour and a half standing in front of the entrance arguing. I hate arguing politics with my friends, because we're inevitably drunk at the time, any argument involving drunk college students inevitably breaks down to someone just yelling slogans. This particular argument ended with CJ's girlfriend telling me to get cancer and die. And she's normally such a cheerful little girl. That kinda killed the mood, so we went our separate ways.

Friday I woke up with a brutal hangover, which I usually don't suffer from. I chalked that up to the Hellfire Martini. I studied a little, read a little, and drank a ton of water.

After cleaning up, I met some friends over at the Fox and Firkin for some pre salsa dinner. Rob was flirting with the hot, pierced waitress., Nikki. I talked Milspeak with Tristan, the former Marine, while Chris taunted me about having Tara consume her sandwich faster that I devoured mine. Hey Chris, after doing the one minute challenge at Ft. Benning, I take my time with food when I can. Deal with it. I had a Cordon Bleu sandwich that tasted great, and a pint of Black Butte Porter. Erin taunted me about the fact that I look somewhere in the vicinity of ten years old in my facebook picture, and Nancy said she didn't believe I was old enough to drink. Jeez, when it rains it pours. Nancy ordered this inhuman brownie, that was covered in whipped cream and walnuts, and two scoops of Neapolitan ice cream. She distributed spoons, and the 12 of us there devoured it.

At Latin X, things kicked off as usual. I grabbed a Vodka and Tonic from the bar, and settled down. I saw a tall nice looking girl, and asked her to dance. "I don't know how to dance, I'm warning you!" Normally any girl who finds herself at Latin X without learning salsa says that, but they know enough about rhythm and dance in general for me to work with them. With this girl, I should have listened to her. I would describe it as dancing with a cannonball. When I led her in a direction, she flung herself that way. No control at all. I locked her up in a closed dance for the safety of everyone around us.

The next embarrassing incident happened during a meringue song. I looked up at the tables, and called a girl to come down and dance with me. She came down, and right before she got to me, her friend, whom my friend Sam had asked to dance, shot him down, and dragged me onto the dance floor. Awkward, awkward, awkward... Sam proceeded to ask the girl I had asked to dance, so they danced, and we danced, and things kind of evened out, but it just felt awkward. I made it up to the girl I originally asked on the next floor, but I just felt a little out of control the rest of the night.

I wound up going home earlier than usual, at 1. I just wasn't into it as much as usual. I hit the rack, and slept the sleep of the exhausted.

I spent most of Saturday just feeling drained. I don't know why, but I didn't like it. I laid around the house, watched TV, made a blog post, but generally did nothing important.

On Sunday, Joe called me up, and we went over to McMenamin's for some drinks. The pool tables were locked down, so we went to Tailgaters. There weren't very many people there, and it was karaoke night, but the pool tables were free, so we played three games. I took the first two, but I couldn't sink the 8 ball in the third.

As we were playing our second game, some guy came on, and just murdered "Dirty Laundry", by Don Henley. It was awful. Not in the so bad it's good type, but the so bad it's terrible type. Somewhere in Texas, Henley is rolling in his grave, and very confused, seeing as he's not dead yet.

I got a couple of hours to kill before I go to a party to watch the hockey game. The Flyers are gone, so I don't really care about who wins, but I promised Joe I'd make an appearance, we'll see what happens.