Last Man Standing

Well, this week finished much better than it started. After a particularly foul week at work that pushed me to my limits of office supply-throwing rage, the weekend was a grand success.

Friday was the worst day, work-wise, and convinced me that going into work on Saturday was a sucker move. After work, I came home and relaxed a bit, then went shopping. Being a good little consumer always makes me feel better. One purchase was Sid Meier's Pirates, which is good, addictive fun. I can't say how it compares to the original, but I'm certainly enjoying it thoroughly right now.

I came home and popped in one of my Netflix movies, The Life Aquatic, which I enjoyed. Having made the decision to not go into work, I stayed up a lot longer than I expected, torn between thumb-jockeying on the PS2 and listening to new music, including the latest from The New Pornographers, Twin Cinema, which is excellent, if not as immediately catchy as Electric Version.

Saturday, I woke up early, finished Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, the second installment in the fine series, then did some cleaning. Bathroom, vacuuming, and a lot of paper shredding. The place feels so different after a decent, if severely incomplete, cleaning. Since I woke up late, this all finished up sometime around 4:30, with no eating to speak of. Which is fine, since the first destination of the evening was Shula's Steakhouse. A shower and a trip to CVS later, I'm ready to head out the door to make the six o'clock reservations at the Don's.

I arrive at the restaurant, which is in the Wyndham City Center, and wait outside, assuming that, since I was almost a half-hour early, I had beaten The Entourage (that's JG and Los Os) there. So I waited around outside until it was nearly six, then decided that I'd just go inside, where, as it turns out, they were having drinks at the bar. Go me! I'm so smart. Within minutes, we are taken to our table in a room that is completely empty. Taking advantage of the situation, JG sounds off with a louder-than-expected "deez nutz!" That pretty much set the tone for the evening.

Dinner was, as it always is at Shula's, fantastic. Food details are, for the most part, boring, so I won't bog down this wee narrative with them. I will say that if you eat there, you simply must have the barbecue shrimp. It's shrimp, stuffed with basil, wrapped in bacon, and dipped in barbecue sauce. After dinner, we piled into The Os car and drove to The Black Cat, arriving around a quarter of nine. We positioned ourselves, as we always do, at the end of the Red Room bar, near the Backstage. And the drinking begins. I have to say, I felt ready to throw in the towel, as I was still in a beef coma. As it turns out, so was everybody else. Eventually, a couple more stools opened up and we could all sit. (To that point, Mr. O and I were standing.) Unfortunately, there were a couple of people dividing our group. Mrs. O and JG were in the corner talking, while Mr. O and I were sitting diagonally from them on the other side of the bar.

CO and I are talking and drinking when I suddenly get a tap on the shoulder. It's Jamy. With quick, across the bar greetings, followed soon by actual mingling, the energy starts to pick up. Also, by that point, I'm nearly out of the food coma. A short while later, ES and her boyfriend show up, and the group is pretty much complete. There was a possibility that a few more people would show up, but due to the work week, I wasn't able to coordinate any firm plans with them.

With our party all present and accounted for, I'm ready to do some quality drinking. And I am. But sooner than expected, the steak sweats have finally defeated Mr. O. Mrs. O and JG are waving the white flag, too. So they settle up and depart. While I do wish they could have stayed longer, I certainly know how they were feeling, and they did so much to make the day great already, I wasn't upset that they had to bail earlier than expected.

Now it's just me, Jamy, ES and James (her bf). We take over the corner and basically just chat and drink. ES, due to an illness, is not drinking (much...she does have on mixed drink and a shot). Jamy, after a couple of drinks and a short night of sleep, is fading fast. So really, it's James and I doing the drinking. Not unexpectedly, Jamy takes leave of the party, which is good. Because falling asleep is pretty dangerous in that corner. Like that one time I passed out, and I woke up with my pants...oh wait. Nevermind.

Jamy leaves, and shortly after, James takes ill and he leaves. So ES and I basically hold it down for probably another thirty or forty-five minutes, leaving sometime after midnight. She walked back to my spot with me, which served two purposes: it kept me entertained, and it also kept me from stopping at Yum's. Thank goodness for that girl. Though, it wouldn't have mattered, because Yum's didn't smell as delicious as it usually does at that time of night.

And that was that. Lots of friends, lots of steak, lots of beer. I couldn't ask for more on a birthday. It completely wiped clean the vitriol from the previous work week. Let's hope that the good vibes from the weekend carry into this week.

To everyone who came out, my deepest and sincerest thanks. You made it a great, great time. And for the well-wishers, I wish you could have been there.