a trip home, the zoo and a pubcrawl

As the summer was coming to an end, I was looking forward to my schedule slowing down a little bit...it seemed like as soon as June hit, we had something going on every weekend through the end of August, and those somethings were always at least a 2 hr drive from home. It was definitely a fun summer, but I was looking forward to more quiet weekends, ones that didnt involve living out of a suitcase & paying for expensive gas. :)

Well...that hasn't happened so much...it's gotten better, there are more weekends that are quiet & not jam-packed with stuff to do, but there are still plenty of booked weekends in there. Such as, 2 weeks ago when I went home to visit the family. Jeremy came with me, and we had a blast taking the kids to the Pumpkin Patch, and hanging out with family. On Sunday the 2 of us had an afternoon date --we went to the StL zoo-- to sortof celebrate being together 6 months (hey-it's a big deal in this battlefield of love that is the dating world!). :) Talk about a great weekend!

Here are a few pictures of the kids at the pumpkin patch:














































On a side note...This last weekend we had the fall pubcrawl in Westport...talk about a ton of fun! My friend Buscher flew in, and my friend Brad & his roomie Kirk drove in to be on the team. It was so much fun...altho it's been a looong time since i've had a weekend with so little sleep! Blogger's being slow so i will post the pictures next time, but rest assured, there are some gems in there! :) haha...

TGIF!!

Today i woke up at 9am. Well, actually 9:05...yikes. Since i'm supposed to be at work by no later than 9:30, i really had to get up & get my behind in gear....made it there by 9:50, after an embarrassing phone call to my boss to apologize for the fact that I was running late. Seriously, she must have been thinking, "How hard could it really be to get here by 9:30?? I mean, the girl lives a 5min walk away. sheesh."

For some reason i have this habit of staying up until i just cant keep my eyes open any more...i dont know why...i remember once thinking (at around 3am) I have sooo much to do, maybe i will just stay up all night & get it done. WHAT??? yeah, that was a crazy thought. but still, this staying up late only makes it harder to get up at a decent hour...and i'm not sure what i'm exactly avoiding by not going to bed at a decent hour. my bed is so comfy, you'd think i'd be jumping at the chance to go back to it the first minute i could. oh well...old habits die hard. i will just make an effort to be in bed & sans tv by 11:30pm. We'll see how that goes.

Tonite we had a happy hour after work...lately the happy hours have been because people are resigning, but this time it was 'just because'. that's the best reason! We all met up around 5:30pm at Fred P Ott's, which was a place none of us had been to before. It was fun, but they closed early, so we relocated to Jillys. Jilly's is somewhat of a hole-in-the-wall bar, and had expensive drinks and apparently were also trying to make money by saving on the expense of heating the place. BRRR!!! i kept my coat & scarf on the whole time we were in there! (all of like 25 minutes). Then, we were on to the Dark Horse Saloon, which was packed with trashy young people. The young part i dont mean in a derogatory way, but the trashy part most definitely. Most of the girls in this bar were wearing tank tops. Dears, its 10 degrees out there. That means Freaking Cold. As in NOT tank top weather. If you're wearing that to catch a guy, you dont want the kind of guy that likes you for having not an ounce of common sense to wear clothes on a cold day. ugh...kids these days... :) lol...do i sound like someones mother? wow...that's scary! :)

Yeah, so we were there like 5 min before we moved on to Harpo's....stayed there long enough to get set up with the cousin from Wichita of a new coworker (she's only worked at my company for a couple of months). Yikes...this is why i despise dating...The dude only talked about himself the whole time i was around him, and during that time had the crudest language i've heard in a long time. i was willing to overlook it until he made a VERY derogatory comment about another girl in the bar to another guy, as if i couldnt hear what he was saying. After that, i had no interest...a guy who doesnt respect me enough to at least act like he respects women in general when he's around me is O-U-T. sheesh. Oh well...at that point i had had a drink or two so I just took it in stride & just talked to someone else for awhile.

After Harpos we moved on to Kelly's Irish Pub...good times! I like that bar & have had a good time every time i'm there. Ran into some other co-workers there, we all chilled over a few beers, and then I shared a cab home with some of my coworker friends. Overall our mini-pub crawl turned out to be a really good night...a much-needed opportunity to blow off steam.

well, i'm off to bed....night all!
xoxo

A few pictures from the pub crawl...

Kenny, Sarah, me & Jason at the pub crawl on saturday. Good times!!!

p.s...this was after we finished the crawl & were just partying at the beaumont...i think we look pretty good for having gone through 5 bars already!!

Sunday, October 23, 2005

Yay pub crawl!! I have to say, we are a bunch of rockstars, truly!

I started the day by picking up Jason & heading to FirstWatch for brunch...just as one would carb-load for a marathon, the same goes for the pub crawl...gotta fuel up for the challenge ahead! Afterwards we started the pub crawl at Blayney's where everyone on the team met up. It was also our first bar, so the 10 of us quickly downed our 4 pitchers of beer and cheerfully went on to Cactus Cafe, our 2nd bar. I haven't been there in awhile, & they had done some remodeling. Kindof a cool place, had good music. While we were there i spotted Sean...yikes!! What rule was that that said no ex-boyfriends allowed?? Yeah, so i avoided that situation altogether, drank my beer & out the door we went! On to bar 3...oh wait, not so fast! We had to stop at Buzzard Beach Bar next door, a bunch of our friends were there so of course we had to say hi! and...um...help them drink some of their beer... :) So now we're on to bar 3...America's Pub...which is the worst bar ever! Totally gangsta on a normal nite, but fortunately at the time we were there it was just us pub-crawlers. We danced it up while racing through our 4 pitchers there and then it was on to the Dark Horse Tavern, bar #4. So far so good, everyone's having a good time, and the drunk dials & drunk text messages are starting to pour in! Once at the Dark Horse we decided shots were in order, and had a couple of rounds of those in addition to our 'usual' 4 pitchers. It was at this point that i started to realize, maybe i havent exactly been pulling my weight...i've been consistently with beer in hand, but i dont think i've had more than maybe a cup or 2 at each bar....not exactly contributing to the beer consumption our team is responsible for. Of course, this is a fleeting thought...because now it's on to the next bar! Bar #5, the Beaumont...thank goodness! All this traveling about was starting to wear me out! Actually, not really...the night was just beginning!!

We ran into just about everyone i know in kc there, since it was where the afterparty was. I ran into some of Beau's friends & chatted with them for awhile...had a heart-to-heart with my good friend Leslina...then ran into Dawn & Jill & talked to them for awhile...i think i had some more beer in there somewhere...ran into Kenny & Sarah & ended up hanging out with them for the rest of the night. At some point we decided that Harpos was the place to be, so we left the Beaumont for there. Had a couple of beers, did a bunch of dancing & goofing off with everyone (I cringe to think how silly we were acting...drunken fools! lol), and when it started to get crowded we decided that we needed to go to Kelly's. Once there we had MORE beer, and ran into a couple of other people we worked with (i'm starting to sense a trend here...). Kenny & Sarah decided they were calling it a nite (wusses! ok wait...it is like 12am now...) so i continued on with my coworkers until about 1am. Crraaziness!! I was afraid i wasnt going to last 5 hours, and here I am 12 hours later still going strong! Definitely time to call it a night, otherwise i risk looking like an alcoholic. ;) (ok, maybe it's a little late for that, lets be honest) So, i hailed a cab & home i went. Once you decide the end is near, best not to wait around for someone to carry you home.

A few notes about the evening....managed to follow almost all the rules i set yesterday....ALMOST. Yeah, remember that one about ex boyfriends not being allowed?? Yeah, we can thank Sean for blowing that one out of the water! While at the beaumont i find out from dawn that she & sean had this long talk earlier in the evening...can we say yikes?! how am i supposed to avoid this guy with him chasing down my friends?? so anyways, she tells him to chill out & just give me my space & things'll be fine...so what does he do? Immediately call me & then send about 10 text messages trying to find out where i am. Oy. When he finally found me, all i got was "hey, hows it goin? havin a good nite?" wtf? dude, you're trying so hard to find me & this is all you can say? you're killin me here! anywho...my good friend kenny came over & saved me, so our conversation ended about 5 min after it started. *sigh of relief*. I feel bad for the guy, but sometimes you gotta know when to just let something go. :
So...aside from that, it was a really good time!! oh wait, one more note...i think i smoked half the cigarettes in kc yesterday...or at least, that's what it sounds like i did, since my voice was gone when i woke up this morning! It's come back a touch, so now i sound like a 60 year-old lady whose smoked her entire life...some improvement huh? hehe...All in all though, given the shape i could be in (say, suffering a 5-star hangover right about now) this is stellar...much better than i wouldve expected given the circumstances. yay pub crawls!! Can't wait for May, when the next one is.

October 21, 2005

So today started out just like any day...alarm goes off at 6am...and 6:15...then radio goes off at 6:20...alarm goes off again at 6:30...and every 15 min until 8:20 when i finally got up. :) MAN i hate mornings! I'm hoping that someday I'll learn to get to bed at a decent hour so i can get up in time to start my day with the rest of the working world at 8:00. Ok, well at 8:30 or 9. :) Gotta love flex time.

When i came into work at 9:20 there already had been some excitement! One of my co-workers found a job in another state and put in his 2 weeks, and today was his last day with the company. Turns out, to mark the excitement of his last day he went out last night & just got hammered & didnt get home until 5:30am. When he came in to work at 9 he was still drunk!! Can you believe it?? I'm appalled...i mean, i dont always love my job, but i'd never disrespect my company & coworkers that much by coming to work in such a mess. Apparently at like 9:30 he decided he needed to get some food in his stomach, left, and didnt come back. Good luck buddy...and dont let the door hit ya on the way out! Now to muddle through with covering all of his work until we can get someone else hired & trained to take his spot. This guy didnt last 90 days, so i hope the next one is a little more ambitious.

On a lighter note...tomorrow is the pub crawl...woohoo!! My friend Jason & I have been training all week for it...granted, that is just a couple of beers here & there a couple of nights this week, but that is more beer than i've drank in the last month alltogether. Very sad...my social life used to be much more exciting. But i digress...so tomorrow is the pub crawl. Really, it sounds like we're just a bunch of boozers looking for an excuse to party like its 1999...but really it's for a good cause!! The money raised from the event (i think there are several thousand people participating) will go to the American Cancer Society. Definitely a worthy cause.
We are meeting up for brunch at 10:45, and then on to take on the challenge of getting through 5 bars of drinking, and still being able to last the rest of the night!! Each year has been a lesson in marathon drinking, and I have learned from my experiences...i've listed them here for your benefit as well! lol

• Pub crawl lesson #1: Make sure to avoid running into ex-boyfriends...this means you cannot have them on your team either. Avoid drama at all costs.
• Pub crawl lesson #2: Do not attempt to train for a real marathon (i.e. going for a 16mile run) the morning of the crawl...this makes you very dehydrated, and the alcohol goes to your head much too fast. You're only allowed one extreme sport per day.
• Pub crawl lesson #3: make sure you eat periodically during the crawl. A sick girl is not a fun girl.
• Pub crawl lesson #4: pacing is key...but so is momentum...if you stop drinking to take a nap, you are down for the count. (mental note here...if you stop early you minimize the hangover factor, hidden bonus...) :)
• Pub crawl lesson #5: If possible, have your team paired up with another team of army/airforce guys...especially helpful if your team is all girls; this definitely helps b/c you have other people to take up the slack from your low tolerance; also helps when you dont feel like walking to bars #4 and 5, they can just carry you! Hoooah! All that PT is paying off guys!! ;)

This will be the 5th pub crawl to date that i've been on (they're twice a year), and things have gone better every time. I'm hoping that this one will be the best yet!! They're all a blast, so no complaints here.