saturday:

had derby practice in the morning (bruised up cynicalscribe in the process), and then went to the fraternity’s house (well, a very large house that a few of the brothers rent that ends up being used as the fraternity house) for the crab feast. i didn’t have crabs, though — i had crab cakes when zenmetsu, his mom, kat and i went to the cameron’s seafood place around the corner from the apartment on friday night, and i figured i didn’t need more crabs.

(going to the seafood place was an experience, however — it took forever for our food to be fixed up, and something was up with the folks working there… i had to tell the guy who took my order exactly where the shrimp cocktail appetizer i was ordering was on the menu: “it’s under APPETIZERS. there’s only TEN THINGS UNDER APPETIZERS.” also, when we went in, as soon as i stepped in the building i sniffed and said “something smells fishy! WHY YES, I SAID IT!“, bahaha…)

anyway, so i had some burgers, vodka-melon, some homebrew beer that some of the other alumni are brewing up (not bad!) and chatted it up with a bunch of brothers that i hadn’t seen in a while. billy, my great-grandbig had also gone to dematha (as well as producer_chris, my big, and webster, my grandbig), and he told me that gabe, an old friend of mine from high school is working for him now. it was also the first time that i had been to the house, and it’s neat in that it’s some old oil-heated plaster house, the sort where you’d expect to find hidden passageways and revolving bookcases. folks even used to call it “the mansion”. i think i heard that it’s on something like 7 acres of land, and that the landlord might be willing to sell it… the fraternity housing group would be willing to help get the land, but the chapter would need to provide something like 10% of the funds, or about $200,000 (the land is sandwiched between campus and a park ‘n ride; it’s pretty much surrounded by state-owned land).

afterwards i went to howl at the moon for my ol’ elementary and high school friend dave’s birthday. i was surprised to see patrick, another friend of mine from elementary and high school there too, as well as rob, a percussionist from our band in high school. i got two drinks for free and that was fine by me. it was pretty crazy there, though… some girl flashed the crowd to win the bucket of booze they were giving away and a guy paid for his three brothers to give lapdances to this bachelorette (the guy who paid had a build like chris farley and whipped his shirt off, yikes!).

dave and patrick and these girls they were with wanted me to get up on stage and do my usual antics, but before i could do that, rob stole the show… first he had about 15 drinks, then he was dancing by shaking his head around like he was either a valley girl or impersonating bruno_boy‘s icon:

then when they played “time warp” from the rocky horror picture show, he was jumping around and shaking his fist in the air all excited… his other hand was holding on to a table, and the table was bouncing all around and the poor girl sitting at the table was having a hard time sitting there with all the bouncing around going on. the manager kind of knows me, and i saw him and one of the bouncers cracking up while watching rob dance.

at one point earlier in the night i heard dave say to rob something about being a percussionist candidate for the national symphony orchestra, and i guess after 15 drinks he thought he was super-perucssionist. when he walked up to the stage, we thought he was going to give a song request or something… but then he squeezed behind the piano player and sat down at the drum kit…

rob: *taps on the drums a few times*

todd the piano player: “look! this guy wants to pay the $40 stage fee to play with the band!”

2 bouncers: *say something to rob about getting off the drum kit*

rob: *SHAKES HEAD NO*

same 2 bouncers: *say something to rob again*

rob: *SHAKES HEAD NO*

3 or 4 bouncers in total: *grab rob and carry him out the door*

spencer the piano player: “see, this is why you shouldn’t do drugs!”

i got outside a few minutes after that and he was sitting on the ground with a few other people from our group, and was sipping on some water and being really wasted. he fell asleep a few times while we were out there, and i figured that it was my time to head out.

went back to the apartment, grabbed my roller derby season pass and a gift i picked up for feisty_fitz, and then drove back to the homestead to see kelly and get souvenirs. spent the night at the house since i was pretty beat by then.

sunday:

grabbed my camera from the apartment before going to get a memory card for my camera and helping set up for the roller derby event that evening. feisty_fitz and mom and dad all showed up to see the event and i think they had fun — kelly said that she would have had more fun if she wasn’t with mom and dad, but apparently mom was getting really into it and would cheer and boo and gasp appropriately.

(mom had previously told me that she’d give me $50 after my first derby bout… now that she’s been to an event, she says i need an intervention and she’ll make it $100 if i quit, bahahaha… good luck!)

afterwards, kelly and i went to the afterparty and we hung out with jazzometer, plantastic, a friend of theirs, cynicalscribe, hannahchan and greyplanet. that was good times too, even if kelly didn’t know what in the world a “natty boh” was. 😛 hahaha. took her back to the house before going to the apartment for bed.

monday:

work was “eh”. i was feeling pretty blah about it most of the day and not very excited to be there… almost surly, but not quite. at least the folks i helped out in the phone queue had things that i was able to help out with almost no problem.

went to the house after work for dinner (steak on the grill with corn on the cob!), edited my roller derby photos and then drove back to the apartment for uploading photos and bedtime.

today:

same deal about work — this time they actually had us pre-scheduled to be on the phone queue because they expected heavy call volumes. i can understand not wanting to have folks calling in have to wait for help, but it still annoys me when it impacts my own work when i have to help out another team that’s getting swamped. who knows if they’ll do that again tomorrow…

i love chatting with whammywah, we’re so awesomely hilarious riffing off each other… see, logs!