Thoughts

Have you ever heard the expression "burning the candle from both ends"? It was always used in my presence in the context of doing too much; staying up too late and getting up too early in the morning. I am often told that I burn the candle from both ends when I try to fit too many activities into too little time. Unlike many people my age, I do not work 60-80-100 hours each week, but I do fill my dance card pretty well. I manage to get 4-6 hours of sleep each night during the week, though every once and awhile I will pick a day to sacrifice. I will go to sleep at roughly 6PM and sleep through the night and recharge my batteries. I think I may need to do that tonight.

I had planned to go to bed relatively early last night. After my exams ended on Sunday afternoon I have been wishing for a day of rest, though I am too stubborn to take a day off from work. The most I can hope for is a chance to be at home, in bed, ready for sleep at a decent hour. That was planned last night, though it never came through. In no way, however, am I disappointed.

Friends and family joined me for dinner last night at one of my favorite restaurants. We had a great meal, some relatively interesting conversation and one or more laughs. My plan was to enjoy dinner out and then go straight home and try to settle in for the evening. It was a great idea in theory, all until Josh had to ask where we were going after dinner.

What is nice is that when something happens, rest assured one of two people will either be blamed for the event itself or having some bizarre influence over causing the effect. You can always know, if not me, then Josh. I will need heavy doses of caffeine today, and I blame Josh. It was his idea to go out, so I point the finger at him, but the stories are great and he gets the credit.

It is not a secret that I have a hard time saying "no" when invited to go out. Most opportunities to do so excite me. There was no surprise, to me anyway, that I abandoned my plan for sleep in favor of going out after dinner. And you know why? No good stories ever come from being in bed early. You do not always get good stories from the bar, but at least the potential is there. Sometimes you have to roll the dice. Last night, my horse came in.

[More:]

After dinner, Josh, Dave and I went to a bar in Royal Oak for a cocktail and some intellectually stimulating banter. It was all downhill from there. Actually, do you remember the old Bugs Bunny cartoons where he would end up tumbling down a snow covered hill and before you knew it he was a giant snow ball gaining speed as his appendages stuck out at random angles? That is a pretty accurate description of our night out.

We walk in the door and there are two waitresses standing with a bouncer. They ask him if they should check our IDs. He tells them they should. Josh apologizes for not having his handy and begs one girl's pardon as he "pulls out his fake." She looks at his ID and then says she thinks she will have to ask him questions from his license. Kidding. Making jokes with the waitress, always a good place to start the night.
__________

If you will allow me, I would like to go back for a minute and explain a piece of information that will be important later in the story. Josh's company holiday party was yesterday. He began drinking at around 3PM, thusly.

We had a 6:30PM reservation, he called me at 6:17PM.

"Are you at the restaurant or on your way?" he asked.
"I am already at the restaurant."
"I will be back at my place in about 10 minutes if you want to come over and grab a drink before dinner."
"You do know that in 10 minutes it will be 3 minutes before we are supposed to have dinner, right?"
"Yeah..."

I guess you would have to know him, but that may give you some idea of the state he was in by that time of the day. Things only got worse...or better at the bar.
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At the bar we make our way to a table. Not too long after we lay claim to three seats does our waitress come to our location. She is the same one who greeted us at the door. Did I mention she was attractive? Oh? I didn't? Well I will take this opportunity. She was very attractive.

I am not sure quite how the subject came up, but before long Josh is regaling our beloved waitress with stories of bar nights gone by. He chooses, of all anecdotes, to tell her of the night I blew it in such legendary fashion. He was in a very (drunk and) methodical way choosing his words carefully.

Blah blah blah...."there's this girl at the bar that he's friendly of."
"Friendly of?"
"Oh, that he's a fan of."
You drunk moron.

The point of his story to our waitress was that he set me up perfectly and that I blew it. He was telling her how he is the quintessential wingman. Remember that, it comes up again later.

She was after all, at work. She had other tables to tend to, so she left. Josh, now forced to find a new conversation looks around the bar. There is a girl standing behind our table on her cell phone. Dave and I are talking across the table when we hear him whistle. He actually whistled at this girl at the bar. What a classy kid. I would try to launch into some politically correct diatribe about the objectification of women (you know, to keep my sister-in-law-to-be happy) but I won't. Why? Because this girl enjoyed it. She waved, finished her call and then came over. Very outgoing this one. I moved to change seats so this girl, we'll call her Winnie Cooper, could sit with her whistling beau. Josh, ever the gentleman, springs from his chair and moves to the only open seat, the one across the table. So now they are talking across the table while Dave and I roll our eyes.

I had to fight hard to stay in my seat. I wanted to run to find a phone number for the good people at the Guiness Book. We had officially met the dumbest girl on Earth.

"Where do you guys work?"
She used guyS, plural, but she really was only addressing Josh.
"I work in Southfield. I, uh...do automotive...robotics."
"OH I KNOW RIGHT WHERE THAT IS!" she responded emphatically as if she sees the sign everyday on her way to work.
You do realize though, that he never said the name of his company...

"I went to the Cincinnati Bengals game on Sunday."
We are in Detroit, you can call it the "Lions game."
"Did you wear orange?" Josh inquired.
"I wore orange everything. Orange shorts. Orange undershorts."
Undershorts?

"It was awesome, everyone was cheering for Ohio."
"Ohio?" I asked.
"Yes, isn't that where Cincinnati is?"
"Well yeah. Uh, didn't you say you were from Indiana?"
"I am, but they are right next to each other."
Right. Of course. How silly of me.

She just turned 21 and she was telling us that she works as a dancer for a private company. The words "bachelor" and "party" were thrown around in some context to describe her clients for the week. However, she did tell us a few other things.

"I'm not your typical stupid stripper."
And.
"I get naked when I drink." Which she then said was part of the reasoning for her chosen vocation.

She walks away to get her cigarettes. When she returns she tells us her friends are going to come over and say hi. One friend she only spoke of as designated driver, for the other, who we'll for purposes of this post call Busty, she elaborated.

"She has the biggest t**s I have ever seen. You'll know which one she is."

And we did know which one she was.

As personable as her two friends are paid to be use to being, they must have just been grumpy last night. They wanted to go and took our poor Winnie Cooper, the rocket scientist, with them, but not before she gave Josh her phone number. I was a good boy, though. I did not make any comments to her as she left.

"I didn't know that 976 was a valid cell phone area code."

So our new friends, the prostitutes (Josh gets all worked up when I call his new girlfriend a prostitute), left us and we had to revert conversation back to our waitress. We pick up where left off, trying to get her to come out with us this Friday night.

Drive up to Rochester, we tell her. She tells us she prefers to stay in Royal Oak because she and her friends live there. They like to drink to the point they can't drive and call a cab home. They would not have that option if they joined us in Rochester. She didn't realize that Josh had all the answers.

"Don't worry about it. We'll get a party bus. You know, a van."
"Really?"
"Yeah, we do it all the time. We get like 15-18 people together. You would...just have to meet us in Royal Oak."
"Oh."

To clarify what he meant, by "all the time" he means we have never one single time done that, and by "15-18 people" he meant Dave.

She says she'll think about it and goes to take empty bottles back to the bar. We stay in our seats, not awaiting the dramatic return of the waitress, but retelling the story above about Winnie Cooper. We didn't realize the waitress came back to our side of the bar. Josh says it's time to go, but I tell him in a minute. Since he had his hour with Winnie Cooper, give me a minute to try and get this waitress to come to the bar.

If nothing else, he should have been happy to stay purely to see the train wreck that would most likely ensue, but he sat down rather willingly.

"Ok. I'm here. What do you want me to do?"
"Nothing. You had Winnie Cooper, let me talk to the waitress."
"Ok, fine," he lied.

She walks up to our table from behind me holding three empty glasses stacked in her left hand and two empty bottles in her right hand. He reaches out and takes them from her. He sets them on our table and she looks at him in question.

"Friday," he said.
"What?"
"Let's get back to Friday."
"We want you to come out with us on Friday," I add.
"Give me one of your guys' number and I'll call you on Friday."

That sounds fair. So Josh asks for her pen and she takes her empties away. He asks me to verify my phone number so he can write it on the napkin. ...And then writes his own. And adds FRIDAY NIGHT in big letters across the bottom.

"I'm gonna go give this to her," he says to Dave and me.

My numero uno wingman. Gets his inner thigh rubbed by a stripper (did I leave that part out?) and then still stonewalls me on the waitress. He heard about that on the way to the car.

"Oh, yeah. I probably should have let you give it to her."

Yes. You should have.

There probably will not be anything more to add to this story, even though our waitress alleges she'll call one of us. She won't call. And Josh is supposed to call Winnie Cooper. He will call. But I hope I'll have plenty more to write on it after Friday night.

Oh, and Josh here is my advice with Winnie Cooper. One simple sentence.

"Do you take a check?"