Beer before liquor....

Thursday night was a little bit "eventful", let's just say.

My friend Lucas and I went to the Talib Kweli concert and stayed out way too late. The next day I paid for it for sure. Let's just say that I did my time "Praying to the Porcelain" god. Thank god for the ability to WFH (Working From Home), I only had to be on 1 conference call with a client, the rest of the day I was able to work through email and IM. However on Monday I'll have a lot of research and information gathering that I will need to get done, so I'll make up my time then.

Thursday started off with me leaving work an hour early. I had plans to take a quick nap so I could be rested up for the night, but that ended up switching over to putting in a few hours in Warcraft playing in the Battlegrounds. I was a few thousand points off of the next piece of my High Warlord set, so I wanted more to wrap that up so I could pick it up on Friday.

Lucas and I decided to meet around 8pm at the Marathon bar in Portland and then head down to the Crystal Ballroom venue. Well, I live over in North East Portland, so getting downtown is pretty trivial for me. When I have plans to go downtown, I tend to hang around the Henry's Tavern area. Since there is a Smart Park complex about 1 block from there, that's where I usually park. I made it there at 8pm. Around 8:10 I got a text from Lucas saying he was on his way and was trying to find parking. Later I found out that the goof actually lives downtown, he could have taken a bus or street car up to where I was. Instead he spent like 20 minutes circling around the bar trying to find parking. Anyways, that gave me a few minutes to have a beer and watch some SportsCenter. Lucas finally showed up, orders a beer and is nice enough to order me one. (Beer #2, are you keeping count? I think I'll be losing count really soon...) We chill for about half an hour, go through another beer (Beer #3) and then decide to head over to the concert.

My friend Carl said that the tickets would be at Will Call for me, so I just walked to the front and checked to see if they were there. Everyone was buying tickets at the door, so I'm sure this pissed some people off (actually, some guy did say that everyone was in line, I told him we were just picking up our tickets and would be done fast... Yeah, I can be a jerk like that sometimes). But whatever, not like I knew any of them in line and could give a rip at that point. The buzz was starting to hit. Well, Carl didn't check on if the tickets would be there or not, and in fact they didn't have the tickets waiting for me. So I asked the lady to check the guest list, we weren't on there. She checked her system to see if the tickets just weren't printed, nope. No tickets, no guest list, not in the computer... WTF. So she asked who put the tickets on Will Call for me, so I dropped Carl's name. Luckily the ticket lady works with him on events, and his last name is really recognizable, so she hooked us up. :) Unfortunately no VIP at the concert, but we were in the concert anyways. That was the important part. Saved a little face with Lucas, I'll just have to give Carl a hard time when I see him next.

First thing we did when getting into the concert was hit the beer. (Beer 4 for me), Lucas however switched up to shots. Lucas actually got a few texts while at the concert, and he found out that a few of his friends were at it too. His friend Josh came and found us, Lucas and Josh went to college together and were roommates at one point. Josh was really cool, we talked about a lot of stuff, enjoyed the music and got hit on by randoms. I love random women. Unfortunately when they're random, they're not the type I look for. So I just humored the poor girl, she was with a friend who was pretty over weight and her friend wasn't top notch. But I don't mind, I like randoms, easy to play with, easy to leave behind. During this period I easily put away another 3 or 4 beers during the concert. (let's say about 9 now).

On one of our many trips to the bathroom, there was another girl whom was dancing by us with one of her friends. Or at least I thought she was just there with another girl and no one else... So one of the times past her, I whispered in her ear "you're pretty hot", and kept moving. I could see that she heard me whisper that, and she gave me a good look. I thought those wheels were in motion, but they weren't. When we made it back down and to the bar, I saw that she was actually there with a few guys, one who appeared to be her boyfriend. Yup. That chance was gone. Oh well, plenty of fish in the sea.

Lucas at the end wanted to hit up Bettie Ford's bar, he has a friend who is a bartender there and has VIP tickets to burn. Unlike me, he had the passes in hand, so we bailed over there and left a bit early during the last song of the encore so we could beat the rush out the door. We got to the bar around 12:30.. already a bit late, and we ended up staying until like 2am or so. There I just basically followed Lucas. That man is a pimp on wheels. He knew basically every woman at the bar, ended up spending some good time with a girl who was down from Seattle there with some friends that he knew. He and she introduced me to a lot of different girls, none really stuck around, plus I didn't make much conversation with them. Oh well, I was not in a mindset of making good conversation. When he was introducing me, Lucas would say that I was a co-worker of his. Predictably they would ask me what I did, so I told them that Lucas was my boss and we went from there. He at one point introduced me as the VP for the company, to which I laughed. Always fun.

Towards the end of the night, Lucas was out dancing on the floor with some girls, so I hung out with them. Some women came and left until I was basically dancing by myself. Well, some girl saw that and decided to put and end to that business. She came up and took my hand and started grinding on me. By this time I was way past trashed. Easily had put down a half rack of drinks (maybe more, as the cups are 16-20oz), and the only thing I had for dinner was a slice of chocolate cake (yup.. I'm a bachelor, what can you expect?).

Right before she danced with me, Lucas had given me a shot. That did me in... not only did I not do the shot right (ate the lime before the salt, then the salt then the drink... yeah, pretty much fucked me up.), but I was definitely at my limit. I would have been fine had I not taken it.

Needless to say, I didn't try getting her number, she wasn't quite the type I was looking for. Although her body felt good against mine, but I'm sure it would have been a mistake to hit that up at the end of the night. Oh well, lots of opportunities are going to come, especially if Lucas and I hang out more, which I'm sure.

I ended up driving home around 2:30am... Much in a state of being that I shouldn't have been driving. No excuses.. I shouldn't have, but I did. I made it home fine, to get to my house from downtown is really easy, all straight shots on the streets, and I've driven in for about 15 years or so now... it's not like I'd get lost. Pulling out of the parking lot was tricky, as was parking. But it was all good.

Friday morning I woke up and attempted to get ready to go to work. I was still drunk, there was no way I was going to make it in. I made a valiant effort though. On my way to work, I checked my Treo for email/messages. I saw that a co-worker of mine had put in that he was WFH, so that sealed the deal. I made a quick turn around, went back home and put in a WFH message as well. Might as well take advantage of it if you can. Plus that, and the fact that my boss was out on vacation made it easy to do. Monday though, I'll have to put in work and make up for it.

I knew I was going to puke, I just didn't know when. I couldn't even down water to help dilute the alcohol in my system. I tried to take some Excedrin's to battle the headache.. tried to down Gatorade... nothing was going down fast enough. I ended up praying around 1pm... I have to remember to never mix.. it's either shots and mixed drinks, or beer. Never a mix. As the saying goes.. Beer before Liquor, never sicker. Once again, I proved that saying right.