And Then What Happened: Boston Part 2

If you missed part 1 of the Boston story, here's where to find it. Really, this photo does more to explain the weekend than anything I could say. It was taken on Sunday afternoon, on our way back from watching football downtown with Katie, Lindsey and my cousin Justine. It took MAYBE 30 seconds for us both to fall asleep.

Anyway. I'm sure I've talked about this before, but I've never in my life had a hangover. I've never gotten sick from drinking too much. I've definitely had enough to warrant those situations, but for whatever reason, it hasn't ever happened. My working theory is that I'm a superhero of some kind with the lamest super powers ever. But I digress.

Now I'm not sure exactly what a hangover feels like. I've woken up and not felt great -- a little bit of a sour stomach sometimes, maybe a slight headache. But it's never been anything I couldn't just wake up and power through.

Well, I woke up on Saturday morning with the biggest headache I'd ever had after drinking. I blame the scorpion bowls. I had some water and took a shower, and I was good after I had some food. I don't know if that counts as a hangover or not, but it's definitely the closest I've ever come. I still say no.

Langdon and I were up around 7:45 or 8 a.m. to head to the airport to pick up J. Mike. Let me take a second to plug J. Mike's blog, where he posted his own story about Boston. Very cool. When J. Mike got in the car, we started recounting some of our old Technician road trip stories. J. Mike and I talked about our infamous trip to cover the Miami game in 2007 where we realized we did not have our press passes two and a half hours in the trip and turned around. "BG, turn around, man. I don't have the press passes." Oy haha.

Then Langdon and J. Mike told a story about a road trip to Winston-Salem to cover a Wake Forest game. The game was long over, and the interviews were done. Langdon and J. Mike exited the field house with the new writer they'd taken along with them, only to be semi-accosted by a homeless man who screamed, for no apparent reason, "And then what happened!" As Langdon told the story, he broke into a dead run as soon as the man yelled. J. Mike followed along quickly enough, leaving the young writer alone. Like you do. Naturally, they tried to spin it into a life lesson for the poor kid in the car.

So there you go. I did what I do, and I ran the saying into the ground all weekend. And then what happened.

We'd made plans to meet Carnell, Katie and Lindsey at this bar near BC's football stadium. There's not a whole lot of room to tailgate for games there, so people often go to bars. This particular bar -- City Bar, I believe it was called -- is where the N.C. State Boston alumni chapter meets before games. Carnell was nowhere to be found until the second quarter of the football game. The girls were very slow to arrive at the bar as a result of Friday night.

Langdon, J. Mike and I had a few drinks and some food and met up with a bunch more of the DC folks who made the trip. We made our way to the stadium, and the game was terrible from the start haha. We were down 7-0 before we even found our seats. What can you do. We laid an egg in the game and lost 14-10. Obviously, we now know how the regular season ends, so it's all good.

That game was the first time I'd really heard the song "Shipping Up to Boston." I documented my thoughts on that last week. I was getting fired up, and they weren't even playing it for me.

So there's not a whole lot to say about the game. After the game, however, Langdon, J. Mike and I hopped on the T to get back downtown to meet Langdon's roommate and his girlfriend for some drinks. We sat down, and I could already tell I was only minutes from sleep. But Langdon saw this guy in a Boston Transit uniform, drinking something out of a Gatorade bottle. Langdon, being Langdon, asked him what kind of Gatorade it was. "My own special blend," he said. (I'm sure it is, I add parenthetically.)

The man, whose name I cannot recall nor do I know if we ever knew, came and sat down near us to share his life story. All I remember is he "fackin' hates loyahz," and he and his ex-wife have a standing appointment in court seemingly daily.

I passed out not long after, but Langdon kept up a conversation the entire ride downtown. And then what happened. Indeed.

The combination of Friday night and a long day on Saturday left all of us pretty drained. We headed back to Langdon's apartment after a few drinks at an Irish pub downtown. When we got back, his roommate and roommate's girlfriend cooked homemade enchiladas for us all. LEGIT. So very good. The roommate made us some kick-ass drinks, too, but of course I don't remember what they were. If Langdon reads this, maybe he can chime in on that. I'd love to know what that drink was. Some kind of ginger beer mixture. For the win.

I tried incredibly unsuccessfully to make plans with Katie and Lindsey. They were, understandably, exhausted and not sure they were going to make it out. Well we were having none of that. So we hit the T and headed downtown. We ended up a bar called Hurricane O'Reillys. Carnell found us while we waited outside, and we headed in. It was pretty much redonk. J. Mike was so excited to be out with us, he joyfully bought all our drinks that night (THANKS BUDDY). Naturally, we drank, I think, four High Life tallboys each. Like you do. Keepin' it classy.

Well, you know how I roll. I got a couple of drinks in me, and it was time to dance. Listen. My arms get involved when I dance. Out to my sides. Above my head. I'm just grooving, man. I can't help myself. The problem was this: I've never seen a more crowded dance floor in my life. My arms were stuck to my sides because I simply couldn't move them.

Carnell peaced out to meet up with some other people he was in town with, so we worked our way over to a side bar and kind of made our own dance floor for a bit. J. Mike got really excited and bought us shots of straight Jager. I don't often take shots of straight liquor. The occasional shot of Jameson this summer, I suppose, but it's not common.

Here's how you know I had a good time. I was checking my Twitter feed after the weekend, and I found the following tweet, timestamped at 1:34 a.m. while we were out Saturday night: "Aww sookie sookie now."

Clearly, I was feeling it.

Langdon and I were finally able to get up with Katie and Lindsey, who DID make it out Saturday night. Katie sent us a picture of the wallpaper where they were and told us to find them and have fun with the scavenger hunt. Of course. As we were getting ready to leave, this guy walked by Langdon, J. Mike and I and LITERALLY showed his teeth to Langdon. What in the world. It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen.

I'm sure Katie and Lindsey have figured this out by now, but there's no chance we could have found them if Katie hadn't checked in at the restaurant/bar on Facebook. I saw the check-in, googled the name and we were on our way.

I left my sister a drunk voicemail. Langdon and J. Mike left Nick and drunk voicemail that went straight to his voicemail hall of fame. Like you do.

So we were walking down to street toward the restaurant where Katie and Lindsey were with some other friends of theirs when these two girls jumped out of an alley, grabbed me by the arms, pulled me into the alley and threw me against the wall.

In my head, I'm thinking, "YEEAAH BUDDY. Best night of my life! Pre-emptively!" I've seen this movie; I know how it ends. One girl was so drunk, all she could do was lean against me. The other girl said to me, in a reasonably thick Boston accent (which is surprisingly endearing on young, cute girls and not middle-aged drunk men), "Please help us. This guy has been following us for, like, five blocks now, and he's really scaring us. You look like you're really cool, so can you pretend to be our friend so maybe he'll leave us alone?"

I'm thinking, well you're the ones that have me pinned against a wall in an alley. Do I need some help? But I said, sure why not. Apparently I look much more intimidating than I feel because that was the second time in a couple of months I was asked to scare someone off.

What the hell do you do in that situation? I looked over at the guy as menacingly as I can (read: not very), and the girls started talking really loudly, "Oh my god, Chris, thank GOD we found you! We've been looking for you for so long!" I continued looking at the guy menacingly, and he seemed to get the point and wandered off.

The girls kissed me and ran off down the street, thanking me profusely. So. That happened haha.

Langdon and J. Mike watched the whole situation unfold and were totally engrossed in what I told them about it. It was so bizarre. I'll tell you what, though. Shit like that DOES NOT happen to fat dudes. It just don't! So once again, hooray losing more than 40 pounds! haha

We finally found the restaurant after some googling and wandering. Katie and Lindsey were extremely surprised we found them. Langdon and I just looked at each other, and we were like, c'mon. Of course we did. Lulz. J. Mike was barely coherent at this point, which was awesome because he began to tweet complete and total gibberish the entire time we were there.

Unfortunately for the world, he went back and deleted it the next morning. I wish I had some examples.

Around 2 or 2:30 a.m., we decided it was time to head back. Now, remember the cab situation I faced the night before? Yeah. Again. Not only was it hard to get the cab drivers even to stop, but when they DID stop and heard where we were going, they often drove off immediately.

So the three of us fanned out to try to get a cab. Langdon and I were on opposite sides of this main street, trying to flag them down. J. Mike, however. Oh lord.

J. Mike took to standing ON the center line in the street, punching cabs as they drove by. It didn't seem like a sustainable situation, but wow do I wish I'd taken a picture of it.

Eventually, we came up with a new strategy. Langdon flagged down the cabs and distracted the driver while I jumped in the backseat and refused to move. Once I got in the backseat, they hopped in too, and we were just like, dude. We've got cash. We're not moving. Drive us home, you know? Shit.

I fell asleep in the cab immediately. Like you do. Like I do, anyway. We got back, paid the cab and headed upstairs. I crashed on the couch so fast I didn't even have time to change clothes.

Sunday morning was a bit rough for J. Mike haha. We finally got him out of bed around noon so we could head downtown to watch football with Lindsey and Katie. And my cousin Justine! Justine lives in Boston, and we tried unsuccessfully to coordinate hanging out Friday and Saturday, but Sunday there was no excuse.

I hadn't seen her since the wedding back in September 2009 that I've talked about so much. Her brother is the one who got married. But she came and hung out with us, and she exhibited what appears to be a BG-family personality trademark: infectious enthusiasm and energy. Good times.

She definitely helped rally us because we were dragging from two solid days of nonsense and staying out until 4 a.m.

Alas, my flight was that night, so we had to head back. The photo up top is from this point in the story. We fell asleep on the T in no time. J. Mike was too nervous to fall asleep, but you could tell Langdon and I are seasoned subway travelers. We fell asleep and would wake up at each of the stations as we approached the station we needed -- which is exactly how I roll on the DC metro.

Made it to the airport and headed back to DC. As we were exiting the plane at National, Katie gave us the most appropriate quote for the entire week: "It's kind of weird being sober."

Indeed it was.

Final verdict: Boston was infinitely more awesome than I expected to be, and I would love to go back very, very soon so I can do actual nerdy touristy things.

Boston, well done!

As always, thank you so, so much for reading and for telling me you enjoy the stories. I get such a huge kick out of knowing people actually like reading my BS.

It should be another insane weekend, again, starting tonight with a party with some work friends, continuing on Saturday night with a holiday-themed bar crawl downtown and then finishing up on Sunday with a date! Doin' the bull dance. Feelin' the flow. Let's GO. Hopefully there will be some blog-appropriate stories! Have a great weekend, kids.

Later!

-BG

What's Next

Oh boy.

Seriously. I am the exact opposite of Peter from Office Space right now. Every day of my life is better than the day that came before it. Every day you see me or talk to me is the best day of my life. Life is so, so very good!

I have been giggling like a school girl for almost three solid days now. I love everybody! This is pretty much an exact replication of how I reacted on Monday after hanging up the phone upon receiving my offer:

Not Gonna Cry
Jerry Maguire at MOVIECLIPS.com

YEEEAAAH BUDDY.

What's Next?

Well, tomorrow is my first day of work. God I really can't wait. CAN'T WAIT. I am going to dominate so hard.

I immediately canceled my move-out notice, and I will sign a new lease tomorrow. I know I may need to move at some point, but honestly, I can't emphasize enough how much I don't want to worry about that right now. Baby steps. One thing at a time. I like this apartment a lot, and the commute isn't going to be that much longer than when I rode the Metro. At worst, if the commute sucks, I'll deal with it for a while, and then look at some other living arrangements then.

I can finally book my flight for Boston next month now that I know from what city I'll be flying. A bunch of us have tickets to the State/BC game -- a true battle of who could care less, to quote Ben Folds. But nonetheless, it'll be an awesome trip with both DC and Raleigh friends heading up there. Plus, I have a cousin who lives nearby! Gotta go get down in Beantown.

While I plan on waiting and getting settled at the job before I do anything, I will absolutely begin my search for a band to join with MUCH excitement. I'd like to see how the first few weeks at work go, but I will be crafting my Craigslist ad before too long! Hell, I may just post the blog post I wrote about it over the summer.

The biggest challenge will be holding onto my fitness and eating habits while working all day every day now. I'll just have to wake up early enough to walk Allie and run or hit the gym before I leave. I just so much prefer to work out in the morning than in the afternoon. I love the feeling of an awesome workout, but I like to get it out of the way and feel the energy rush throughout the day. Like today, I ran four miles this morning, and I've felt awesome all day. Although there are certainly extenuating circumstances for that as well! LET'S GO.

I'm going to have to work hard to maintain my food discipline, too. I'll need to bring my lunch a minimum of three days a week. Since hitting 185, I've lost hardly any weight at all. Some of that is due to fun trips to Raleigh and Charlotte, to be sure. But I've also noticed my pants getting looser and looser in the interim. So it's not all that I'm not losing weight. I could just be toning and tightening up. I mean, geez. My new 34"-waist jeans that I was so excited about just a month ago were LOOSE on me last week, despite holding steady at around 185. What in the world!

I'll need to get my old dog walker back on retainer, too. There are going to be nights where I don't get back until later than Allie is used to. But she really seems to like the woman who's walked her in the past, and she's not too unreasonably priced, so it seems worth it. She'll come walk Allie for 30 minutes or so and feed her for me. Not bad at all.

So the blog. Obviously, I won't be able to devote time during the day to writing anymore. Honestly, I cannot believe I've managed to keep up with posting three times a week since early June with very, very few exceptions. I have no intention of stopping now either. I've gotten into a rhythm, and I really enjoy writing for whomever decides to stop by and read. What I plan to do now is write my posts the night before and just post the link during the day. I'm sure the new blog routine will take some getting used to, but it'll work out just fine.

Weekend Roundup

You may have read about my less-than-awesome drive last week. Turns out I completely busted BOTH wheels on the passenger side of the car. The car place ordered one wheel because they didn't know both were wrecked. The back wheel was wrecked on the inside, which they didn't know until they took the wheel off. To which I'm compelled to ask, "Why didn't you do that before ordering parts?" But I digress.

They called me on Friday to say it would be done by closing. Then they called 20 minutes later to tell me about the second wheel. The second wheel was supposed to arrive on Monday. It did not. The guy at wherever they were getting it from somehow failed at putting the wheel on the UPS truck, and it didn't arrive until Tuesday afternoon.

Anyway, the rest isn't that important. Both wheels eventually arrived. Both tires eventually arrived. And everything was put on the car. A good time was had by all.

I finally got home last night around midnight. What a week.

Oh and Kirk and Liz's wedding!

Wow what an awesome wedding. Incredibly beautiful and unique location. Excellent food and dancing at the reception. Old friends I hadn't seen in forever. The unbelievable experience of seeing my old friend Paul dance. I've never seen someone control a dance floor like he did Saturday night. It was really something to see.

I've got nothing else. I'm so incredibly giddy right now. Tomorrow's drive in the morning rush will be the best drive in the history of mankind. I can't wait!

Next time we speak, I will no longer be unemployed. GREAT SUCCESS.

LET'S GO!

-BG

Ohhhh Savannah Part 3

My Weekend in Savannah; Or Why You Shouldn't Send a Text Saying "I'm at a Hospital" after Midnight Part 3

When my cousin Kris got married in September of 2009, it was the first time the whole family had really gotten together when we were all above drinking age. My dad and his brothers and their families and us got together a few times for huge vacations, but the cousins were always younger. I think I was 18 on our last big all-inclusive vacation.

So this wedding was absolutely insane. Best wedding I've ever been to, and I don't anticipate that changing any time soon. They had a live band playing 80s and oldies, and trust me when I say that's the most efficient way to get the maximum amount of bodies on the dance floor.

Well, it was a big family wedding with an open bar. The drinks were flowing, starting at around 3 p.m., ending around 10 p.m.

Let me tell you something else about me. When I get a couple of drinks in me, I have the propensity to dance. As my friends from softball can attest, what happens once we get two or three beers down? I start to jam in my seat.

The wedding was no different, except instead of three or four drinks, it was 13 or 14 drinks. And the band was playing 80s music. I'm sorry, but if they're going to play "Billie Jean" I am compelled to dance. I am, of course, making no claims about being any good at it. It just happens, and I have a hell of a lot of fun.

What does this have to do with Savannah? Uncle Steven apparently began referring to me as the "funky cousin" based on my performance at the wedding. So his girlfriend Kim and Lindsey's friends Nicole and Laura knew me as the funky cousin before I arrived. I believe his exact words were "I've never known a Jew with rhythm until you, but I suppose that's because you're only half Jewish." I mean. I'll take it. Gladly.

Much to Kim's great delight, it took exactly two bourbon sweet teas at Bernie's on Friday before I was jamming gleefully in my seat and saying things like, "This is most definitely my jam," and "I can't dance to this, man, play something else."

So there you go. This guy: funky cousin. Nice to meet you.

Back to the haunted zombie tour! After the guy's camera battery jumped out, the girls and I were all sufficiently creeped out. I'm sure there is a perfectly logical and reasonable explanation for the battery jumping out. Of course there is. But even if the hatch pops open, there's usually something holding the battery in, right? At this point, after all the drinking and ghost stories, and it's close to midnight or after midnight -- the mood had been set, and we were perfectly happy believing in the not-so-logical explanation. It was more fun anyway.

The tour continued to other cemeteries and houses with creepy pasts. And, of course, no haunted tour is complete without a stop by an abandoned hospital. Unfortunately, we couldn't go inside, much to my dismay. They were in the process of "getting clearance" to go inside, whatever that means. But it wouldn't be possible until August, and even then, it would cost $100 to go on that tour. Oh well.

As I mentioned back in part two, Matt and Jeb's constant texting was a theme for the night. Still, I wasn't any less drunk than before, and it wasn't any less dark outside. I got another text from my brother, "Hey where are you? We want to come meet you."

Yes, I understand that. I still don't know where I am, so I gave them the only descriptor I could.

"OK, well I'm at a hospital."

Right. At the time, it didn't occur to me at all what a text saying I was at a hospital would mean, especially with it being nearly 1 a.m. and following 12 hours of drinking.

The texts stopped and the phone calls started picking up at that point. I excused myself around a corner and explained I was not, in fact, injured, suffering from alcohol poisoning or in an actual hospital. Haunted tour. Abandoned hospital. Relax. And no, I still don't know how to tell you to get here.

The tour finally ended at a bar called McDonough's at around 1:30 a.m. One of the girls wanted to keep hanging out, the other admitted they were driving to Chicago at 7 a.m. (where they're from), and it's a 16-hour drive, which meant they'd be waking up in four or five hours. Not really conducive to continued hanging out, unfortunately, so we said our goodbyes.

However, I finally had a legit landmark to give Jeb and Matt. They arrived 15 or 20 minutes later, and we went into the bar for a handful more drinks. I think I had two more drinks in there to bring my total for Friday to the following:

4 bourbon sweet teas
8 beers
2 lemon drop shots
1 Washington apple shot
1 cider

Yikes.

The bars don't close until 4 a.m., but I had no interest at all in closing down the bar. Around 3 or so, I recognized the importance of getting some food in me since we didn't actually eat dinner, and all I'd had to eat all day was a chicken wrap at around 12:30 p.m. Someone in the bar suggested a place across the street called Parker's, which turned out to be a gas station with a breakfast hot bar inside that was open 24 hours. Like you do.

Needless to say, Matt and I went. Jeb stayed behind for a bunch more drinks and closed the bar. I ended up eating two sausage, egg and cheese biscuits, some cheese grits and a little fried chicken. Matt had a similar spread. It was amazing. Well, no. It was gross, I'm sure. But it was exactly what we needed.

We found a table out front of the gas station and hung out for, like, two more hours. Jeb stumbled over around 4:30 and went inside for some food. He came out with two huge take-out boxes of food. Apparently, he asked a rather large man for suggestions, and he ended up just asking for what the big man got.

One of the boxes contained only a foot-long piece of fried fish. I don't know what kind of fish. I had a bite of it, and then we ended up giving the fish to a homeless guy. The other box contained cheese grits, scrambled eggs, hash browns, sausage and bacon. And, oh by the way, sitting there in the middle of the cheese grits was a kielbasa. Of course.

We had a great time just sitting out front of the gas station at our table. Talking to all the drunk guys and girls that stumbled by. We had a group of about five girls that sat with us for about 30 or 45 minutes while they ate their drunk food.

I never could have imagined when I woke up to drive to Savannah on Friday morning that the night was going to end nearly nearly 23 hours later with eating breakfast food from a gas station. Luckily, it turned out our hotel was only a few blocks away. We stumbled back and fell into bed around 5:30 a.m.

What. A. Night.

The next day was much more low key. Fortunately, I continued my lifelong streak of waking up without a hangover. GREAT SUCCESS. Once I had some water, I was good to go.

We found a restaurant for lunch that served oysters and margaritas. I had three margaritas, and then we wandered around Savannah in daylight (for a change) for several hours. We managed to stumble across the very first haunted house from the night before -- the one with the camera battery incident. It was less frightening during the day.

We ate some dinner, and then hung out at a dueling piano bar for a few hours. No real crazy stories at that point.

I'd never been to a piano bar before, and I was told this one was a little disappointing. They played a few too many songs I didn't care about at all. But there were a few that got me out of my seat and into my "funky cousin" suit. Faaantastic.

Like I said, it was a more low-key night. We got back to the hotel and into bed around 2:30 a.m. The final tally for Saturday was:

3 margaritas
2 beers (one was a to-go beer, while walking around a park!)
3 jack and cokes at the piano bar

Got up the next day, ate some breakfast and drove back. All the weekend did for me was reinforce the need for drunken cousin debauchery way more often.

I would go back to Savannah tonight for a repeat performance. After everything that has gone on the past several weeks and months, I needed this more than I can even explain. All in all, on a scale of 1 to 10, the weekend in Savannah gets a 73.

Check out part one of the story here and part two of the story here!

So! In other news, tomorrow is my birthday. It's the first birthday I haven't been excited about. I'd like to post again tomorrow because I'm heading back home on Friday and likely won't write anything after spending, what I can only imagine will be, the whole day in the car. And then I'm heading out for a softball friend's birthday on Saturday night! Hey-oh! I'm a busy guy these days.

That's all I've got for now. LET'S GO!

-BG

Ohhhh Savannah Part 2

My Weekend in Savannah; Or Why You Shouldn't Send a Text Saying "I'm at a Hospital" after Midnight Part 2

Here's the thing about me. I'm not a heavy drinker. At all. Every once in a while, I throw a ridiculous night in there. But for the most part, if I'm out drinking with friends, I feel a pretty good buzz after maybe four drinks. It doesn't take much.

By the time we got back to the hotel after the second bar on Friday afternoon to prepare for our haunted pub crawl, I was at least 10 or 11 drinks deep. So it's around 7:30 p.m. I think, and I'm gone.

I remember getting into a cab to get to the starting point of the pub crawl, a bar called Moon River. I have absolutely no recollection of the cab ride there. Apparently, my brother, my cousin Lindsey and Lindsey's two friends joined me in the cab, and there was a lively discussion about tattoos and possibly getting some later on? (We didn't, apparently.)

I don't know.

My memory catches back up when I'm standing at the bar with Lindsey's two friends (Laura and Nicole), ordering a water before we head down to the basement for the start of the haunted tour. The water definitely helped, as I remember everything else the rest of the night.

On the whole, the haunted pub crawl was only OK. It was pretty cool to walk around downtown Savannah and near River Street and just kind of hang out.

The first stop was the best, with some pretty cool stories of people seeing things and strange happenings. I'm afraid the alcohol has robbed me of the details of the stories. So we're downstairs in the basement of the first bar, and I'm talking to Jeb and we notice these two girls standing reasonably near us.

I start chatting them up as we're going through the tour, just talking and hanging out. We go upstairs to the bar to get a to-go drink (no open container laws for the win! We brought drinks from the previous bar to each new bar all weekend).

The girls and I walk outside because the tour is getting ready to leave. We get to the next bar when I look around and see Uncle Steven, his girlfriend Kim and...none of the rest of our party.

Matt, Jeb, Lindsey, Nicole and Laura are just gone. We couldn't even make it past the first bar without losing 60 percent of our party. Sigh.

I start getting texts from Matt and Jeb, which ends up being a theme of the night, except I'm in the middle of a city I've never been and, oh yeah, drunk. I have no idea where I am, which also ends up being a theme of the night.

As I said, the tour was unremarkable, but the bars were pretty cool. We're in the second bar on the couch just relaxing before we leave for the next stop when the tour guide gathers everyone outside to leave. Uncle Steven came up to me to say he and Kim were calling it a night because it was like 9:30ish at that point. I, obviously, was not ready to head back just yet.

So the party of eight we left the hotel with to go on the tour was now down to just me after only the second stop on the haunted pub crawl.

There were two more stops on the tour. I bought the girls a drink at the third stop, some kind of cider. Pretty tasty, I think. But I have to be honest, I don't really remember what anything tasted like at that point.

Matt and Jeb kept texting me to find out where I was, but I had nothing. My only directions were "we turned left at a light, and then right down an alley." So, yeah. Not very helpful.

At the last stop on the tour, the three of us get one more round of drinks, and the girls ask me if I want to join them on the midnight zombie tour they have next. Yes I do. Yes. I do. The tour actually did sound pretty awesome -- going around cemeteries and haunted houses, etc.

One small problem. They didn't know where the tour was supposed to start. Obviously I did not either. So we just kind of wandered around Savannah, trying to find a group of people on a tour. We walked and walked. Turned down this street and that street. They called their hotel (where they booked the tour), and the hotel said it was starting at some bar called Cleary's I think? We finally find Cleary's, and we get there right at the meeting time for the tour. There are no people. Of course there aren't. We do the only thing we can do and keep wandering.

There are squares all over the city with parks in them. We turned a corner and saw there was a square with a cemetery in it. This looked promising. We made our way to the other side of the cemetery, and there's the tour! We'd somehow only missed the introductions.

The wandering around, however, did nothing to help my bearings or sense of where I was in the city. So Matt and Jeb kept texting, and I kept saying things like:

"I don't know where I am."
"I've never been to this city before. I'm drunk. It's pitch black. It's after midnight. What makes you think I can answer these questions?"
"There are houses around. Does that help?"
"You keep asking for locations, but I don't know what to tell you. Houses don't have signs."

So on the tour we go.

There's a house in Savannah that no one wants to own. Hasn't been lived in for more than a hundred years. The house has no electricity -- it doesn't even have a power box to make it capable of having electricity. Allegedly, a girl was found tied up in a chair in the window in the late 1800s. Dead, naturally. If you take a picture of the window, you're supposed to be able to see funny green orb-like lights in the window where she was found.

Of course, I forgot my camera. Like you do. But! One guy tried to take a picture, but the battery jumped out of his camera and hit the ground as he tried to snap the photo. So. That happened.

This is getting pretty long again. Part three coming soon, with the exciting conclusion and why my family refers to me as the funky cousin. Yes, really. Holla.

Ohhhh Savannah Part 1

Sorry for missing my Wednesday and Friday posts last week. This whole driving to Charlotte and then to Savannah thing really threw me off. Anyway, I've got some stories from the weekend, and I'll share them here. I'll probably break it up into at least two parts so you aren't faced with too much of a ridiculous post. Anyway, here's part one!

My Weekend in Savannah; Or Why You Shouldn't Send a Text Saying "I'm at a Hospital" after Midnight Part 1

Let me tell you something about Savannah: It is awesome. Like, for real.

As you know, I drove from DC to Charlotte on Wednesday, and then from Charlotte to Savannah on Friday morning.

Two of my cousins had been planning this trip for a couple months, and they were trying to get everyone down there to have a little fun together. We always have such a ridiculously great time together, and we absolutely need to do this more often than just weddings. Yearly, etc. And the great thing, as observed by my uncle, is it doesn't matter how long we've been apart, or how long it's been since we've seen each other. We get together, and it's like we hang out and talk to each other every day. It's never awkward; it's never weird or strained. We just get together, and we know we're having a great time.

I really wanted to do this trip from the first I heard about it, but I always just kind of figured I wouldn't be able to go because of everything going on with the job thing, and it's an insane drive from DC to Savannah, etc. Just seemed like it wouldn't work out. Well, things have changed over the past several weeks, and I suddenly was overwhelmed with the desire to go out and drink and participate in general debauchery (the sorts of things at which my cousins are quite good).

My cousin Jeb messaged me on Facebook chat on Tuesday in a last ditch effort to get me to come. I'd already resigned myself to missing it. With the dog, it just was a lot of logistics to work out.

Then I started thinking. Matty is in Charlotte. Charlotte ended up being less than a four-hour drive from Savannah. My dad travels around a lot for work, and I knew my mom was going to be in Florida watching my sister's dog because she was going to be in Chicago hanging out alone for back-to-back NKOTBSB concerts. I know. Long story. But! It turned out my dad was coming back to Charlotte early on Friday. If I could get myself to Charlotte, the logistics behind the drive became much more palatable.

So I just said, in so many words, "fuck it." I told Jeb I was in. I called home and told them I was driving home the next day, and we were going to do it. Spontaneity has never been a strength of mine. I've always been a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. Take it as it comes. Just kind of hanging out and seeing what happens. Well I figured I would change it up a little, stop thinking and planning and just do it.

I packed a bag and left the next day.

My brother and I left at 8 a.m. on Friday. I knew we'd have to come home on Sunday, so I wanted to get there as early as possible to maximize our time in Savannah.

I should have known how things would go when I called my cousin Jeb around noon to let him know we were close, and he was still in bed because of the night out before. Turns out he, his sister Lindsey and Lindsey's two friends were out until 5:30 a.m.

We grabbed some lunch at a cafe around the corner and walked down to River Street. The car stayed parked at the hotel the whole weekend, which was fantastic. We were close enough to walk everywhere we needed to go.

Once we got to River Street, Jeb was complaining because we'd been there for an hour and hadn't had a drink yet. So Jeb, Lindsey, my brother and I found a place called Bernie's Oyster House. I was drawn in by a sign promising sweet tea with bourbon in it. As I said on Facebook that afternoon, it's like they knew I was coming.

Oh boy were they fantastic. It was just after 1 p.m., and things went progressively downhill from there.

The bourbon sweet teas were like silk. I told the bartender it didn't even taste like there was any alcohol in it, and he responded by saying he put in a lot more the usual because he liked our group. Great success.

Well I had four of those bourbon sweet teas. And, as I recorded on Facebook, the first shot of the weekend occurred at 2:34 p.m. I believe it was a Washington apple. Two lemon drops followed not too long after.

We ended up staying at Bernie's until around 5 p.m., just hanging out and drinking a lot. One of Lindsey's friends met up with us there, and so did my uncle and his girlfriend. From there, we went to another bar, but I was most definitely drunk by that point -- along with my cousins and brother -- and have no idea what that bar was. It was pretty wide open, with some pool tables and bottles of Sweetwater Blue -- a great beer that tastes like blueberry muffins. If you've been to the World Beer Festival in Raleigh (well I'm sure it's in many place, but I went to the Raleigh beer fest), you may have tasted this beer. So good.

I think I had two or three. Honestly, this is the point in the evening where things get a little fuzzy. We walked back to our hotel, and Jeb and I hung out in the courtyard area outside with another beer or two while we waited for everyone to get ready to go to our haunted pub crawl.

The pub crawl is where things really got interesting. Part 2 to come!