Family Day
Back in the day, I used to get off work on Friday. Fill up a satchel of cookies. Hop on the Tide and secure my corner table on the patio at O’ Brien’s. I would throw down beverage after beverage with Adrian, Poodle, and Drew. Yesterday, I squeezed in a nap, then got to work early. My corner patio table was connected with two other tables. Instead of drinking with Adrian, Poodle, and Drew, I was cleaning up after their kids. How times have changed.
Drew and Liz are in town from Seattle, and it was great seeing Kathy and Liz walk in with Ruby and Cal, respectively. Ruby’s a fair skinned Buddha, who sits and smiles, while Cal can hear music playing on a car radio six blocks away and immediately start dancing. They are two cute kids. A bunch of other friends showed up to fill up the patio. No matter how good a happy hour I was gonna have, it was great seeing everyone again. It wasn’t the really same, considering I was sober and they were all home by eight. I guess life changes as we get older. Happy hour brought a good crowd. I had my peeps from DDB in, celebrating one their birthdays. I gave him the O’ Brien’s stoplight, which is a green shot, yellow shot, and red shot. I would tell you what’s in it, but that spoils all the fun. Let’s just say his friends were ordering him water not long after.
Aoife and Kimi came in for vagtastic Friday. it was now the most difficult part of the evening, ordering dinner. I stared at the computer screen, hoping for a new menu item to appear. Guess what? It didn’t. I settled on the Portobello mushroom sandwich. It was really good. Now all I have to do is order the shit out of it until I gag when I put it to my mouth. That’s the thing about my family, we’ll find something we like then order it to death. My sister is a little more flexible than I am. She orders different things all the time. I’m beginning to wonder if she’s really my sister. Since there wasn’t a baseball game keeping the happy hour crowd, the bar thinned out, but there was still a fair number of bodies in the house. The band was Meet Me At The Pub. They’ve played at the bar before but I couldn’t remember them. With a name like that I figure they’d be a Cranberries tribute band. In fact, they play reggae. Aside from Bob Marley, I’m not a huge fan of Reggae. Maybe it’s because it doesn’t mix well with weed. In any case, Meet Me At The Pub crushed it. They were still playing well past last call so I went back to tell them to wrap it up. The crowd was going insane. It was cool to see.
The night never got super crazy save for about fifteen minutes, but it was steady. I somehow avoided looking at the time until just before last call. For the most part, the customers were cool. There was the one woman who ordered a vodka soda, Shirley Temple, and vodka red bull. I told her the total was twenty dollars. She asked me to break it down by drinks: seven, three, ten. She and her girlfriends conferred like Generals at a war table. It’s just a round of drinks. Give me a twenty and fuck off! Again, she asked how much everything cost. Again, I told her. She gave me her card and closed out. By the way, thanks for the buck. That’ll make up for the three minutes of my life I will never get back.
The night ended up far better than any of us expected. I got home late and watched LIfe, which was awesome. I got to bed around five and because God hates me, I woke up at nine forty-five. I’m sure my friends got their eight hours. Since we’re older, most of us go to bed earlier. Moreover, I’m sure they were exhausted from family day.
