Professional Slacker

Fry and Duff flew in on Tuesday night to spend a few nights with me before they headed back to NYC. I somehow managed to ensure that I had not one meeting on Wednesday, so I called in sick, and we decided to take a long boozy lunch at Cafe Sydney, possibly my favorite restaurant here.


This all would have been a little more enjoyable if, while sitting on the bus to the restaurant, I hadn't looked out the window and seen my main client standing directly in front of us. I'm still not sure if he saw me or not, but I figure we can maintain a don't ask-don't tell policy and avoid making things awkward.

Once I was over that, we had a fantastic lunch for a couple of hours, did some drunk shopping, and then headed to the Dolphin to keep drinking wine, making it a 10 hour binge session. Combined with showing up late and leaving early on Thursday and Friday, I don't think I'll be winning employee of the month anytime soon.

And as some sort of sweet revenge from my client, I will definitely have to spend a few hours in the office today to get something ready for a 9am meeting on Monday. Considering I've spent so little time in the office this week and not working on a weekend in months, I'll just get over it. And I'm thinking the ready supply of free beer in the office will help.

Top Form

I can't even bother to try and fully describe the madness of the last week, so here's my laziest attempt.

I flew down to Melbourne on a "business trip" on Thursday night, for one meeting on Friday morning. At the last minute the client tried to tell me that I shouldn't bother, but I'd already made plans to meet up with friends for drinks, so I insisted that I be there for such a valuable meeting, and got on the flight anyway. The client probably wasn't impressed when I showed up hungover to the Friday meeting, having been out drinking and dancing until 3 in the morning, but it's so hard to care at times like that.

I normally would have stayed in Melbourne for another night, but I flew back to Sydney for our work quarterly event, which was salsa dancing lessons (while drinking endless amounts of sangria) followed by tequila shots and cigars. I unfortunately headed off to another bar just before one of our senior managers was sitting on a couch, leaned over to get something off the table, and simply keeled over onto the floor, to the utter shock of anyone in the vicinity.

Saturday was deceptively quiet until I went to some farewell drinks around 7pm, where everyone was about an hour ahead of me on the bottles of wine. After everyone insisted that I accompany them later to a dance club, they started dropping like flies around midnight, so I grabbed my friend Rina and headed to crash my coworkers sister's bachelorette party nearby. I give myself points for not stripping, but I don't actually remember getting home.

And on Sunday, I was close to death, but still managed a few beers at a BBQ before going to a Eurovision party to celebrate all of the weirdness and tacky shit that is Europe and their taste in entertainment. Potentially a proper post coming on that one later.

Anyway, it's now Tuesday, and even if I hadn't had an awful day and want to murder my main client, Fry and Duff are flying in tonight to stay with me for 4 nights, so I'm calling in sick to go drinking tomorrow. Life is good -- my liver, not so much.

Ungrateful

Forgot to mention this before, but as I was so ridiculously hungover last Sunday, I didn't get around to doing much. This included calling my mother for Mother's Day.

And so, I woke up on Monday morning to an email from my mother, to both myself and my brother, with the subject line "Happy Mother's Day" and the message "Thanks for nothing."

Anyone I've told about this simply responds with "Your mom is awesome." I, on the other hand, thinks the woman lives for these moments.

I promptly followed up with an apology phone call and painfully expensive bouquet of flowers to be delivered the next day, with an essence of guilt included.

(My brother said he had mailed a card, which eventually arrived at my mother's house on the other side of the Atlantic having been postmarked for one day before Mother's Day. When this was mentioned he promptly denied that he had waited until the last minute to send the card, which I find hilarious since there's hard evidence to the contrary.)

Isn't It Great...

...how going over to a friend's new apartment to check it out and have a glass of wine can turn into a drunk two person 90's dance party in the blink of an eye?

Ouch.

Left Just In Time

I was rather proud of myself for not drinking for an entire 4 and a half days last week, before realizing that if that's considered an achievement, I might actually have a problem.

That all left me not particularly in the mood to drink during the weekend, but I still managed to drag myself to a couple of bars on Friday night, and then out for what I knew would be a big night on Saturday. You know you've taken a wrong turn somewhere when a girl you literally met a couple of minutes before is telling you about the aftermath of the first time she tried anal sex. It takes a lot to leave me speechless, but I simply had to end that conversation with "I'm sorry, but I am not discussing this with you right now.", and headed back to my friends.

I hung out with that marginally more civilized group for a few more drinks, moved onto a seedy club in the Cross, and then decided it was best that my night come to an end, since I was spending the next day with my family and didn't want to show up looking too awful. (I still ended up taking a two hour nap on their couch though.)

The highlight of the night that I'm actually thrilled I missed, however, was that apparently just after I left the group of girls I was with, one of them decided to get a meat pie (it's an Aussie thing), and another one reacted so badly to the smell that she started spewing everywhere. Even better, she informed me of this a couple of days later by writing it on my Facebook wall. And I thought I had no shame...

That Other Dirty Word

I mentioned to my colleague that I was trying not to drink for most of this week due to my ridiculous drunken behavior over the previous weekend. And he had the nerve to tell me that I should try...DETOX.

I cannot stand that word and what it implies for so many reasons, some of them being:

1) I fail to see the point. Oh wow, you get to feel and look great for a few days. And then you go back to your old habits, and look and feel like shit all over again. Rock on.

2) I absolutely hate it when otherwise fun and boisterous friends decide they are going to detox, therefore depriving me of a drinking buddy. It's just utterly selfish, really.

3) In my professional medical opinion, it's just as unhealthy as going on a crash diet. Unless you have the ability to maintain it as a lifestyle (and therefore sacrifice the things that make life worth living), then once you start up again it will be even more of a shock to the system. Just call me Doctor Zander.


Anyway, I had made it FIVE days without drinking (I actually don't remember the last time I did that) and was thinking about holding out until Friday (tomorrow), but now that I've been provoked, I plan to drink as much as I damn well feel like tonight, and feel like crap tomorrow. That'll show 'em.

Unnecessary

My weekend started out alright on Friday night, where I found my way to bed by midnight, and woke up on Saturday feeling quite alright.

So naturally Saturday descended to a level of drunkeness that I have since deemed totally excessive and unnecessary. I woke up on Sunday in a condition I haven't experienced since possibly my 21st birthday, with absolutely no recollection of how I got home. I also had no ATM card, but I'm guessing I just dropped it on the ground somewhere.

I actually don't remember much after around 8pm, which is probably the most appalling part. But I was definitely out partying until after 2am, by all accounts. Apparent highlights include:

"Do you remember when you fell down the stairs and hit your head on that metal pole and you said you were fine but you decided to lay on the ground until the taxi showed up?"

"You almost walked into a tree on Oxford Street, much to the amusement of everyone sitting at a cafe nearby."

"They wouldn't let you into the Colombian so you came and had a slice of pizza and then tried to get in again...and they actually let you in!"

"I don't understand how you got into Iguana..."


Yeah, awesome. I am actually going to try not to drink until Friday. Wish me luck.

Help Needed To Risk Losing My Job

Okay, so this is a cry for help. We've just received confirmation of the theme for my firm's ball this year, and it's apparently Sparkle & Sophistication.

I find this extremely boring. Last year the theme was Gotham City, which resulted in some of the most entertaining costumes I've ever seen at a party. And my main concern is that without proper costumes, people will get boring and just try to look good.

Screw that. As we know, I am completely incapable of taking a party theme seriously. Please refer to my recent wearing of female genitalia on my head at a wig party.

So...what should I wear? A few options have crossed my mind. I could locate one of those Bedazzler things from the 80's and attach cheap plastic rhinestones to an old suit, and look like a tacky jerk who is trying to be sophisticated. Or I could just go completely in the opposite direction, and show up in rags, with a shopping cart and perhaps a strange and hard-to-identify odor.

Suggestions are welcome. And mandatory.

Analysis of a Weekend

For some reason, I feel like doing one of my time line rundowns of my weekend. Keeps things short and punchy, and it's also a lot easier than trying to write full paragraphs.

FRIDAY

4.37pm - Begin drinking in the work weekly meeting.

5.29pm - Leave the meeting a bit tipsy, as usual, and head to the pub with a few coworkers.

8.04pm - The only one left at the pub with the big boss. Get boss drunk and interrogate her about the details of her dating life. Swear not to tell anyone else in the office about it all.

10.12pm - Realize I've been drinking for almost 6 hours on an empty stomach, which is a bit much for a quiet night. Head home, but not before reminding the boss that I now know all sorts of details about her personal life, and it might be in her best interests to ensure I get a good performance rating in the upcoming reviews. Throw in a totally not genuine "Just kidding!" at the end of my warning.


SATURDAY

4.11am - Wake up at this ungodly hour yet again due to my awful insomnia.

6.03am - Decide to go for a swim.

6.48am - Blog about awful experience at the pool.

8.58am - Finish cleaning every inch of my apartment (probably some manifestation of my psychological need to cleanse myself after previously blogged traumatic experience) and decide that it is the last productive and responsible thing I am doing all weekend. Begin plotting ways to balance out all this responsibility with some sort of shenanigans.

10.40am - Make plans to meet Muthy for lunch at the Grand National.

1.07pm - Arrive late for lunch, make up for it by buying the first round of drinks. Briefly envision the downward spiral that surely lies ahead, but get distracted talking about myself.

4.17pm - Inform Muthy that in return for the last round of drinks I bought, I expect her to accompany me to a sex shop to buy something a little more interesting than a regular wig to wear to Brownie's farewell/birthday party that evening.

4.32pm -Agree that as drunk as we are, we could definitely use just one more round of drinks at the next bar we come across before we're ready for sex shopping.

5:02pm - After stumbling around a sex shop named "The Tool Shed" for far too long, and asking the cashiers "DO YOU HAVE ANY FAKE VAGINAS?!" and then after perusing their selection tell them "These are actually rather functional. I was thinking something more decorative." Happen to find the last strap-on latex vagina in the store, and happily pay $27.95 for it. (Bargain!)

5:43pm - Arrive home much later than intended, and rush through showering, eating, and getting dressed, only to inexplicably sit down and have a completely unnecessary beer on the couch before heading out.

6:28pm - Finally get to Brownie's place for the champagne toast and some cake. Everything tastes so much better when you're wasted.

7.30pm - Head down to The Golden Sheaf for the party with my rock mullet wig on, and as each guest arrives, reveal the fact that I have a latex vagina underneath.

9.02pm - Do a shot apparently known as a "Wet Pussy". How disturbingly appropriate.

10.46pm - Tequila shot.

1.42am - After dancing for hours and finally getting kicked out of the top floor, tell the bouncer to "hold on a second" and insist that the whole 2nd floor sings Happy Birthday to Brownie. Bouncer not amused.


SUNDAY

Not really sure what time I got home or woke up, but the odd part is that I felt 100% fine. I even went to a Swans game (some kind of rugby football thing) and totally enjoyed myself. Which means that Sunday was basically some oddity that will never happen again, where I am immune to hangovers and enjoy sports.


So yeah. Great weekend. And I'm not sure I can ever really top going to a bar with a vagina on my head, so I may actually just kill myself any day now since there's nothing more to live for. Just a quick warning.

Trauma

I suppose I should be blogging about being drunk, but other than getting smashed at a client dinner on Wednesday, or delving into the topic of wearing fake plastic vaginas on our heads with my senior leadership team from work last night, I've been really well behaved this week.

No, what I want to talk about is the traumatic experience I went through just moments ago. You see, I've had major insomnia over the last few weeks. This means that no matter how late I go to sleep or how much I drink, I wake up at 4am in the morning. It's awful. But more on that later.

So, I woke up this fine Saturday morning at 4am, and around 6ish I decided I should make use of this time and go for a swim, as I usually only do during the week. I headed down to the pool, swam a bunch of laps, and then decided that since I had all this time I may as well go to the sauna and relax a little. Might even help with my insomnia, right?

After about ten minutes, some fat 75-year old man walks in, wearing blue speedos with some sort of leopard print down the front. Uh, okay. Whatever. People make poor fashion choices, even when it comes to swimwear. I can relate to that. However, that excuse was no longer valid when he donned a little straw hat and some odd-looking gloves, whipped out some massive eucalyptus leaves, and started beating them all over his body. Not exactly the relaxing atmosphere I'd bargained for. But I figured, he'll be done any moment now. No need to look too rude and rush out.

And oh how I regretted that otherwise tactful decision when I looked over again and he was NAKED (except for the hat and gloves, naturally) and still beating himself with leaves. I'm sorry, but would it really have KILLED YOU to NOT brush eucalyptus leaves on your genitals until after I had left the room? Seriously? Is there even a description of how unnecessary that was?

At this point I knew I had to get the hell out, and so I got up to walk out and he looks at me and says in some thick Russian accent (I assume Russian because what other people could be so tacky and oblivious to others), "HOT?"

Um. No. Not hot. At all. Actually, I think my libido may be in hiding for at least a couple of weeks after this one, buddy. I might even suggest that advocates of abstinence take a video of this whole scene and show it to blossoming teenage girls. I don't even think I can eat breakfast for a few hours now. NOT HOT. You fucking weirdo.

Next Up: How Many Babies Could You Eat?

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