Category — booze

My finger is a little better today, thank you everyone. I still can’t touch myself drink tea with it but whatever…baby steps.

So, this weekend I have to go out to every karaoke place in the WORLD for an article I’m working on for The Mercury and it is going to be like 850 billion degrees. However, since becoming a militant vegan activist 5 days ago, all of my summer clothes totally fit me again, so I won’t be forced to wear a sweatshirt to hide my jelly belly. I hate that term.

Anyway, tonight I’m going to The Hutch and Yen Ha and maybe also The Ambassador. But here’s the rub - I can’t drink very much because I have to keep my stamina up for the next three nights. Plus, I’m vegan now and if I get all drunk everyone will be able to laugh at my drunkenness and look down on me and if I can’t be the one looking down on the people then WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING THIS FOR?

And tomorrow night I get to have karaoke girl’s night, whee!!!!! Melissa Lion, myself, and my new Superfan, Erica are getting together for one night of ribaldry and excitement! I hope Erica remembers not to look Melissa directly in the eyes and also to always, ALWAYS bow her way out of the room.

I’m very excited to meet my Superfan. I only saw her for a split second on NW 21st, but she looked pretty. And she’s funny. And she’s from the east coast. And she thinks I’m like a god or something. And now she knows where I live.

What could go wrong?

Hahahaha.

I’m scared.

NO! No. I really am looking forward to the three of us hanging out. Erica seems super cool. I am a little worried about ordering drinks and things because usually Dane takes care of that and I’m afraid I might just sit somewhere for an hour before I realize I’m not actually drinking anything and no one cares. And I’ll miss Dane. I’m sappy.

I wish Crissy could be with us. It would be so awesome and we could all have a big pillow fight and take pictures and Ken would have a heart attack. But in a good way.

And I haven’t told Superfan and Melissa this yet, but a friend of mine who I haven’t seen in TWO YEARS is going to be at The Alibi with her friends and so we’re going there too.

So many girls. I bet we all get our periods, like, fucking immediately.

I slammed my finger in our front door last night.

Finger: Hurt all night long.

12:59 pm: I might die. Also, I am a total idiot. Carry on.

Self Portrait: Idiot With Margarita

Gay. This song is about a gay sun.

Anyway, here is the video Nels has been going on about for the last ten hundred years.

And ladies, they are married. I know it might be tough to hold yourselves back, but try.

Have some fucking class.

Matt and Nels: Do George and Elton have blogs? I didn’t think so..

I couldn’t not put this up.

Thanks Megan!

(Dane is the bearded one dancing. The awesome one dancing, I should say.)

Dane: Robot-ing his way into my heart

Let me tell you about a terrible idea I once had.

One time I decided to drink 3 margaritas with dinner and then follow that up with a Makers diet and 2 beers for dessert. Also, I didn’t really eat much at the dinner, possibly because I was too full from a giant movie pretzel.

Ok, so yes, I had this terrible idea last night.

It started out like this - just me shootin’ the poop with George Clooney about you know, hair products and italian villas and ladies and savile row tailoring and stuff…

And then Dane attempted to make new friends utilizing the sneak attack method popularized by villains in silent films.

After which his methods became more aggressive and, um, AWESOME.

And then fake violence ensued, probably because I told Portland that Jared Leto put on 700 pounds for a film role which is blatantly untrue and now competent film editors have to clean up the mess made by rogue freelancing hacks with half a journalism degree and a penchant for lying. Luckily, we have a safe word so no one was hurt. It is “Piers Anthony”. Now you know.

It was fun.

And now I am laying on the couch nursing my eighteenth Diet Coke and watching The Dukes of Hazzard because it is incredibly comforting. Do not look at me like that with your judgey eyes and judgey face.

I AM MAKING MY WAY THE ONLY WAY I KNOW HOW, OKAY?

We’ve got a wedding to go to in about 5 weeks and because I am a girl I am already panicking about what to wear.

This weekend it was suddenly about 900 degrees outside and beautiful. Unfortunately, I could not enjoy it very much because I believe it was nature’s way of kicking me in the balls about nutrition and possibly not drinking so many cocktails all the time. The truth is I’m in much better shape than I was last spring when this happened and I was coming down from a three month marathon of divorce karaoke, divorce jaeger shots, and divorce Jack in the Box so I’m not freaking the fuck out the way I was then. HOWEVER, I’m still not quite ready for tank tops and skirts and flip flops the way every girl wants to be all the time. So today begins my re-commitment ceremony to healthy living. And drinking wine at bars instead of delicious boozy margaritas because a glass of wine takes about 14 hours to drink and a chocolate martini takes about negative 5 seconds.

Maybe you shouldn’t drink any alcohol at all, you say?

Well, to that I say, keep your morals off my goddamn lawn, you hooligan! I do so love my delicious wine and it loves me back and who are you to put boundaries on a love that is hurting no one except my waistline and why are you judging me and subsequently marginalizing functional alcoholics everywhere? It’s hurtful and, dare I say it, IGNORANT.

So I’m going to dial back my portion sizes AGAIN and mostly just lay off the boozy drinks and up the exercising a little but mostly I am going to try not to obsess about it too much. If I was 22 I would be able to lose 9 pounds in a week just by forgetting to eat but now that I’m an adult I never forget to eat. EVER. I do however, still forget to pay bills because I have no ability to prioritize. Like, two months ago right now I should be doing our taxes. Instead I am writing a blog post about dieting and alcohol and that is because I would rather talk about dieting and alcohol than discuss the merits of a five party system (although that sounds alcohol-y, right?) or Sudanese politics. And this should explain to you why I will never, ever be a respected journalist at The New Republic. I will just forever be known as that one blogger who thinks AIDS is funny.

Do as I say, not as I do.

Don’t worry- blog post will be up this afternoon. We had a whole weekend of fun and booze friends and I had a deadline this morning and now I have to go to Whole Foods which should make me sufficiently annoyed enough to rant about something on the internet shortly. HANG ON.

So I went with this

Vegans.

And these

Not Vegans

I also went with drinking three and a half vodka sodas and either making three new friends or giving three new people a lot of ammunition if they were ever to, oh I don’t know, write about me in a slambook or just stand in the hallway at work and make fun of me. Because that is what I would do if the situation were reversed. I’m kind of an asshole that way.

So it was super fun last night and I hadn’t been to Club 21 in a million years which made feel decrepit but I am used to that. I don’t know why it bothers me when I’m older than people now - I’m older than Dane by a good five years (he’s 29) and that never upsets me. To make matters worse I end up saying mildly offensive things like, “I haven’t been here since I was 25 and I would usually end up crying in the rain around midnight because that is what 25 year olds do”…to the 25 year olds sitting next to me.

Goodness.

Anyway, Matt and Alison and Erik (and Melissa, of course) were all very charming and funny and fun (although I believe at one point Matt tried to talk about sports with Dane, who knows nothing about sports, which resulted in Matt calling Dane a girl nine or ten times - and I think this completely endeared him to Dane) and we laughed a lot and I learned about the King of Cocktails and the jiggling Guinness machine - although I have yet to see the jiggling Guinness machine in action so as far as I’m concerned it’s still a myth, like narwhals or the holocaust or global warming - and Melissa taught us all how to write a book using mathematics and we learned that Erik knows a suspicious amount of plot points concerning Sweet Valley High.

Oh, and Matt smoked the shit out of a cigarette.

And in the end, I lost track of how many times I put my foot in it. At my age, it’s all I can do just to stay upright after Final Jeopardy is over.

UPDATE - Oh! The vegan potluck was really fun and we had tequila shots and met many nice dogs and ate guacamole and now I am hungover and I just found out that this is following me on Twitter which just pushed my hangover into the suicidal region.

Tonight we are going to a vegan potluck at my friend Jen’s house but I’m a little tentative about whether we’ll make it there or not due to an exciting happy hour meeting we are having over in NE Portland with Melissa and some new writerly friends.

Apparently, I am going to be introduced to “The King of Cocktails” which I can only assume is a bottle of tequila waved lovingly around a wedge of lime. I’m probably wrong about this as I am about oh, so many things.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to both of these events and I’m sitting here - four hours to go - trying to figure out what I should wear even though I shouldn’t care because I’m all cerebral and erudite and learned and crap.

Jen’s friends are all Eastside vegans with vegan tattoos and vegan hairgel and vegan babies and the new happy hour writer friends have never seen me in person before and I would like to underwhelm overwhelm them with my presence so I should probably put some thought into you know, deoderant and fashion maybe.

I was thinking I could wear something kitschy and indie like Miranda July

but it would probably come off more like this

And maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, actually. That jumpsuit looks like it could hold a lot of snacks and mentos and things.

Still, I want to put my best foot forward prior to putting it in my mouth as I will almost certainly do and I am ready and willing to take suggestions for wardrobe choices. Also, makeup and flossing techniques.

Bring it on internet.