Cocktails

I love wine.  I had a fling with tequila between the summers of 2007 and 2008, but wine has been my only long-term relationship (with alcohol).  The closest thing I've ever come to drinking cocktails were Tequila Sunrises (during that bout with tequila) and the Jack-n-Cokes I get every time I'm at a bar.  They're simple, sweet, and alcoholic.  Who could ask for more!

This year for Annie's birthday (the day the Maya calendar supposedly ended), we fought through a blizzard to take The Art of the Cocktail at The Ritz-Carlton, Lake Tahoe.  Only our group of 4 (us and her parents) and 2 other guests actually made it to the class, so we did it at the bar of the Manzanita instead of in the Living Room Restaurant.  There we had their two top bartenders giving us the secrets behind their most popular drinks.  I got pretty drunk... I think it was the altitude.  We took the recipes home, tweaked them to our tastes, experimented with friends, and now I'll list the recipes for the 4 cocktails that got us through the holidays.

We bought all of the tools necessary to make these cocktails, like a cocktail shaker, jigger, & strainer.

Since I'm using a jigger, all of my proportions are in ounces, but yours could just as easily be in tsp or Tbsp or shots or whatever you want.  That's the convenience of proportions, so I'll just leave them as such.

Annob's Sidecar (this makes 2)
1 Cointreau
2 Simple Syrup (if you want less sweet, make this 1)
2 Lemon Juice
4 Brandy
Shaken and strained into two dry martini glasses, or in our case, a wine glasses.
(If you're feeling fancy, use 1 orange for 1 lemon and drop a spiral of orange peel in the glass.)

Annob's Moscow Mule
2 Vodka
~6 Ginger Beer (usually I split a can/bottle between roughly two drinks)
Stirred with a cinnamon stick, leaving the cinnamon stick in the glass.

Annob's Margarita
1 Cointreau
1 Lime Juice
1 Orange Juice
2 Simple Syrup
3 Tequila
Shaken and strained into a salt- or sugar-rimmed glass.

Annob's Keeneland Breeze
2 Bourbon
2 Cointreau
6-8 Ginger Ale

It's shameful for us to take any credit at all for these classic/standard drinks, but we did play with the recipes we were given.  You could order a Sidecar, Moscow Mule, or Margarita at just about any respectable bar, and who knows, maybe they'll be better!  Keeneland Breeze is a cocktail from the Keeneland horse-racing track in Lexington.

As far as the cocktail recipes are concerned, all fruit juices are fresh-squeezed.  Lime and lemon juice are completely interchangeable.  You can even replace the orange juice in the Margarita with lime.  Cointreau can be replaced with Grand Marnier with little distinction in taste.  I just like to keep Cointreau around for when I make buttercream.  The cheapest Brandy you can find works for the Sidecar, we use Christian Brothers VS (the same brand I use in my Sangria).  You can use the cognac of your choice, as well.  We use Bulleit Bourbon and Absolut Vodka.  I've used 1800 Reposado for my Tequila in the past, but currently we're using Espolon Reposado.  Goslings is the standard Ginger Beer, but I'm really digging Regatta for its extra fresh-ginger spiciness.  It might be too much for some, though.  Finally our simple syrup is just half sugar and half water.  No boiling required.  Just use warm water, shake it up, let it dissolve for a few seconds, shake it up again, and drop it in the fridge to remove the cloudiness.

I'll be honest, I hated vodka until I discovered the Moscow Mule.  Also, we bought a muddler to work on things like lemon drops and mint juleps, but we focused on these 4 drinks instead.

Cheers!
~RoB

TBOX 2012

Two weekends ago, Annie and I took a trip up to Chicago to visit with one of her close friends from college, as well as participate in the annual Twelve Bars of Xmas (TBoX) bar-crawl throughout Wrigleyville.  (When you click on that link, you can find me in that blurry picture right below the tendons in Heat Miser's right wrist while he pours cereal into the audience.  I'm the dark afro with reindeer antlers on.)  The weather sucked driving up there, but we got there Friday afternoon and decided to pre-party for the bar crawl with red wine and tequila and Jack Daniels.  I've made better decisions...

The crawl started around 8am on Saturday the 8th at The CubbyBear, across from the Chicago Cubs' ballpark.  The line in front of that bar was an absolute zoo; a great foreshadow of the day.

TBOX is effectively a drunken holiday parade on Clark St.

One big thing about TBOX is that you're supposed to look ridiculous.  Straight from their website:  "People need to be STARING at you the minute you leave the house."  I feel like I succeeded in that, since I used blinking LED Xmas lights and red/green pompoms to make a ridiculously ugly sweater.  I also had pink-bunny, footie pajamas on, as well as antlers.  A spectacular moment happened before we even got into the first bar.  An old man pulled up to the stop light, rolled down his window, and shouted "what's going on?", to which someone in the crowd yelled back, "a birthday party!"

The first bar & opening ceremonies were boring.  The guy who created TBOX and organizes it now had a really long, indulgent sing-a-long that he composed and it was super awkward.  It seemed as though he didn't have many friends in real life, so he was going to milk today for all that it was worth.  We left in the middle to get our drink on, but not before getting a green bracelet.  The first bar we went to was Bar Celona.  It was empty, so getting drinks and using the bathroom was easy.  I don't drink beer, so a bar-crawl means that I'll be drinking a bunch of liquor.  There were deals on Jagermeister shots all day, so that was what I was going to choke down so that the day didn't cost $500.

TBOX is all about stickers, as well as their theme, which was TBOXopoly this year.  So, at each bar you got a sticker that said 'you landed on...' and there was a royal court walking around passing out stickers that looked like money with their individual faces on the bills.  Annie and I even had bright pink 'Virgin' stickers that had to be signed by one of the royal court after we kissed/got kissed by them.  (Again, the underlying theme of these folks having poor social lives and needing this bar crawl.)

Thank you, Annie's friend, for hosting us!

I got antsy and progressed by myself to Rockwood Place for a shot and a sticker before meeting my group at the Hofbrauhaus, called Uberstein for some reason.  At this point, Annie was already trying to slow me down by making me drink water in between shots of Jager.  We walked across the street to get into Exedus II Lounge, which I started to freak out about because it wasn't on our TBOXopoly boards.  If I was being challenged to hit at least 12 bars on the board, I had no time to waste at other bars.  Apparently Exedus was one of 3 bars participating in TBOX that weren't on the board, so at least we got stickers.  The back corner of this bar was ridiculously dark, so my Xmas lights were shining bright.

At this point, hunger was affecting my drinking, so Annie and I actually took off to go find pizza at Dimo's.  I ate a ton there, getting a dollar off my second round for being fat.  Annie thoroughly enjoyed the Mac-n-Cheese pizza, and our friends eventually met us there.  We had heard how ridiculous the lines were getting at most of the bars, and we could see that the Blarney Stone didn't look too bad from the windows of the pizzeria, so that is where we headed next.  This ended up being the most-crowded room of the day.  Plus, the single bartender was an old Irish asshole that only served people right in front of him.  (I understand that it was a zoo, and that he could get away with that, but you should really walk along the bar and try to get to everyone.  People were starting to throw shit at him when we decided to just leave.)  At least this pub felt the most authentic.

From there, we decided to head south and find the shortest line, which was to Rookies.  As I look back on the day, Rookies was probably my favorite bar.  This is sad, since it's a Michigan State bar.  They did a fantastic job at controlling numbers that went in so that once you were in you were comfortable.  It was easy to get drinks, the live DJ was playing good music, and there was plenty of room for drinking and dancing.  We stayed there for several drinks, but eventually moved on as our group was getting drunker.  In fact, our group split in half at this point, since Annie and her friend ran off ahead while the rest of us waited for someone to make their way out of Rookies.  I eventually ran off to find the girls, but the rest of the party never came.  Oh well...

I found Annie and her friend at Fiesta Cantina, and we all ran upstairs.  Once we got drinks, we hovered around an empty stripper pole, which was used several times by drunken sorority girls (I wasn't complaining) before we decided to progress to the next bar.  I'll be honest, this is the line in the sand.  This is where things get hazy.  I know most of the events that occurred from here forward, but they may be out of order, or just plain made up.  You can see the number of bars that we had already hit at this point.  I tried to text Annie every time I took a shot, but I lost track by Rookies...  You've been warned!

We found ourselves at Nisei Lounge, where we were lucky enough to meet up with one of my friends from college.  That is, unless Nisei Lounge doesn't have two dartboards in the back.  If it doesn't, I'm not sure what bar we were at.  We left here to return to Clark St. and hit up Deuces, Irish Oak, Mullen's, Vines, and eventually Yak-Zies.  (You're very welcome for combining those into one sentence, since this is already getting too long.)  I really liked Vines, and I would like to visit there once when it wasn't a shit show.  They were even smart enough to have bathroom attendants, so it wasn't absolutely disgusting in there.  At one of these bars, we ran into 4 people dressed as toy soldiers.  After the fact, I was told that they looked like they were from Babes in Toyland, but at the moment, all I could do was sing songs from The Nutcracker loudly at them while making robotic toy soldier motions.  I was not the only one singing in our party, for the record.

Doing shots of cereal is another big thing at TBOX.

At Yak-Zies, my friend from college reunited with his group of bar crawlers.  This bar felt exactly like Elephant & Castle, which was one of my favorite pubs from bar-crawling San Francisco during St. Patty's Day.  It was very comfortable, very spacious, very easy to get drinks, and they had food, which was becoming a necessity again.  At one point, a taco truck pulled up outside, and Annie begged me to bring her food from it, but the nice gentleman at the door said he couldn't allow me to do that since they serve food.

I only needed one more sticker to finish my 12 bars (and Annie only needed 2), so we left our friends at Yak-Zies and ran to Trace.  [If you're doing the math, we had actually already been to 13 bars, but the first bar didn't count and neither did Exedus.]  For our sakes, I don't think we drank at Trace, but we quickly found our way to Raw Bar.  They didn't have any stickers left, but they did have amazing oyster shots with vodka, which we gladly partook in.  This was another bar that I would like to visit while sober.  We finally found ourselves at the northern-most bar of the day, Full Shilling.  This is where shit hit the fan for my female companions.  This is the bar that they remember least, and it's also the bar where they barely took a sip of the beers I bought them.  All they wanted was water.  Lots of water.  I felt like I still had my wits about me, but events that followed might prove otherwise.

We finished, but Annie would not finish those beers!

We were handed red bracelets to match the green bracelets we were handed to at the first bar.  (Remember those bracelets from the first bar?)  These bracelets signified that you had completed a TBOX bar crawl!  Happy with our success, we decided to swing back to Yak-Zies to pick up our fellow partiers.  We only actually got one person to go back out with us, and our first stop was Big G's Pizza.  For some reason, they had stickers, which we gladly accepted, but I was more interested in 3 more slices of pizza.  Also, we ran into the toy soldiers again.  I sang again.  I also finished their half-drank bottle of water after they left.  Could I be more obnoxious?  Annie and our friends decided to sit there for a minute to watch the Heisman ceremony, but I couldn't sit still.  From what I recollect, I stood up and said, "I have to go" and ran off to continue bar crawling on my own.

Annie's completed board, which wouldn't make it home with us

I got to check out Rockit Burger Bar, CubbyBear (again, but this one counted), and Sluggers before meeting them back at Casey Moran's.  I, technically, should have never seen Sluggers, but I walked in the door that they were reserving for the exit.  I had no clue, since nobody stopped me.  It wasn't until I gave up on the crowd and walked back outside that I saw the huge line to get into that bar.  Bernie's had also shut their doors and weren't letting anybody else in.  I remember being very angry at Bernie's.  I also have the slightest memory of reaching into my bunny pocket to find change for a homeless person and pulling out golden, chocolate coins instead of money.  (Most of us found these in our pockets the next morning.  Where the fuck did we get these?  Full Shilling?  Drunker than I thought...)  I gave the chocolate coins to the homeless man anyway.  I pray it was somebody just dressed homeless, since that's a dick move.  Casey Moran's would become home base for the rest of the night, and where we hailed a cab from to take us home, but I wasn't finished.

When I met up with everybody once again at Casey Moran's, I realized that my college friend, who had missed part of the crawl for a birthday party, hadn't finished collecting all the stickers for his TBOXopoly board.  Well, I was a self-proclaimed expert at this point, and I dragged him down the road in the search for stickers.  We went into one really fancy bar that, for the life of me, I cannot figure out which one it was.  We also hit up Dark Horse and Black Sheep, but I was just hunting for stickers.  I think we collected his last sticker at Nisei Lounge (a reappearance for me), and we celebrated with a round.  On the way back to find Annie, I swung in to Merkle's for a round in memory of Granny (who had her funeral at Merkle's Funeral Home in Monroe, MI, in June.)

We time-traveled back to Casey Moran's where I couldn't find Annie.  I remember having an overwhelming fear that Annie and her friend had gone home without me.  I had memorized addresses and cross streets, so I wasn't worried that I'd never see them again, but I do remember being worried.  It turns out they were on the other side of the wall dancing.  I got dragged over to their side of the bar, and I would never see anybody on the other side of the wall again.  I don't remember anybody leaving, but the next thing I knew that side of the bar was closed and they were gone.  Oh well, dancing and water was the name of our game. I also had one other college friend that was headed there at 10pm to meet us.  (What time did we start?)

By the time the new guy joined the party, it was an utter shit show, all parties included.  I ran off to try and collect my first friend who was wandering the streets looking for his lost jacket.  I got to see some spectacular text messages that were passed:  "Abe wow Itzel is: hooatsky earth brute."  Finally, just before 11pm, Annie and I hit a wall.

And it was a big, fast wall that we hit...

We walked outside and hailed a cab back to our friends place, having just left her at the bar.  We managed to get into her apartment.  I had to strip down out of the bunny suit at the door and head straight to the shower, because I was disgusting.  Annie immediately passed out on the airbed.  I, I'm told, came out of the shower screaming at her to drink water, fearing she was dead.  Then I passed out, too.

We woke up at a reasonable hour the next morning, but I think I was still drunk.  Our host had apparently brought someone home with her.  [Awkward palm tree.]  The three of us (sans extra guy) ate at a cool place nearby.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to meet up with one of my closest friends in Chicago since he and his wife had consumed too much alcohol the night before, also.  Once Annie and I sufficiently had our shit together, we got into our cars and headed back to Kentucky.  The weather driving home sucked.

Your weather sucks, Indiana,
~RoB

P.S. I'm pretty sure that my college friend who got really drunk and lost his jacket had this Red TBOX present on at one time, having found it beside the road, and eventually ditching it since it smelled:

Now it sits in front of Wrigley field.

P.S.S. I'm still unclear how I ended up with a purse strap (no purse) around my right wrist (go back to that last reindeer photo).  It looks like no purse anybody in our party was carrying...

To Jail or the Hospital?

I've made a friend in Lexington that I have a strange connection with.  I wouldn't consider us very close, and we haven't really spent that much time together, but we have similar personalities.  He's an asshole in the same way that I am.  We're both smart, dirty-minded, and quick to add our opinions about things.  Usually in the form of a pun or sarcasm.  The biggest difference is that he's cheap.  I don't really have any money, but I'm still not cheap.  Well, he's moving to California this week.  So, we wanted to give him a night out on the town before he left us.

I've actually been having stomach issues over the past couple of weeks, which actually forced me to go to a clinic at one point.  Because of this, I haven't been drinking lately.  Thankfully.

This was roughly the same group of people that drank heavily for St. Patrick's Day, and we all know how that turned out.  The cheap friend who got everyone kicked out of my favorite bar in Lexington, The Penguin, is the same guy that I described at the beginning having the same personality as myself.  I don't know if he felt he had to live up to his last performance, or if he just doesn't have a limit switch.  The mantra we decided on before going out was: "nobody goes to jail, nobody shows their tits".

Shots were had at the first bar.  Shots were had at the second bar, a tequila bar.  Drinks were flowing as soon as it hit midnight, since their house margaritas got quite cheap.  At one point, sparkly eye shadow was brought out and applied to my eyelids, with the ring finger of the girl who owned the makeup, since that's, apparently, the appropriate way to apply eye shadow with your fingers.  I was notified by this same girl that the superpower that matches my personality would be invisibility, since I wouldn't have to wear pants.  So true.

We progressed onto The Penguin, which was tempting fate in the first place.  The first thing that was ordered was another shot.  This time, it was a shot called The Cody.  It's whatever the bartender feels like pouring into the glass.  Apparently, our bartender just got divorced, 'cuz he was on a mission to fuck somebody's life up.  From what the largest person in our group could see, the bartender poured in Jagermeister, Bicardi 151, Gin, Everclear, and a few other un-identified liquids, a recipe that bear-man drunkenly repeated for the rest of the night.

Like I said, I haven't been drinking lately, and I wasn't really keeping up with the crowd tonight, but I decided to suck it up and try this concoction.  As I was shooting it, my body stopped me about 1/3 of the way.  I couldn't finish it.  It was the worst thing I've ever put in my mouth.  I've never bitched out on a shot.  I assure you, you would have also.  Within minutes, the 3 people that were able to put their shots down were nice and drunk.  Then the night got interesting.

Drinks were still flowing.  Dueling pianos were... dueling.  The bar is great fun, which is why I like it so much.  It was great to enjoy it as a fairly sober customer, this time.  Fishbowls were purchased, over-enthusiastically.  Dancing was had.  Cider was flowing.  Before long, everybody in my party was just about blackout drunk, aside from one other girl, who lost her house keys at the tequila bar and got at least one drink/shot behind in trying to find them.  So, I just got to enjoy the cheap guy getting handsy with another girl in our party.  Drunken ramblings.  Big smiles.

We've all been there.  We know things can't go this hard for this long and not start to make a turn for the worst.  The cheap guy started getting a little too handsy.  Although the girl that was dancing with him didn't mind, she wasn't really coherent enough to really make that call herself, so we started playing all kinds of games to calm down that situation.  The lights came on.  It was roughly 2:30am.  The bar had emptied out at some point, and we were going through the motions of collecting our party and our possessions and heading to the door.

The cheap guy, at this point the drunkest person in our party, was starting to get obnoxious.  He was calling everybody in the party the same name.  He made a turn for the bar, which we all started to be wary of, since we figured he would mouth off to the bartender and get booted out of here.  Instead, he got served.  I'm told that he actually told the bartender that he was Bruce Wayne, asked one of our friends to confirm that, and still got served.  Love this bar.

I was on my way out as he started yelling at the bartender and at our group of friends.  Something about getting laid tonight, just with less class.  I just peaced out, and left other people to deal with him.  At dinner, I notified everyone that I held no responsibility to anybody except Annie, even though I was going to be mostly sober for the night.  I look through the window, and I see the majority of my group dragging the drunk cheap guy out, slightly against his will.  They got him outside, he's still running his mouth, albeit mostly incoherently, and he's making it more and more difficult to keep him moving out of the range of the bouncers.  One friend managed to get a trash bag form The Penguin staff before departing.  We managed to drag him down the block a few store-fronts before things really got interesting.

He managed to get a hold of a parking meter and start hanging on for dear life.  He wouldn't budge, regardless how much he was begged or physically nudged.  Then it became apparent that he was having trouble with motor skills, and the shortest girl in our party, who was primarily holding him up, started asking for help.  The whole party got together and convinced him to sit down on some steps.  Our largest friend, bear-man, a 6-foot-something bear of a man, was sitting next to him.  We all huddled up and set plans for cabs and money and getting everyone home safely.  We turn around, and scrawny, drunk, cheap guy is strangling the also-drunken Crossfit monster.

I managed to drag drunk cheap guy off and rest him up against another parking meter.  The party split at this point, since bear-man decided that if he hung around any longer he was going to have to show the skinny drunk guy how bad the decision to try and choke him was.  Short girl begged me not to leave her holding up drunk guy by herself, but the rest of the party went to make sure bear was ok and going to get home ok.  Drunk guy started losing his grip on the parking meter, and short girl couldn't take any more weight, so I told her to drop him.  Maybe busting his knees or his head would wake him up a little.  She didn't like the idea, but since I wasn't going to help, she didn't really have a choice.  Down he went, face down, sprawled out on the sidewalk.  And that's where he laid, un-phased and still mumbling.

That's when the cops pulled up to The Penguin.  They talked to the bouncer, and one cop turns toward us.  We have no time.  Drunk guy is going to jail, and he will not cooperate with us.  So, I screamed at him to stop running his mouth.  I dragged him into a little, dark doorway leading into a closed store.  I roughly flipped him over, picked him up, threw an arm over my shoulder, got the short girl under the other one, and we started scurrying away.  As soon as we stepped out from the doorway, the cop was about 3 feet to our right.  We just started walking away from him.  Granted, it looked more like 2 people holding up a stiff in the style of Weekend at Bernie's.

"You guys going far?" said the cop, now right behind us.  "Nope, just around the corner," the short girl quickly replies.  On cue, and almost over-top of the correct response, drunk guy turns his head to clearly pronounce, "To Jail!"  I almost punched him out.  I sure as hell wasn't going to jail.  Our Weekend at Bernie's charade continued up another block, around the corner, up another block, and off of Main St.  The cop was apparently satisfied enough with our handling of the situation.

At some point, short girl's husband, over-excited drunk, came back and tried to hail us a cab.  It stopped, looked back at drunken, half-dead Bernie between us, and sped off.  We got skinny, drunk guy about one more block before he started actin' a fool.  He decided that he needed to fight me this time.  It was almost comical.  I just held onto him tight until his fit ended.  At one point he whined, "Why am I so weak right now?"  I'm not sure sober he would have had much more leverage.  I should probably continue on calling him scrawny, drunk guy.  He finally gave up, and we realized that we had only made it about 3 blocks in roughly an hour.  No cabs were going to take us home, so the only option was for me to get my car and drive us home.  My car was probably 6 blocks away.  Maybe more.  Dragging him there would probably take us all night, since he continued to get worse.

The last crosswalk we were in, he gave up and we just dragged him to the next parking garage.  I made sure everyone was ok with the idea, and ready to handle him, then I took off sprinting toward my car, by myself.  I was parked just past the courthouse, with the large fountain and bright lights illuminating its steps.  I ran to my car, pulled out of the garage, followed the labyrinth of one-way streets, and finally pulled up in front of the parking garage I left them.  I got out of my car and stepped into pure pandemonium.

I saw over-excited drunk running around in the parking garage waving one hand over his head clutching the large garbage bag and holding the other hand over his crotch.  "I'm gonna piss myself."  So I left him to find short girl, holding Humpty Dumpty on the ledge as he's vomiting up shredded chicken and alcohol.  Her mascara was tear-streaked and smeared to the sides of her face as if she were wearing a Bat Girl mask.  (Later, she admitted to getting overwhelmed when she realized that if he tried to attack her, she had no choice but to hurt him severely, since she wasn't capable of holding him off like the last two guys did.)  She notified me that a few cops have passed by, and each time they just held his head up and pretended like he was fine.  We let him puke and drool and slip in and out of consciousness until he seemed to have the bulk of what was coming out of his system.  We were at the base of the stairs to this parking garage.  Randomly, other drunken people would come by and either ask us if we were ok or make some comment about how they've been there.

Over-excited drunk shows back up with a bag of pee, only to comment on how he should have saved the bag for pukey-face.  A few times, drunk guy would yell "RUN!!" to a passerby.  One tough guy decided to turn around and get all, "from what? You?"  We had to politely ask him to please forgive him and give us a break.  I can't remember quite what happened, but I do remember the drunk guy exclaiming, "I can't control gravity" as he tipped forward off of his wall and landed in his pile of puke.

We decided this was the best chance to drag him to my car.  We did, getting puke all over each other, and we threw him in sideways.  He refused to pick up his legs, and told us just to break them.  I was happy to, since I was fed up, and I started shoving and maybe even kicking.  Drunk guy yells, "I don't trust him, he's going to kill me!"  Wife climbs in on the other side and asks drunk guy if he trusts her.  He did, so she yelled, "Get in the Fucking car!!"  It felt like 8 hours, but we were finally in the car, and we were heading home.  Over-excited drunk was nervous that he had never seen someone this drunk before, but I told them I would tell them what to watch out for since he was crashing at their house.  (At Michigan, the rule-of-thumb is that you don't take someone to the hospital until they shit themselves.  Probably not the best metric, but it hasn't backfired on us yet.)

I pull up to their apartment, get out of the car, walk toward his door, and the wife starts screaming, "he's not breathing."  At that point, Annie calls my cell phone.  She's made it home with drunk girl that got felt up, via a taxi that was taking drunken bear home, but realized that I have the only house key, since I have the car.  As this conversation is happening, I have pulled open unconscious drunk guy's mouth, pulled his tongue forward from blocking his breathing, stuck my finger into his throat to do a throat sweep (darn right I'm American Red Cross First Aid / CPR / AED certified!).  I punched him in the chest a few times, it's hard to do chest compressions when I'm on the phone.  "Get back in the car, we're going to the hospital.  Annie, we have to go to the hospital, I think drunk guy stopped breathing."  "Well, can you swing by and give me a key, Angel is going crazy?"  (Really, Annie?  I'm about to drive someone to the emergency room, and your drunk ass wants me to swing by with a key so you can take a nap?)

So we're heading to the hospital.  Over-excited guy is drilling me on what's going to happen to him, and if he will get in trouble.  I explained that they could charge him with public intoxication, but that it rarely happens.  However, if he decided to start swinging at a doctor, or if his flailing injured a nurse, then his ass was grass.  Somehow, drunky heard us and started begging for this not to go on his record.  Wife, who was slapping him in between frantically yelling his name and checking for breathing, mentioned that he actually looked like he was coming to.  In order to avoid incidents and potential criminal charges, the husband and wife team vowed to stay up with him all night and make sure he was ok.  Drunk guy was calling us all by the same name still, but he changed it to the name of over-excited guy, so maybe he was coming around.  I busted a U-turn.  They decided they could call the ambulance if necessary.  Phone call, "...bring me keys..."

We pulled back up to their house, we carried him inside the house, and he even asked us to let him go up the first flight of stairs himself.  He managed, but only because the couch is right in front of the steps at the top.  Straight forward, down on the couch.  Phone call, "... bring me keys..."

Drunk guy decides he needs the bathroom and gets up himself.  I explain to the couple about what positions to keep him in, most importantly not to let him pass out on his back.  How to check for breathing, etc.  Phone call, "...bring us keys..."  I'm on the stairs, about to leave, wishing them luck when Boom! the drunk guy falls in the kitchen, straight onto his head, no hands out to break his fall.  Fuck him, I did my part, so I left.

I drove home.  Not a single phone call.  I figured they gave up and broke a window.  I pulled into my dark driveway, and they weren't sitting at the front or back porch.  I walked up to the back porch, opened the screen door, and started to unlock the dead bolt.  From behind me, I hear moaning, see beings start to lift themselves up from the ground, and zombie toward me, arms outstretched.  Turns out it was Annie and the girl that got felt up, who had passed out in our back yard.  Felt-up girl passed out on top of the picnic table.  Annie on the ground.  (She later found a bunch of bug bites on her legs.)

I was still revved, so I offered to drive felt-up girl home, who was starting to look on the sober side herself.  It had, at this point, been about 3 hours since I had last seen her.  Annie stumbled inside, set down her bottle of water, and stumbled off toward the bedroom.  I drove felt-up girl home, windows rolled down to suppress the puke smell permeating the car, and I returned home.  I grabbed the pet stain and odor remover from under the stink, and I cleaned the interior of the car.  I went back inside and stripped down my absolutely disgusting clothes, dropped a line on Facebook, and jumped in the shower to get all of the puke out of my hair, off my skin, and out of my sense of smell.  Finally, at roughly 5:30am, I fed my dog breakfast, and I passed out beside a deep-sleeping Annie.

The next day, between hashing things out with Annie and meeting everybody except scrawny, drunk guy and felt-up girl for Sunday dinner, a full picture of the night developed.  The group not stuck with scrawny, drunk guy ended up at a pizza parlor.  It's likely they were actually eating a pizza on the steps of the courthouse as I went sprinting by to pick up my car from the garage I had parked in at the beginning of the night.  (There have been many jokes about me pulling a scene from Scrubs and stopping to enjoy pizza with them while leaving the married couple to deal with drunk guy themselves.)  The water bottle Annie had at the end of the night was from the pizza place.  That group got to see two guys get into it at the pizza place after one accused the other of cutting.  They also had a random incident with a lost, drunken person, but without a doubt, had a calm, pleasant night compared to us.

The couple that had to stay up all night with drunky didn't appear to have any more major incidents.  We had apparently gone through the worst of it together.  There was one moment where his face got stuck to the inside of the trash bag that he was drooling into, and they had to help him not smother himself.  There was also a pretty spectacular moment where he had his pants around his ankles and his head buried in the toilet when he exclaimed that he was going to get laid tonight.  His odds weren't really in his favor.

One person said something that really nailed the whole night down for me.  We were inches away from losing drunk guy to the police.  Hell, if things got really crazy and I ended up going to jail, I would have had sparkly eye shadow on for my mug shots.  Plus, Annie made it clear that, though I said I only claimed responsibility to her, she was the person that I took the least care of.

What age does your group of friends have to be before nights out on the town don't create blog posts this long?
~RoB

P.S. Nobody went to jail, nobody showed their tits.  Not for lack of trying.

WDW Day 2: Drinking Epcot

Though we finally got to sleep at 2am after our first day at Disney World, Annie sprung out of bed ready to get to Epcot as soon as it opened.  I wasn't having it.  Though she wasn't totally thrilled at the idea, we agreed to meet at Epcot at 10:30am, just before the World Exhibit opened.  This gave her the chance to run back to Animal Kingdom, buy a shirt she was considering, and ride Expedition Everest a couple more times.

This was my first encounter with what would become the Achilles' heel of Disney World:  the bus system.  Though I was out waiting for the bus by 10am, which seemed reasonable since Epcot was across the street, I don't think I actually got to Epcot for over an hour.  (Oh, and though Epcot was literally across the street, it was the World Exhibit part of Epcot, which means the entrance was on the other side, and it took forever to get to.)

Epcot is the only thing that I remember about Disney World when I went there in high school.  There are a bunch of different countries represented by a little neighborhood of shops and eats that are supposed to feel like you're in that country.  They were even worked by people who were brought over from that country.  It was mind-blowing for sheltered, white trash, young ~RoB, who was much less educated about the rest of the world when he was 16.

We started in Canada & the UK.  It was too early to drink, and I don't drink beer, so it was primarily looking at things to buy.  Annie wanted a London Olympics shirt, but we didn't buy it until we came back at the end of the night.  There were Highland games for the release of Brave, but it was swarming with little kids, so we skipped it.  Somehow, cornhole was considered a Highland game.

We were walking through a shop in France when I noticed a bunch of wine bottles lining a counter.  Granted, it was maybe 11:30am at the latest, but who doesn't want a little French wine to get through their day at Disney?!  The man behind the counter was asking the man in front of us in line how he planned to spend the day.  The guy responded, "I have 4 kids dragging me around."  Then he walked out with his full glass of Champagne to find those 4 kids.  They sounded wonderful.  Upon looking into it, we realized that there was a World Wine Walk where you could drink wine from the different countries as you travel through.  We signed up, and we drank the French wine.  I convinced Annie to get some French pastries from the bakery, but they sucked. Don't get 'em.

It was hot, so we liked to stop in all of the museum-things to see art and the like, since they were extremely air conditioned.  Morocco was just, eh.  Japan was better. They had this whole exhibit about how Japanese legends and ancient gods have influenced video games and cartoons.  Taiko drumming rings throughout the pavilion.  Annie did a Sake tasting and also got some sushi.  We skipped 'merica, cuz we're pretty well-traveled there.  Italy was the next stop on our wine trail.  It was also when shit started to hit the fan.

We drank the Italian wine.  This was probably the most disappointing of the countries, because the old lady behind the counter was bitchy.  However, we realized we needed some food asap, cuz things were slowly getting drunk, between the heat and the alcohol.  We found the Tutto Gusto Wine Cellar, sat down and drank wine and munched on some light food.  It was all really amazing.  One of the highlight meals of the trip.  Stumbling back from the bathroom, I realized that everyone around me was pretty red-faced.  Apparently, the only way to experience Epcot is to drink it. And to start early.

On to Germany. We actually enjoyed the German wine, and now we have our eyes open for Spatlese. I also got a lesson on the German wine-making region from the lady behind the counter.  Annie got beer, too.  China didn't have alcohol, but it did have a shitty, frozen-food version of a steamed pork bun.  We really miss living beside Oakland's Chinatown, because we got addicted to those damn little buns.  Who knows how much MSG we consumed in our last year there.  Anyway, China did have another cool exhibit about the life-size army of statues that one of their emperors was buried with.

Finally, Norway for the viking boat ride, and Mexico to drink in their new Tequila bar. At some point, it started to rain.  So, being sturdy, outdoors-y people, we took the opportunity to walk to the other side of the park, Future World, and ride some of the rides while people were evacuating or hiding.  Only a few things stick out.

Mission: SPACE was probably the most fun. More because they ask you to leave at least a dozen times if you have motion sickness issues.  It ended up being the best simulator I've been in.  The Seas with Nemo was uber disappointing.  Living with the Land was an interesting look at sustainable farming and research performed there.  And, of course, we had to do Soarin', since Annie loves it.  It's the exact same as the one in California.  I think we finished with Spaceship Earth.  I remember really disliking that ride the last time I was there.  However, the new interactive movie they create for you at the end made the ride totally worth it this time.  Annie tried to upload it onto her blog, but the link is broken, so here it is:

Annie apparently broke the camera on her side, but my face is classic.

Now you see why it took so long to publish this post, it's damn long,
~RoB

Ridic Rupp

I went to a(n?) NCAA Men's Basketball game with Annie on Tuesday:
#1 University of Kentucky vs. #8 University of Florida

For those who haven't caught up yet, we live in Lexington, KY, now.  This is the home of the University of Kentucky, and this town couldn't be more proud of its college.  Also, their men's basketball team is pretty darn good, so the team spirit is pretty solid throughout.  It's so nice to be back in a town, like Ann Arbor, that pulses to the beat of the college.

Let's start with the fact that it felt more like a(n?) NBA game than any NBA game I've been to.  The lights go down, the spotlights start flaring through the crowd like a rock concert, and when the first string comes out, they're brought to the court with fireworks booming.  Fucking fireworks.  Inside.

Annie snagged us tickets, but they weren't together.  I was in the corner, and she was a section over, 6 rows higher.  I think she was a row from the top.  Not ideal, but it was fun just to be there.  Here's an idea of the view from my seat.

I think it says Kentucky Basketball Never Stops.

I showed up to a big Florida fan sitting in my seat.  Then I realized I was in the wrong row.  Everyone was nice about it, though.  This Florida fan was like 1 out of 10 Florida fans in Rupp Arena.  Don't get me wrong, I fucking hate Florida (read: Tim Tebow and Urban Meyer), but I always feel bad when people are so vastly outnumbered in someone else's territory.  I'm always nice to away fans at Michigan.  And I pray that people are nice to us if we're traveling to an away game.

At this point, I realized I wasn't going to be able to remember everything for my eventual blog post, so I took notes on my iPhone.

Welcome to my brain.

OK, so things that I took away.  Their student section is spectacular when the other team is shooting free throws.  At one point, the whole student section quietly sat down and 3 guys only wearing UK speedos hopped on their chairs sporadically placed among the section and started making a scene.  Not one of them should have been in public in a speedo.  It was great.  They also have a wave orchestrated where somebody conducts them and they quickly all hop up and make a bunch of motion just before the shot.  Kudos, student section.

UK fight song?  Not so spectacular.  I honestly couldn't tell when they were playing it.  'Are people clapping off-beat cuz they like this song, or is this the fight song?'  They also have a chant/song that plays over the speakers.  ♫ What's your favorite color, baby? ♫ and everyone responds ♪ Blue & White ♪.  It only stuck in my head because, well, that's two colors.  I'll tip my hat to the people on the scoreboard, though.  They scored things faster than the time it took me to look from the basket to the board.  Sometimes I wanted to clarify if the shot was outside the arc, and the scoreboard would be too quick for me.

Another realization I had is that holding up one finger is way over-used.  A camera is pointing directly at you for a nationally televised game.  What's your go-to move?  You hold up your pointer finger and yell, "We're number one baby, Go Blue!"  Well, very rarely are you actually number one.  (I remember playing USC at a Rose Bowl when they were number 2, and every time they held up that g-damn victory V, I kept yelling, "yes, you are #2.  We'll be #1 tomorrow.")  Anyway, I found it really amusing that all of these people yelling "we're #1" actually were.  UK is #1.  Yell that shit proudly.

There was one drunken douchebag (there always is) with an awful bowl cut, whom looked barely 21, that was yelling at the lone Florida fan in front of me.  Again, Fuck Florida.  But, I felt bad.  Only for you, heylookchris.  So, I kept having witty comebacks for the Florida fan, ya know, to keep things civil.  At one point, Bowl Cut, was yelling "Read me the scoreboard.  I can't read it.  Read me the scoreboard, Florida."  To which I quipped, "not saying much for the quality of a UK education."  The people next to me budded in with, "Be careful dissing the education.  Two grads right here."  Had I been in Ann Arbor, I would have told them to go fuck themselves and that I was smarter than them, so I'd say what I damn well please.  However, this isn't home yet, so I kept my cool.  I just wish they would have been present for more than half of the second half.  Or stood more.  I stood the whole time and I could honestly give a flying fuck about UK.  I was just there for the energy.

Yep, that sure is a Wildcat mascot at the top of the pyramid.

The game was king of disappointing.  2 national top 10 teams clashing?  Nope.  UK sticking it to Florida?  Yes.  I've always been a fan of the alley-oop, and boy can UK execute those.  So, at least it was interesting.  I'm so used to watching Michigan, that I forgot what it was like to have a floor full of giants that can actually block shots with their long-ass arms.

Finally, the Kentucky alma mater was less than spectacular.  Something about rolling around on the floor of a log cabin and that rough times will keep coming, but we'll make it through.  Ole Miss Kentucky.  Awkward.

Go Blue (no, not Big Blue, just Blue),
~RoB

XCD Day 4: FNL & Busy OK

I've never watched Friday Night Lights, but Annie swears that we drove through the non-fictional town it was based off.  No, not Odessa, TX.  Panhandle, TX.  One of my closest high school friends now lives there with his wife, his two-year-old, and a baby on the way.  (If you read yesterday's post, you may notice a trend.)  I went to school with only 2 Hispanic families, all of them were close friends, and I just visited them both in the Southwest in consecutive days.  During high school, I had no clue I was 25% Mexican, but it's interesting to think about now.  Apparently I should move to Albuquerque and quickly pop out a toddler and get another one in the oven.

This close friend has two great stories that immediately come to mind:  1) the time that we were hopped up on No-Doz for most of a weekend until I crashed in his car in the driveway of some good friend's clutched furiously to a water dildo, and 2) rolling his drunken ass out of the back of his van and down to the beach at some god-awful hour so that he could continue throwing up, and then leaving him there when it started to rain, convincing myself that I'd be back in an hour or so.  I woke up about 4 hours later and drove down to see if he was alive still.  He was missing.  So I drove to his house where he had apparently ended up.  Some neighbors called the cops thinking that we murdered someone and left the body to float away in Lake Erie.  Turns out that his mother would have been much happier with a drunken mess of a son, as opposed to one brought back by the cops half-dead from being drunk and soaked in rain and left outside.  Not my brightest moment.  (Btw, you still owe me like $70 for all those football tix you ditched on.  And where are my band CDs?)

Day #4

The town of Panhandle, TX, was both comically small and desolate.  There were streamers hanging from store windows celebrating the local high school football team.  It was almost spooky, in a ghost town kind of way.  As far as I can tell, this is the only road aside from the surrounding neighborhood:

Brick road is kind of cool, but that is literally all there is to this town.

When I picture Texas, I picture oil, steer, and San Antonio.  I do not picture cotton agriculture, which is apparently what this region survives on.  Craziness.  It had almost an air of New Mexico to it, but I still felt like some tall, shadowy figure was about to bound around the corner with a giant belt buckle and an even larger cowboy hat.

The rest of that day's drive was uneventful, until we decided to stop.  We typically have an idea in our head where we are going to stop that day.  You have to have some idea in the southwest, or you'll end up driving sleepily in one large span of highway between two 'cities'.  We had decided we would stop in Weatherford, OK.  Not quite to OK City, but close enough.  Plus, I have a good friend from Michigan whose last name is Weatherford.  It seemed like a sign.  Well, Weatherford had one hotel that took dogs, they had only one room left, and it was kind of expensive.  So we pushed on.

But then the next city didn't have anything either.  So we started making phone calls.  Nothing in Bridgeport, Hinton, or Geary.  So we pushed on to El Reno, OK.  As we were driving there, I thought about how I would be able to update my Facebook status with something witty like "Driving for 4 days, still in Reno!".  (There's a Reno, NV, where we started.)  I didn't get the chance to, though, because El Reno was also booked up.  Annie started to freak a little, but I told her that we could just stay in OK City, since I heard it was kind of cool.  I made it up, but it helped a little.

We finally found a place in Yukon, OK.  It is just on the outskirts of Oklahoma City, and we couldn't believe how much further we had traveled than we originally intended.  Just because no rooms were available.  This leads to the biggest question of the whole trip:  why the fuck was Oklahoma so busy?  There's nothing there.  Nothing.  Maybe OK sucks worse than NM.  Fucking Oklahoma.  (Your saving grace is that you have a musical named after you.  Count your blessings.)

And Bdubs (#3 if you're counting) for dinner in Oklahoma City to watch Michigan Basketball,
~RoB

Edwin's Last Straw

If you don't remember Edwin & Eloise, then you should familiarize yourself with their disgusting, voyeuristic habits.  Well, it looked like things were the same this year.  Walking around at night, haunting the denizens of the full Tahoe house over Xmas break.  Business as usual.

They were at least nice enough to keep their waking-hour discretions in the guest room this year.

Not that they are any less demonic, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit to finding Eloise's jokes mildly amusing after a 46 oz margarita at the local Mexican restaurant.

She didn't seem to find me half-shabby this year, either.  Probably all of the red wine.  Next thing you know... Bam!  Makin' babies.

Apparently, Edwin walked in while we were in the middle of doing the nasty.  It's hard to hear anything else going on, if you've ever heard me making whoopie.  But I was awakened by Eloise's screams as she pushed off my heavy, muscular arm and excused herself to the bathroom to clean up the mess I made.

Edwin had apparently been disregarding the rumors that Eloise was sleeping around on him.  The scene that he found solidified what he had heard, and it was too much for him to handle.  It's what the evil fucker deserved anyway.

Happy New Year,
~RoB

Royal Wedding - Day 1

Annie and I took off to Omaha, NE, to participate in the wedding of one of my favorite people ever.  He's the groom in the pic below (not to say that his new wife isn't just as amazing as he is).

All of these fancy cartoons are taken from the groom's blog.

The trip started with an invitation to the rehearsal dinner.  (Technically, I guess it started at 3:45am when the taxi picked us up to drive us to SFO.  After all, we had 2 cities to touch down in before we would eventually make it to Omaha [though we were on the same plane throughout].)  I guess checking into the hotel happened before the rehearsal dinner, as well.  We took a shuttle from the airport to the wrong Hilton.  Why the fuck are there two different Hiltons in downtown Omaha?  We also received a gift bag when we checked in, which excited Annie so much that she hasn't stopped talking about it.  Seriously.

Moving on.  I had never heard of general riff-raff being invited to the rehearsal dinner (or anybody outside of the actual rehearsal), but I'm glad they did it.  It was the first opportunity to meet people and family, and it was a good introduction to the high taste and classiness that the wedding would be.  We discovered that there were only a handful of people that we knew, and only 1 or 2 that I knew well (the groom was a friend of mine from U of M).  So, I had to come out of my shell a little and try to be social.

There was way more food than I expected, and it was really good.  (I ate just before going so that I wouldn't be a ravenous monster.)  The red wine was Flowing, with a capital 'F'.  Anytime somebody walked by, your glass was filled.  I probably drank something like 10 glasses.  After a slide show, we all congregated to the bar, and the Jack&Cokes started to make their appearances.  Then there was talk of progressing onto the next bar.  Which led to more and more bars, until we closed the bar at our hotel and I finally returned to the room with an already sleeping Annie.

Notable moments were:

Giving the bartender at some dive a $10 tip after keeping a tab open.  Alcohol was cheap, and we drank alot, so it was a fair tip.  However, he walked out from behind the bar to approach me as I was walking out, shake my hand, and thank me for the tip.  This is why I tell Californians that they have no fucking clue how nice we are in the Midwest.

A fight broke out at one bar right next to us.  The crowd splitting the multiple guys apart ended up pushing us into the bar.  We pushed back, and one of the groomsmen jumped in front of the groom in an attempt to shield him.  (Way smarter than my "punch him, pussy" cat calls.)  It was just this side of ridiculous, but the craziest part was the drunken redneck yelling "I'll fucking kill you, faggot!"  Who the fuck says the word 'faggot' anymore?  In my head I pictured him spelling it 'faget' or 'faggit'.  We were also surprised that they let him sit back down and continue drinking.  I guess it makes sense not to kick everyone out so that they can kill each other in the street.  Or maybe that's just how things roll 'round here.

Great Facebook statuses when I woke up:  "Alcohol is so cheap!" In Nebraska, True.  "What bar number is tjis?"  Fair question, but asking the same thing 12 minutes later is a bit obnoxious... and a sign that things are going downhill.  "Crazy dex happening in rhe 5040s. Come lisson!"  This was the last thing I communicated before passing out around 2am.  I thought I could hear some wild sex going on in my hallway.  I apparently thought we should all congregate outside of the participants' door and enjoy it together.  Note:  drunken texts are funny and between two people.  Drunken facebook statuses are funny and between 1,000 people.  Try to keep that math in perspective next time, drunken ~RoB.

Magically, a hotel shuttle arrived outside of one of the bars as we were all about to stagger home.  I have no clue who was in a right enough mind by that time of the night to make it happen, but kudos to them.  There were way more of us than the shuttle should transport, so the Super Groomsman (who shielded the groom) and I were going to walk back.  It would be an opportune time to start burning off the alcohol before taking off to nappy, nappy land.  They ended up shoving our whole party onto this little shuttle, which probably wasn't smart by any means.  I stood the whole way back.

My attempt at taking a pic turned into a fairly accurate representation.

Those people still going strong made our way to the hotel bar just before last call.  We ushered out a bride and groom, still in full wedding reception garb, cuz everybody within 4 states was getting married at our hotel in Omaha over Labor Day weekend.  Anyway, by this time there was a half dozen of us, including a girl that had fallen out of the shuttle onto the pavement at the Hilton, only to return in sweatpants and a renewed enthusiasm for drinking.  I had promised the Super Groomsman that I would still walk around with him before hitting the sack, but whiny messages from drunken Annie sent me up to my room with the groom when he finally decided to call it a night.  I found out the next day that the Super Groomsman managed to stay out an hour past that point, and he eventually returned to his room "smelling like a homeless person".

It had been a while since I've hit the hard alcohol, and Day 1 in Omaha was way more fun than I had prepared for!
~RoB

(Day 2 to come.  Day 3 is summarized in my last post.)

Off the Ground

I dropped a gummy bear on my kitchen floor, and I immediately picked it up and popped it in my mouth.  It made me realize that I'd eat most things off of the ground.  It reminded me of a drunken time at the Rose Bowl where I pulled a fallen Jello shot out of the dirt and straw and shoved it in my pie hole.  It was more dirt and straw than Jello, and I gnawed on it like a cow, but I managed.

Though this isn't an extensive list, it is a collection of those things that I would immediately eat off of the ground without any consideration:

• Gummy Bears
• Bagel Bites
• Gummy Worms
• Pizza Rolls
• Sweethearts born before 2010 (they got shitty last year)
• Charles Chocolates' Orange Twigs (went out of business, so I'd scrape it off if it was squished)
• Jello Shots, apparently
• Sixlets
• Just about anything else that's sweet

I do know that both a wasabi pea and a savory rice cracker spent a significant amount of time (read: months) on the floor of my office without being eaten.  I'm looking at the savory rice cracker as I write this.

Oh, apparently the 5 Second Rule is bullshit, but fuck science.  Who eats bologna anyway?  Hell, who has carpet?  Eating bacteria keeps you strong and your body's defenses vigilant.  I say that without any actual knowledge.

Anyway, in payment for my vacation and the sporadic posting that 3 weddings in the next 5 weeks (as well as football season) will force, you should make and eat this (not on the floor): a Cookie Dough Pie.

This is what it looked like when I made it. Get your own! (Couldn't be easier.)

Happy to be back,
~RoB

Fred Flintstone Poetry

There once was a guy dressed as Fred

whose girlfriend sprayed her hair red.

He thought it'd be fun

if he too sprayed his gun.

So good times were waiting ahead.

The party was Halloween Prog.

There was Spongebob and Scooby the dog.

A drink at each stop,

and you drink 'til you drop,

but the drinking was just a prologue.

They drank and drank and drank some more.

Fred passed out once and b'gan to snore.

It was quite a test

as they all progressed.

Fred managed to follow next door.

Fluorescent: the type of hair dye

Fred made Betty use for her guise.

At the end of the night

the dye glowed in black light.

So Fred decided to flash all nearby.

All near now have PTSD

because Fred flashed his wee-wee.

To the part he held true,

yelling 'yabba-dabba-do!'

Will a night beat this ever? Maybe!

Happy Birthday, Aunt!

Today is my aunt's birthday.  It's worth mentioning that my aunt was my bastion of hope growing up.  Saying that I didn't grow up with many positive role models is a slight understatement.  However, seeing that I had one sane family member with a happy life made me realize, early on, that people can survive my family and come out alright.

I remember that when things got particularly tough throughout my childhood, I would always consider calling her to come and get me.  I always pictured moving in with her to finish my childhood like a normal person, and her phone number was the first number I ever memorized.  I still know it.

I'm actually glad that I never had to move in with her.  My life story would be so much less interesting, and I fear that the high pedestal that I hold her on might have crumbled a little.  It's too hard to enjoy every moment with someone you live with.  That's life.

Thanks for introducing me to Phil Collins and Michael Jackson and Wilson Phillips and Madonna.  I owe any knowledge of classic rock to you (since my house played classic country music exclusively).  Thanks for getting me into Fossil Watches (I'm wearing one right now), and thanks for taking me to the Lion King when it came out, since I didn't get to go to the theaters very much until middle school.  You've spent way too much money on me over the years on Christmas and Birthday presents, and you were the only person to send me money when I started this blog, cuz you read between the lines that I was having real financial trouble.  You really are the cool aunt that everyone wishes they had, and I hope this is a great birthday!  Let's hope this is your last birthday in IL!

Yes, my hair was that long at one point!

Oh, and you're no angel either.  Don't forget, I drove you around after your party at Hooters in 2005.  You giggled like a sorority girl in the back.  I know you can party, and I know that your blog would be just as interesting as mine, if you wrote one.

So, Happy Birthday, Aunt!
~RoB