WEEKEND RECAP

FRIDAY

Boss Man decided we needed a little company retreat, so my Friday started on his speed boat with my co-workers. We cruised around Lake Washington and had a grand old time taking turns being pulled in the tube behind the boat. Everyone had a grand old time except for the Lil’est Dictator, that is. She refused to put on a bathing suit because she thought it was “weird”. She also, apparently, can’t swim (file that bit of information away for a rainy day…) and was afraid that the “life jacket” wouldn’t effectively keep her boney, 90 pound ass from sinking to the bottom. Whatever.
Later, I had dinner at Palermo on 15th with Faye, Borgia, Ben, Dom and Ben’s piece du jour. :P
After dinner, we decided to play drinking games with the movies “Out Cold” and “Orgazmo” (the unrated version). Sherrard hated “Out Cold”, which is perfectly reasonable. It’s a silly movie with a cliché plot. Faye and I tried to figure out what we liked about it and the only explanation we could come up with is Zach Galifianakis. So there you have it. “Orgazmo”, on the other hand, was a hit with everybody and there’s no denying its brilliance. All I have to say about the “unrated version” is that I don’t understand what the hell the MPAA is doing. The only new bits we noticed were a few extended humping scenes (how much humping is TOO MUCH?) and a few little noises here and there. Weird, man. Anywho, it got late and Faye was supposed to meet Borgia at a bar with his friend who is deathly allergic to cats, so she couldn’t come to my house. Sherrard, being hammered at this point, challenged Dom to an Atari duel, but it never panned out and he left with Faye. I went to bed.

SATURDAY

Woke up feeling ok. Man, I miss that feeling. Dom and I watched some more Deadwood and Battlestar Galactica (THANK YOU, Ben, for getting us caught up on the new season of B.G.). Then I got a hair-brained idea that I should go to Value Village to look for brown coat. If you can’t guess why I would do that, I’m too embarrassed to tell you. Faye begrudgingly went with me. I didn’t find anything, but Faye found several cute tops that will aid her in her new persona: adorable urban cowgirl. Faye and I split for dinner with our fellas. I convinced Dom to take me to Ballet, a delicious “Asian” restaurant on Pine. Well, it’s delicious to me. Apparently, their meat dishes aren’t as orgasmic as their vegetarian ones (their mock chicken, while resembling unappealing and floppy dark meat, is tender and flavorful). Anywho, after dinner, Dom and I squeezed in one more episode of Deadwood before I rushed off to the Satellite with Sherrard to meet Ryan, Faye and Borgia. And thus the debauchery began. At the Satellite, the normally ok (but NEVER great) waiter was clearly in a bad mood and decided to take it out on our table by, well, completely ignoring it. For the first round, Borgia had to go up to the bar. After that, if we were lucky enough to get the guy to come to our table, he would inevitably leave before everyone got their orders in. I’m sure it only pissed him off further when he would return with the drinks and the person who got left out would then order something else. He only served us too full rounds and we were there for several hours. Meanwhile, he was attending to other tables like they were giving blowjobs for tips. Needless to say, we wanted to stiff him a tip, but without the proper change, we ended up giving him 12%. After that we decided to hit the Comet. We sat at one end of one of the big tables. After a while, a group of people took up the other end. Not a big deal. But then Ryan, Sherrard and Faye, who were all sitting on the same side of the table, got up at the same time to take care of their respective business. Not 5 seconds later, this girl, who already had a chair of her own, sat down in Ryan’s chair. I leaned over and said “Excuse me, that chair is taken”. She kind of glanced at me and then turned her head back toward her friends. She didn’t get up. I leaned further and said, a bit louder “Excuse me! My friend is sitting there. He just got up to go to the bar”. I looked at her friends for help. She was clearly wasted. And frankly, I was getting a bit drunk myself. Her friends looked back at me as if to say “We don’t even really like her. You’re on your own.” Finally, I got Drunk Girl’s attention. She looked at me like I was being the biggest bitch on the planet, gestured to the three empty chairs and said “Fine! You can have ALL the chairs!”. Then she sat in the empty chair on the end of the table and pulled Ryan’s chair right next to her. I tried to explain AGAIN that people were actually sitting in those chairs mere seconds before she sat down. Obviously, she was here when they were here so she would have no reason to doubt me. But she didn’t listen. So I just waited for Ryan to return. He did, and had to pull his chair away from the Drunk Girl and back to our side of the table. I told him what had happened. Later, the Drunk Girl got up and I told Ryan he should pull her chair closer to him. He did and that was when her friends decided it would be fun to fuck with her. They told him to tell her he knows “Brady”. When she sat back down, she missed the subtlety of the fact that her chair was now right next to Ryan, and he began to tell her about how he knew Brady. She believed him right away. Apparently, it was almost too easy. Especially since this girl was hammered at Brady’s wedding as well and wouldn’t have remembered Ryan if they’d made out in a broom closet. For all she knows, they DID. Wacky. By the end of the night, Drunk Girl and Ryan were best friends and she was never the wiser. After last call, we were ushered out by the Comet staff and decided that we weren’t tired enough to go home. Nay. Instead, we NEEDED to go to Faye’s house for a Dance Party right then and there. After a quick stop to QFC for some not-at-all needed beer, we headed over to Faye’s. On the way, Sherrard, who was carrying a 24-pack of bottled Weinhart’s, tripped. As he toppled to the ground, he instinctively held out the box full of glass to cushion his fall. Miraculously, only two or three bottles broke. Sherrard was embarrassed, but honestly, with the state we were all in, it could have been any one of us. At Faye’s, we began the dance party with the classic Nightwish song, “I Wish I Had an Angel”. Fans of the director Uwe Bole might recognize this song as the closing number in “Alone in the Dark”. Next up, Faye put on the ever-popular Brit Pop mix that I believe she made for A.J.’s birthday two years ago in an attempt to make him realize the genius of the English. Somehow, we got on the subject of the classic Disney film “The Electric Grandmother” and the rest of the night turned into a google party. Things got fuzzy. The next thing I knew, I was attempting to take a nap on Faye’s couch, when she clearly just wanted everyone to leave. Ryan and Sherrard convinced me that I could make it home with their help. Once inside my apartment, I saw that it was 4:30 in the morning and I knew that if I attempted to find my jammies, I would surely wake Dom. So, my drunky brain rationalized two options: 1) Sleep in my bed in my clothes or 2) Sleep on the couch in my clothes. For some reason, I decided the latter was preferable.

SUNDAY

Despite Dom kindly relocating me to the bed at 9am, I was still very much in a bad way when I was woken up at 11 with a phone call from Ryan. We had decided the night before that we would have breakfast at the Canterbury and I figured, at that point, that coffee and greasy food could only help a bad situation. Breakfast was great and hit the spot. After breakfast, I was badly in need of a nap, but there was no time. Dom and I had domestic things to do like buy bookshelves and go grocery shopping. We went to Target, but half way there, I realized that the sooner I got home and back into bed, the more likely I would be to actually DO SOMETHING that evening. So we bought a few essential groceries at Target and sped home. I definitely felt better when I woke from my nap. But after dinner, I was ready for another nap. There wasn’t time, however. Karaoke was calling. Dom and I met Ben outside of the Bus Stop, where we sadly realized that it was no longer our little secret. There were NO tables left, which isn’t surprising considering there are only, like, 5 tables in the whole joint. Luckily, we ran into our friend Rob in the street and he tipped us off about a place called Vito’s on Madison where he was headed after he “put [his] face on”. Sweet. We called the necessary parties and made our way over there. It’s a great little bar with a delightfully Mafioso atmosphere. We were met by Elyse, Gene, Andrew, Brugos and his friend who’s name escaped me because I’m an asshole who can’t remember names.
Ben, Dom and I were the last ones standing, and we headed back to the Zookster pad. Ben was staying over to ease the Bumbershoot situation the next day. For some reason, we decided to watch Reefer Madness the Musical in fast forward (i.e. only our favorite numbers) before going to bed. This resulted in me having “Listen to Jesus, Jimmy” in my head for all of Monday.

I will get into Monday tomorrow. I’m having a lot of trouble getting through this update on account of work being busy and because of having to welcome a new Baxter ailment to the fold: unexplained stomach pains! That’s right. Last night, I was getting some sharp pains in my lower abdomen. I assumed it was cramps, but as they worsened, and nothing seemed to dull the pain, I suspected they might be more. I could do very little about it but curl up into a tiny ball on my living room floor. So much for my friend’s birthday party. Sorry, Ryan. Anyway, this morning, they aren’t much better. I think I’m just used to the pain at this point. But it still hurts to walk or breath. So I’m going to the doctor at two. I can say this about my body: it’s never boring. But it does everything it can with each passing year to tell me that I should never ever pass these genes on to another human being.

September 7, 2005
Categories: Dear Diary, I'm Working . Tags: weekend recap . Author: Baxter . Comments: Leave a comment