So Much For Being Good

I decided to meet up with Juice for "just 2 beers" after work yesterday, which turned into 6 of us drinking on empty stomachs for three and a half hours or so.

I ended up stumbling home and grabbing some chicken tikka on the way. After only about 6 beers. I blame the fact that I hadn't had anything to drink in 3 days.

Lesson learned: Don't stop drinking.

Bring on the weekend.

Cabin Fever

As expected, it was an awesome and relaxing weekend down the coast for the 4-day Easter Weekend. It actually rained for the first day or so, and in an effort to do something other than drink the whole time we were trapped indoors, we decided games were the way to go.

One game I'd never played before, but is officially my favorite game ever at this point, is Fishbowl. To sum it up as quickly as possible, each person playing writes around 4 well-known names on pieces of paper and throws them into a bowl. You split into teams and each team takes turns going through as many names as they can in a minute. In the first round it's like Taboo, where you can't say the person's name and your team has to guess them, in the second round (with the same set of names) you can only say one word, and in the third round it's basically charades.

Quick tip for anyone aiming to play -- animated characters work the best. All of mine were Optimus Prime or Papa Smurf. You haven't seen comedy until you've seen a 250lb man mime transforming, or skipping daintily through a forest.

We also played Scattergories, which is actually fun because you get to argue about everyone's answers after each round. Although I couldn't really dispute Fry's accurate, if somewhat racist, selection for "Things That Are Black" starting with the letter 'N'. (That one was even funnier when Keegs responded with "doesn't that start with a 'K'?", and I had to clarify that Fry hadn't said "knickers".)


Anyway, we were pretty grateful when the sun finally came out. Sunday was the best, and we spent the entire day between a couple of beaches, all screaming like girls whenever we stepped on a piece of seaweed. So now I'm tanned and relaxed, and as of this moment I've gone a whole two nights without a drop of alcohol. That ends tonight, but I still think I made a solid effort there.

Carried Away

We had another farewell lunch at work, which meant we headed back to Opera Bar and ordered bottles of wine.

As you can imagine, if you're at lunch and you've just imitated a colleague's mother having sex before the appetizers have arrived, it's probably going to get pretty messy. (Still very sorry about that.)

Eventually the farewell boy gave the most awkward farewell speech ever, basically bitching and moaning about how things have changed and everything sucks now. So I decided to take the high road, and got drunk and told him that if he doesn't like it then he can just leave and let the rest of us enjoy it, instead of sounding like a bitter dickhead. That went down well. Eventually we managed to stumble into the office for about 5 minutes to shut down our computers and grab our stuff, but it was long enough to get disapproving looks from the more serious members of the team, and even have a PA take one look at us and say "You really shouldn't have come back to the office."

And so, to reward myself for my professionalism, I'll be leaving the office at 2 today so a bunch of us can head down to Hyams Beach at Jervis Bay to a house we've rented and chill out for 5 days. It will be a lot like the picture below, but with beer bottles instead of children. See you next week.

That's More Like It

I can only really describe the past few days as somewhat shocking and downright ridiculous. As mentioned last week, I am back in a major party mood, but I guess I thought maybe I'd spread the partying out just a tad.

Friday started with me crashing a farewell event for another group from my company. Despite the dirty looks from the people who had no idea who I was, I accepted a wristband and proceeded to load up on free drinks and food all night for not only myself, but also my 5 team members I'd brought with me.

On Saturday I spent a few hours at the beach before catching the ferry to Manly for far too many bottles of wine with Busty. I decided to head back to the city around 10pm, and figured I could probably go for "just one more". Cut to 4am, when I realized how horrifically drunk I was and decided to head home. Apparently the highlight of the night for the Fisher sisters, who insisted on dragging me to around 7 bars that night, was the following comment that came out of my mouth when a guy in a Transformers shirt started hitting on one of them:

"Hey, AUTOBOT! I'm sure you think you're cute and everything, but this night isn't about you. So get her number, and MOVE ALONG."

I'm guessing that since I don't have any black eyes and my friends are still talking to me that no real damage was done. I'm just going to hope that insulting random guys isn't my new thing when drunk, or I wouldn't bet on myself making it through 2008 alive.

Sunday was yet another drunkfest, when I met up with a few others for lunch at Catalina's in Rose Bay, easily one of the poshest restaurants I've been to in Sydney. After a few bottles of wine we headed to a pub, after which I was off to another pub and ended up drinking with a bunch of people I barely knew at someone's apartment.

I stopped drinking at 10pm and went home only because I had an 8am flight to Melbourne on Monday morning. As you can imagine, a 4-hour workshop plus various other client meetings is not what the body needs after a weekend like mine. And somehow I still managed to have a few glasses of Pinot Grigio in the business class lounge that night before flying back to Sydney.

Not really sure what I was thinking, but it was a fun weekend, even if my kidneys probably have jumped ship by this point and my bank account is a solid $600 lighter. And considering I had a few drinks before coming home tonight, plus I have plans to be quite drunk every night until Monday, let's just look forward to more than a few stories in the few weeks to come.

Sydney, I apologize in advance.

Makes Me Wish I Had One

I first saw this ad on Sunday afternoon, which is apparently when it debuted. Since then everyone has seen it and has been talking about it.

I, for one, think it's awesome, and am more than happy to share it with you all. It's even made the newspapers, although I find it hard to imagine that anyone would really have grounds to ban it.

Otherwise, it's been a busy and interesting week, with a few changes that promise to result in me drinking a lot more in the near future and having much better material for this blog. Hang in there.

Not The Brightest Bulb In The Tanning Bed

Well, Vicki's comment on my expectation of having a quiet weekend was rather prescient - while it wasn't a blowout weekend where I woke up Monday morning unsure of what had happened, it still managed to involve far too much to drink.

Friday was the tamest night, including a drunken viewing of Juno, which was hilarious, although we probably laughed a little too loud thanks to the wine and beer coursing through our veins.

I managed to start out Saturday on a great note, going to help Banx set up for her trade show and having a nice lunch. I then went to meet Murphy and Law at the Tilbury, where they were so far ahead of me in the drinking that I just gave up, and ended up practically carrying Law back to her apartment where she passed out on her sofa at approximately 7pm.

And Sunday I went to meet the family for lunch and way way way too much wine. There is really no excuse for there to be three entire bottles of wine on the table when there are only 4 of us actually drinking the stuff. But we did our part and it was gone before dessert arrived, leading to a very quiet Sunday night at home watching a few TV shows while desperately trying to keep my eyes open.

Since the quiet weekend thing never really works out, I think I might just plan to have a retarded drunkfest this coming weekend, even though there aren't any real plans that I know of. The most dangerous kind of weekend, really...

Still Alive. Mostly.

As usual, I have even more excuses for not blogging for about a week.

I went up to Newcastle with Murphy on Saturday morning. We went to a wedding in the afternoon, and then started drinking and didn't stop until 3ish in the morning. We woke up the next morning to head to the pub and then start drinking again for another 12 hours. I drove us back on Monday morning, and considering how run down I was, I still have no idea how we made it back alive. But I have some awesome pictures.

The next morning I woke up and went straight to Coogee beach for "Management training", due to my recent promotion. As you can imagine, when you have the view pictured here, there's only so much training that's really going to get done. Not to mention that we were treated to a 3 course meal with unlimited wine and beer for about 5 hours that evening. I ended the dinner by high-fiving our company's Chief Marketing Officer as he attempted to leave, and then dragging everyone to the Coogee Bay Hotel for beer and racist jokes. They must be so happy they promoted me.

And just when my liver thought it could have a rest, I met up with Busty on Wednesday night because her long time boyfriend had dumped her, so we split a bottle and a half of wine and talked about what a bastard he was. Which was surprisingly fun.

And of course I came back to the office to deal with hundreds of emails and numerous meetings that people had been kind enough to schedule for me in my absence. hence my hiatus from the blogging world. I will try to be better next week, although considering what a quiet weekend I have planned, it might be really, really boring.

Calm Before The Storm

After a really hectic week at work, and knowing I had a huge weekend ahead of me, I decided to have a quiet Friday night, and limited myself to 4 beers in the office before going home to watch a DVD and falling asleep on the sofa.

I realize it's uncharacteristic of me to be so sensible, but after a day where I was dragged into a "priority meeting" with a client where things were going a bit awry, and I managed to steer the conversation into the topic of leather underwear, it was probably best that I didn't get trashed and see where the night took me. Because that would have been an ugly, ugly place.

So now it's Saturday morning, and even though it's the big Mardi Gras weekend and the parade is tonight, I will actually be skipping all of that this year to drive up to Newcastle with Murphy for a wedding and a drunken weekend out of town. Pictures of me drunk in the boonies will likely be available within a week.