Quarters, letters, and other excuses to drink on a weekday

Interesting week last week.

Tuesday night, I had to stay late at work decorating a Christmas tree (no joke), so when I got off; my plan was to just go home, hit the gym (ya, that’s right, I go to a gym. That Just Happened) and call it a night. On my way home though, I spot Brownsox and Kraut at the local sushi place. Now I thinks to myself “Well lad, ya have to eat, and do you want to eat alone” so I pop in and sit down. We have a lovely meal and a couple of beers, as Kraut tells us how her dentist caused her nerve damage. Fun times. After dinner, Kraut heads home (she has a real-people job), and I talk Brownsox into having another round at McCann’s (for he has a fake-person job).

We strolled over, and sat down at the end of the bar. Next to us was this couple who appeared to be a little older than us. The woman was a red head. Brownsox loves redheads (really, all men do, Brownsox just targets them). After staring at the woman for a while, Brownsox notices that they are playing some sort of game with a quarter. Brownsox, always the forward kind of chap, asked what they were doing. They explained the game as follows; A player spins the coin and calls the side. If when the coin falls that side is up, they make another player drink a shot of Spinning Player’s choosing. If the coin falls other side up, Spinning player does a shot of another player’s choosing. Brownsox, on the couple’s urging, decided to give the game a go. He spins the coin, calls heads, and it lands tales. The couple tells me I am to choose the shot. I choose my favorite shot, Wild Turkey. This scares the couple a little, but we are unfazed. Brownsox shoots, and then spins again. He wins the spin. I must drink a shot of Jim Bean. The couple is scared, we remain stoic. We then pass the quarter along the four of us, playing the game and splitting the cost of the shots. In the span of twenty minutes, I do a shot of Jim Bean, Jose Quevo, and SoCo Lime. We leave after about 45 minutes of this, not because I wasn’t having fun, but because I had work the next day and did not want to vomit on my boss during the staff meeting.

Thursday was another late work day. We were doing an end of year mailing, which meant we had to stuff, seal, and stamp literally thousands of envelopes. I agree to help, and stay late on Thursday. Now, 7 pm comes and goes, and it’s just down to this one guy and me in the conference room doing this mailing, everyone else going home for the day. I decide that I do not need to be sober to do this, and head to my desk. A playwright had giving me a half bottle of Vodka for an opening night gift, and I decided it would best be served as ‘work booze’. I looked around the office for something to mix it with; I wanted Orange Juice, but the closest thing I could come up with was Sunkist. So Sunkist it was. Now I did not plan to drain that entire bottle, but we had a lot of letters to get out, and anyone who has done a mass mailing knows it is real boring. So I and this work buddy drink several vodkas and Sunkists (a drink we dub the “Philips Head”) and get a ton of letters ready. When the stack ends, and the bottle is dry, we decide we need a little more booze. So we head to the defacto work bar, The Irish Rouge, and grab a couple of beers. As I am finishing my second beer, I get a call from Teach, telling me he is at O’Hanlin’s (that bar under the train at 31st and Ditmars) and that I should come by. Realizing that a change in venue is the only way I am not going to get super-blasted, my buddy and I decide to head our separate ways. I meet Teach at the bar, chat up the bartender (the Irish lass who works at Stout, this whole bar is there the cool people from Stout end up at) and tag a couple of Harps. Around Midnight, I stumble home and eat leftover chicken.

I start tech in a couple of days, so not sure if anything exciting will come up. But January is around the corner…