Late Thursday Post

Ladies and Jellyspoons,

If you've been wondering what the hell is going on, allow me to tell you (yeah, I've been doing a little drinking). I am in the middle of leaving the wonderful abode in High Point Terrace and moving to Germantown. "Germantown?" you ask. Yeah, G'town. I have moved into my old room...from high school. This is a temporary setback until I get back on my feet. I am unemployed. We just lost the business. So this is one of those wonderful situations where family relies on family. Granted, it's going to drive me crazy, but I am going to help my family while they help me. I guess my cab fares home will be a little more than they have been. :)

Anywho, I'm here at Cigar Night and I was chastised for not telling what the hell's been going on. I've moved most of my stuff to the 'rents' house. I'll stay there from now on. Thanks to all of you who have offered a couch (or a bed) for me to crash on after nights of partying. For those of you still looking for the resume email, I'm almost done with the second draft. I have several friends who are in hiring positions at their respective jobs. They are reviewing the resume so it doesn't look like a crappy second rate job.

I'm going to head back and return to my cigar and glass of wine. Enjoy yourselves and remember that no matter how fucked up your life may become, you always have family to fall back on (whether your "family" is the biological one or the group of friends you have acquired).

Have a good one and don't get none on ya!

Thursday's Birthday Party

So my dear friends Shady Hasbeen and Shady Lady V wanted to throw me a bday party last week. Well I was a little preoccupied with helping close the company and losing my job so I kinda blew it off at the beginning of the week. Wednesday (my actual birthday) rolled around and they kept asking if and when they could do something. Well, I was busy Wednesday and Friday nights. I knew I was going to be recuperating Saturday. So it was either Thursday evening or sometime the next week. I called Shady Hasbeen Wednesday after leaving the office to say we could do it Thursday. I told her I didn't have too many restrictions or requests. Here's what I wanted:

drinks and friends at Newby's

That's pretty simple right? She, Shady Lady V, and HM were going to do all the leg work (i.e. make sure I got there and got home alive). Thursday morning (nothing like procrastination) I sent her a quick email with a list of folks to invite. Of course I forgot folks and slowly realized it throughout the day. I kept sending text messages throughout the day. You want to know what degree of senility I had? I forgot to invite my own damn brother! Yeah I know that was pretty bad. I called him but he was already at the Flying Saucer with a few friends.

Anywho, back to our chronological time line, I got home from work around 5ish. Shady Lady V gives me a call. She and Duchess Lana were driving around trying to find the Drama Queen of the moment. I'm not going into all the details. Let's just say that MY birthday plans were changing dramatically because of SOMEONE ELSE'S drama. Needless to say I was told people were dropping out or we were headed to Gill's. Greeeeaaaaattt.

I was supposed to be picked up within the next few hours. Of course I still wasn't sure about the exact plans. I just decided to be ready for fun and not let anyone else's drama ruin my fun. I threw on a pair of jeans and a polo shirt. Grabbed my drinking boots (which coincidentally are my work boots) and got the camera. I heard a horn honk and I went outside. There sit Shady Lady V and the Shady Hasbeen. Hmm...I was told HM was going to pick me up. But this is a nice surprise. We roll back to Shady Lady V's apartment to get her bday present for me. It is a signed picture from Sarah Jane Morris. I knew her as Sarah Morris when she drove me to high school. She was a senior at Hutchison when I was a freshman at MUS. Now she is a rising actress in Hollywood. I know she's in "Brothers and Sisters." But...I still haven't watched it. I did record the show on the DVR. I'll watch it eventually.

We start heading to the bar when I turn to the backseat to say something to the S.H. I notice balloons in the back of the Trooper. WTF! I just knew this couldn't be good. We parked by CK's coffee shop and I started to walk. I realized they weren't with me and as I looked back, I noticed they were unloaded stuff. When I say stuff, I mean lots of stuff. I just shook my head and decided to see what would happen.

We took a corner bar off to the left. I waltzed over to the bar to see my favorite lady bartender Shawna. Some of you know her as Miss MySpace 2006. After that hug, I headed back to the table. I had my Guinness and watched IN HORROR as evil incarnate blossomed forth from the hands of Shady Lady V and the Shady Hasbeen. Kidding. They put up balloons, cracked open glowing necklaces, and put curly candles on my bday cake. I've never seen curly candles before. I was kinda impressed they found them.

Then the folks started rolling in. I don't remember the order of arrivals, but here's the list of attendees:
Gordo
Shady Lady V
the Shady Hasbeen
Scottie Too Hottie
HM
Miniher (also known as Mendi)
Jana and Andy
SR
Queen Katie B

I went through my pics and i don't think I missed anyone. Speaking of pics, I'll spend the rest of the post with the pics. I'll explain stories that go with them.

Here we have the Shady Lady V and the Shady Hasbeen with the set up. You can see the cake, balloons (see the string at least), and the necklace things. The Shady Hasbeen is also showing a little shoulder.
Scottie Too Hottie and Gordo think I can be the next Derek Zoolander. They made me do this face. I call it "Blue Steel".I was apparently not the only person who was showing things Thursday night. The Shady Hasbeen was showing HM how she is a vampire. I think she may be trying to suck the life out of him here. Unfortunately she doesn't realize that a man has to be married before he can have his life sucked out of him.Here is a great shot of the cake...surrounded by beer and cigarettes.Here's a shot of yours truly blowing out the curly candles. Has anyone else ever seen those?Here is HM and the Shady Hasbeen. And she says she doesn't have any cleavage.We of course had to keep up with our tradition of the hold-me-kiss-me pic. For some reason we couldn't get it down just right. Either one or both of us were laughing the whole time.Or someone was losing control of her lose-rise jeans. Mmm...tasty.We finally got it right. It's kinda fun to keep trying something over and over.Both of my Shady lady friends show us what they like to do on Friday and Saturday nights.The Shady Lady V let me drink my Guinness without using my hands. Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me!Here we have the Shady Lady V, the Shady Hasbeen, and ex-Duchess Jana.Miniher (aka Mendi) insisted on buying me a few rounds of Patron shots. Thanks babe.We also had Katie B there. I think she may be dressed to close. What do you think?Of course there was some sort of creature in the background distracting the cameraman.

Well thanks to everyone who made it. Sorry to those who were accidentally left off the guest list. It won't happen next time. This was just a last minute party.

I'll get to the Friday night post in the near future.

Have a good one and don't get none on ya.

Ole Miss vs UGA gameday

I know I'm posting this over a week later, but it's no big deal. When I last finished the first installment of the story, Jules, Spilly, and I were dealing with hangovers. We took I-55 south to Batesville. On the way down we passed this exit sign.

Spilly went nuts because there was a local band in college who called themselves Coldwater Independence. They mostly did covers and didn't survive more than a year. But damn they were fun to go listen to. He made me promise to post this pic. So here ya go Spilly.

As we started getting close to Oxford, Spilly and Jules went nuts. They hadn't been back in 3 years. Jules apparently became Elaine Bennis from Seinfeld: everytime she saw something new she hit us both on the shoulder and say "Get out! What is that!?!"

I dropped them off at another old friend Marion's house. Marion stayed in Oxford after graduation and has worked around town. She even lives in the old house that she had when I graduated...4 years ago. It even smelled the same. If you knew my friends in college, you would know what that means. I walked in hugged her neck and met her boyfriend. I then excused myself and stood outside the front door. Afterall, I am in the job market and have to take a wiz-test when I get a new job. Don't want to fail because of second hand contact.

I left them there and headed to the family tent. I hung out there and then my hangover officially kicked in. Despite however much tequila or beer I drank, it never went away. I just had to fight it by eating and waiting. Mac had picked out several types of Salvador's premixed margaritas. Here's a pic of him and Dad with two kinds. They didn't realize it initially when they poured the drinks but they had Ole Miss themed drinks. They had me take this pic.

Throughout the day, a long line of old friends came to the tent. Evil Howard came by on his own. We talked a while. He's up in Maryland working as a manager for some company that goes around testing the air for harmful chemical (i.e. anthrax). I actually started to tell a story of Evil Howard here, but I'll save that for another time.

Spilly and Jules walked up eventually with Marion and two other friends from college: Mark from St Louis and Kyle. Mark updated me on the latest funny story about Mikey (see July trip to New Jersey wedding). Of course I won't recap that here. I wasn't involved.

After a while they wanted to see more folks so we all went to the Grove. We passed a tent with two other fraternity brothers in it: Stotts and Rusty. We talked to them for a few minutes before continuing on. We wandered around and ran into a few other folks. I got a phone call from Dad who said there was someone at the tent to see me. It was my old roommate from college Lt. Troy and his lovely wife Lauren. Theirs was the first wedding I was ever in. I hugged them both and as I sat down to talk to them, Lauren says "we're pregnant!" Literally, my butt wasn't even in the chair when she said it. As the words entered my ear three things happened:
1. I fell the rest of the way into my seat
2. I thought and said "How great for yall. That's awesome!"
3. I thought and said "Oh my God, Troy's going to be a father!!!"
That last one got a laugh from all of us. We sat and talked for a while. Then I got a call from my current roommate, Symon. He was trying to find us. I gave him directions and he eventually made it over. He met my family and ate...a lot. He's originally from Dallas, so he loved the Mexifest themed food. He loved Mom's King Ranch Chicken. He went nuts over it. Then he had some of Yankee's Tea (backstory: we have a friend from Illinois who is still in school in Oxford. He makes a special tea with Maker's Mark). He told me to pour out his beer and fix him a whole tea.

After a while Symon went back to the Grove, and Troy and Lauren went to their tent. I stayed at our tent for a few to grab a bite to eat. After a few more cups of Yankee's Tea, I decided to go find where Symon's tent was and also stop by a few others. The problem was the team was about to walk through the Walk of Champions. So most folks were along the walk and no one could get cell coverage. I stayed to watch the walk and then decided to head back to the tent. Here are two pics from the walk. The first is Coach O (Head Coach Ed Orgeron). The second is All-American Linebacker Patrick Willis.

After I got back I took a few pics from my chair. At that point I had fought off my hangover and was a happy man. Here is a shot of the tent. Yankee is the young man on the left. And yes, those are my feet.Here I am with my brother and sister. Yes, I am wearing my "Pi Phi Loves Our Rebs!" sticker.

Here are a pic from the game. I took videos of some things. I wish I could figure out how to upload them on here. I put them on photobucket. Anyone know how to upload videos into a blog post? Anywho, this is before kickoff.

Here are a few pics Jules took:
Jules with Marion both very hungover.

Jules and Spilly drunk on the Square in Oxford.Spilly and Kyle...drunk on the Square.Skooch, Jules, and Spilly outside Betty Davis Grocery on the way back to Memphis Sunday morning. The Betty Davis Grocery is an Ole Miss landmark. It is the one of the two closest places to get cold beer. It is located just past the Tallahatchie River between Oxford and Holly Springs. They also serve BBQ there. I never had it though.
That's all I've got from that weekend. I'll try to get to my recap of my bday party and the Cowboy Mouth show Friday night later.

Have a good one and don't get none on ya.

Songs on the Playlist:
The Grateful Dead - Bertha
The Grateful Dead - Me and My Uncle
The Grateful Dead - Next Time You See Me
The Grateful Dead - China Cat Sunflower
The Grateful Dead - I Know You Rider
The Grateful Dead - Jack Straw
The Grateful Dead - Big Railroad Blues
The Grateful Dead - Playing in the Band
The Grateful Dead - Turn On Your Lovelight