ok, so the weekend started out with brothers chris and matt picking me up from my house… route 50 was a parking lot. once we made it to the bay bridge, though, it sped up and we made pretty good time. chris and matt kept talking about their jobs at bwi (lucky!), so i was a little jealous of them, if not for the pay they’re supposed to be getting – they haven’t got their first paycheck yet… need to be fingerprinted first and that’s taking a while to do – but also for the money they’re making now. it’ll be better once i get hired at verizon wireless, though. we had a little bit of trouble finding james’ place, but made it there at the same time as everyone else.

we all grouped up to head out to brew river and it was starting to pour, but didn’t have any problems getting there. well, actually, most of us didn’t have any problems – 4 or 5 of the guys who were already 21 left a half-hour earlier than the rest of us to hit up the bar at brew river, but they ended up getting lost along the way and apparently went the wrong way on route 50 and ended up at ocean city or something (james’ place is about 30-40 minutes from there, and 20 minutes away from ocean city). when we got there they had us in a room just off of the main dining room (i guess they got some sense this year, haha). when we got in that room it had two long tables, one for us, and the other for this group of elderly people that were taking a group picture before leaving. one of the guys asked if he could get in the picture with them, so one of their pictures has all these old people and one random guy standing in there, hehe. the table we were at was set up for 20-something people, but we had maybe half of that there (it ended up being about 15 or so guys there). took a while for the food – we kept telling the waiter to wait before taking orders in case the other group arrived – so we had been sitting around for about an hour before placing orders. i got a ribeye steak with 4 or 5 shrimp, with green beans (that turned out to be really spicy… HOW can green beans be spicy??) and applesauce (yum!). while we were waiting for the food this girl with this huge basket of bread kept coming in and giving us rolls and muffins and stuff like that. once the other guys arrived and we got our food, one of the guys took his mini serving of butter for his rolls and asked the waiter who should be the lucky one that gets to eat it, and he pointed at me ^_^;; the guys were cracking up and thought it was good sport of me to go along with it, and they got a picture that they’ll probably be putting up on our website.

went back to james’ place and hung out. sat around and talked politics and spy conspiracy stuff and all sorts of stuff with chris and steve (he’s the one who told me about the conet project in the first place). we watched some stuff on tv, but i don’t remember what it is now. we ended up falling asleep around 4:30-5 am just as it was beginning to become light outside ^_^;;

saturday began waking up around 9 am (hooray for 4 hours of sleep). we started our business meeting at 10 and got our events and stuff for the fall all planned out and set, and we originally planned to leave for the beach between 2-4 pm. we ended up getting “die another day” off of pay-per-view and watching that (we were all about the girls in the movie, bond girl or not), then we had dinner, hung around for a little bit more, and finally left around 8 pm. when we got to ocean city we ended up stuck in traffic for a long time, tried to find a parking space for another long time, and didn’t get the car parked (all the way down by the bay at the end of 6th street). we walked up and down the boardwalk for a while (the guys who were already over 21 went off to a bar while the rest of us wandered around.

funnyness ensued when we stopped at a stand for lemonade and funnel cakes, and the girl at the counter had an accent. (ocean city usually has lots of people from foreign countries working jobs there). one of the guys asked her where she was from and she said she was from poland, so one guy who’s got some polish ancestry said “hey, so am i!” and she started to try to talk at him in polish, until he basically said he wasn’t really from poland, hehe. as that was happening, squirrely tried to convince me to hit on some hawt chix that were walking around the boardwalk (he said i have to uphold my reputation, especially now that i’m the social chair). i didn’t, though… ^_^;;;;

one guy walking around saw us wearing our lambda chi letters and as he passed said to us “every man a man!” so we gave him a thumbs up, hehe.

we split into two groups when a few of the under-21 guys went off to find the over-21 guys and hang out. i told the guys i was with how squirrely tried to convince me to try to pick up chicks, and ryan decided that since he held the office of kappa (fraternity educator) he’d do a mini fraternity education session right then and there on how to pick up chicks. we didn’t do anything but talk about it, though. 😛 we wandered up and down the boardwalk and met up with everyone else (this was around 11:30), and we all went to “the dough roller” to get some eats.

when we realized it was after midnight the guys who were over 21 at a seperate table told me to come sit over with them, they asked the waitress for a seperate cup, she checked my id and said happy birthday. it was some fruity wine sort of drink they were having (don’t remember what it was), but it wasn’t bad. we split up after that, with most of the guys going either back to james’ place or to walk the boardwalk some more, and myself and 4 other guys went out to the bars. (they originally were going to take me to a bar called “BAR” – no kidding – but the waitress said that was a crappy bar and gave us two suggestions to go to, so we took her advice).

first we went to this place called “the cork bar”, and the doorman checked my id, checked his watch, said “well i’ll be” and said to go on in. it had all sorts of fireman / policeman paraphernalia on the walls chris was going to get me a double vodka and coke, but since it seemed “BAR” was the only bar that accepted credit/debit cards one of the other guys got it for me. the lady sitting next to us heard that it was my birthday and congratulated me, hehe.

after that we went to “the bearded clam” (o_o;). it was just before last call, so the doorman called in to the bartenders and said “HEY! IT’S THIS GUY’S BIRTHDAY? SHOULD WE LET HIM IN?? OR SHOULD WE BE MEAN AND KEEP HIM OUT??”, and the bartenderes said yeah, let me in, so we went on in. since brian (one of the guys who left to go straight to james’ place after the dough roller so he could get ready to go home) gave john $5 to get me a black russian, john ordered me one, but the bartender said that a mind eraser would be better. (my head still hurts just looking at the pic of it online, haha). after i had that i felt a little queasy and ran off to the bathroom, and just being in there made me feel better. went to the bathroom and came back out a little wobbly but still ok. the seahag of a lady sitting next to us had a grating laugh that went “HAAAAAHHHH!!! HAAAHHH!! HAAAHHHHHHH!!!!”, and she started asking us questions, laughing after every question and every answer:

seahag: *to our group* “HOW OLD ARE YOU?”

me: “21”

seahag: “HAAAAAHHHHHHHAAHHHHHHH!!! I KNEW THAT!!”

me: “well, i turned 21 like… 45 minutes ago.”

seahag: “HAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!! THAT’S GREAT!!!! HAAAAHHHHH HHAAAAAAAHHHHH HAHHHHHHHH!!!”

us: ^_^;

seahag’s husband wanders over

seahag: *to husband* “DO YOU REMEMBER WHEN YOU WERE 21?? HAAAHHHHHH!!!”

husband: *mumbles*

seahag: *to us* “HAAAAAAHHHH!! HOW OLD DO YOU THINK I AM?? HAAAAHHHH HAHAAAHHH!!”

chris: “uh, 29-30?”

seahag: “I LIKE YOU!! HAAAHHHHH HHAAAAHHHH!!! I’M 36!!”

husband: *whispers to us* “42”

seahag: “HHAAAAAAHHHH HHHAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!”

we ended up leaving there and going back along the boardwalk to meet up with our friends again. since chris was driving he didn’t really have anything at these two bars, so on our way along the boardwalk we had 4 drunk guys and one not-so-drunk guy teetering around and talking loudly at each other past the other people on the boardwalk and the policemen on horseback. chris had to convince matt that petting the horses was not the smartest thing to do at the moment. we bumped into some other lambda chis from who-knows-where (i think they said millersville?) and tried to talk to them for a few minutes, hehe… i remember trying to explain the shirt i was wearing:

see, we go to umbc, and some people think it’s funny to say “oh, you’re going to yoU Made a Bad Choice, haw haw haw”, so we made up rush shirts that say in bold text on the front:

and on the back of these shirts it said “NOW MAKE A BETTER ONE – RUSH LAMBDA CHI ALPHA”, hehe. i remember trying to explain this while drunk, pointing at each seperate line as i said each word that stood for UMBC, but since “you” and “made” were on the same line and i pointed at “you” and pointed at the next line – “bad” – while saying “made”, i couldn’t quite figure out why i kept pointing twice on “choice”, hehe ^_^; so what i ended up doing when trying to demonstrate was…

*point at “you”* “you”

*point at “bad”* “made”

*point at “choice”* “a bad”

*point at “choice” again* “choice”

*look confused at the shirt*

we met up with our friends, john went off with them and matt, dave, chris, and i went off to chris’ car. there were 3 or so people sitting on the porch of the house we parked in front of, and i didn’t notice them until we got in the car, and while we were sitting there getting our bearings the number of people on the porch tripled. i guess they wanted to watch us, lol.

chris got gas for his car and drove back to james’ place. for the better part of the drive matt was talking with some girl he knew (i don’t think it was his girlfriend), and we were betting that after that conversation he had (i don’t remember most of it, haha) he’s now single again, hehe… ^_^; chris stopped off at a gas station on the way back to get a soda, and i wandered in to the bathroom – i had to lean my head agains the wall while taking my leak since the room was starting to spin. ^_^;; wandered back out to the car, and we continued along our way. twice on the way back, about 10 minutes from james’ place, i had to have chris pull to the side of the road so i could pop the door open and puke in the grass. ^_^;;; we got to james’ place, wandered in, and i got a cup of water. sat down, and after about 10 minutes ran out the front door to yakk in his flowerbed. sat in a chair on the porch and almost fell asleep there until chris came out to tell me i’d get bit like crazy by mosquitos, so i wandered inside, sat on the couch, pulled someone’s sleeping bag over me like a blanket and fell asleep.

i woke up this morning around 8:30 and was the first one awake. i guess i felt so refreshed because i actually got a decent amount of sleep, and most of the alcohol was out of my system from the puking on the way home. ^_^;;; took off my shoes and fell back asleep for 2 hours, and dreamed i was drunk again and at some amusement park. when i woke up then i was fine when i was sitting down, but standing up made the room feel like it was starting to spin, so i sat back down again, hehe. spent most of the morning packing up while holding my stomach, and chris and matt and i piled into chris’ car and left after 11:30. since we were about 40 minutes from ocean city we were already beating much of the beach traffic and didn’t have any problems getting back, and got back to my place just after 1:30.

i took a nap when i got back (see previous post), and woke up around 7-something when mom and dad called to say they were still in ocean city. i’ve been sitting here nursing a coke after i woke up, and for the most part the room has stopped spinning, but now i’ve got a headache.

it’s felt weird this weekend… thursday-saturday it felt like this wasn’t happening to me as if it was some out-of-body experience or something, and i didn’t feel like i was myself again until i woke up this morning. i seemed to notice that people said “21” in regular conversation a lot more than it usually seemed, haha. now the parents are home from the beach, and i’m going to find something to munch on. and some aspirin.