"Oh my god there's a riot in Belgium!"

*Sorry about the random title, but it's from my favourite new French dance trash song. Learn to love it.

Ah, so the weekend. It was actually pretty awesome, even though it technically should have been horrible with having to move apartments etc. A few more details...

FRIDAY

I actually made a really poor showing at my work quarterly events. We ended up at the trots, which is like a ghetto version of the horse races, except these horses pull buggies, and the people who attend this sort of racing are possibly the most wretched slice of humanity I've been exposed to since I had to meet a friend outside an exit from the Staten Island Ferry terminal (I'm telling you people, it was like standing watch at the Gates of Hell). I was hoping there would be a Wikipedia page to explain what the trots are, but entering that ends up redirecting to the entry for diarrhea. It was gross, but not that gross. Between the disgusting characters around me, a horrid hangover, and the fact that I was bleeding through my wifebeater, I ended up heading home before 9pm while everyone else partied until two or so in the morning. Ah well, at least I preserved my dignity. Not everyone else in my office was that fortunate.

SATURDAY

Ah, the day of the big move. I literally hadn't packed a thing before I woke up on Saturday morning. Fortunately for all of my friends who had offered to help, I am an insane planner. I had emailed out a schedule of events a couple of days beforehand, and everything went according to plan, with the truck returned within 4 hours and only costing about $50.

The fun really started when we convened at Paddy's place afterwards. Actually it was off to a slow start, with all of us just sitting around drinking and talking, and even observing Earth Hour to recognize the threat of global warming. (I'd also like to take a moment to talk about the ridiculous difference between international news web sites and the same company's website for Americans. One has articles about Darfur, global warming, and political unrest. The latter has enthralling headlines such as "Hilary Duff feels pressure to be thin". There's a reason we're all idiots.)

However we felt like the night needed a boost, and everyone agreed that a bottle of tequila and a drinking game was in order. We tried to think of a game, when Juice finally remembered the rules for "The Circle of Death". This involved spreading a deck of playing cards in a circle, and having each person take a card in turn. Each number corresponded to a different result -- so if you picked a 4, all the girls had to do a shot. And if you picked a 7, you had to perform a dare, or do a shot instead. As a result, two people ended up playing most of the game in their briefs (made that much better because one of them definitely had Wolverine on his crotch).

But the best one was if someone drew an ace, which meant they got to make a rule. Juice decided that the rule would be that no one was allowed to say the name of anyone in the room. Do you have any idea how hard that is? This was made even better when I pulled an ace and declared that no one could swear, meaning that everyone was doing double shots because they'd accidentally say someone's name and follow that with an expletive.

You know when everyone is laughing so hard that they are crying, and start to laugh in really strange ways you've never heard before because they are having serious trouble breathing? It was just like that, for about 3 hours straight. We took a short break so that I could run out and get another bottle of tequila, which was gone in less than 30 minutes.

I staggered back to my new place around midnight or one, although a couple members of the crew managed to go out partying until about 6am. How they accomplished that is a pure mystery to me as I distinctly remember stopping off at an Indian take-away place and having the cashier laugh at me because I could barely stand up. Dancing was definitely out of the question.

SUNDAY

Woke up feeling awful, but managed to set up my new room properly (pics of the new place can be found here) and then met a coworker for breakfast in the new neighborhood.

I then headed into the city to meet my aunt and uncle from England for a nice lunch at Cafe Sydney, where I've been dying to go since I moved here, and it lived up to expectations.

Eventually I headed home, cleaned up around the apartment, inhaled a pizza, and passed out by 8pm to sleep off whatever tequila was still sitting around in my body.