~Friday~ I caught the city bus for the first time in a while, arriving at the stop at 8:17 and boarding the bus at 8:25. Hot Mess Driver was at the helm, and the temperature on the bus was warm, but not excruciating.
A guy who boarded at the Gorman and Conifer stop took way too long to enter his fare. For the Day Pass, 40 nickels is the most number of coins you could use—as pennies are not allowed—and although I don’t think he used that many, I’m quite sure he used at least 15, if not 20, of them.
At the McKimmon Center stop, we had another “piggy banker,” although with not quite as many coins. Peeps be breakin’ into their piggy banks to get fare money.
Also at the McKimmon Center stop, two guys took the very back seat of the bus, on opposite ends, leaving two seats between them, one more than they probably do at the theater—all in an effort to let you know they’re very, very straight. And to remove any possible lingering doubt, they proceeded to talk about girls, of which I heard the beginning of a sentence before tuning them out, “That bitch be straightenin’ her hair back…”
I turned my attention to a cute little girl who did something I’ve seen little kids do, but really just don’t get.
She just kept saying the letters of the alphabet out loud. And I mean fairly loudly, and nonstop. I don’t know if that’s showing off that they know something, or just vying for attention. In either case, I was happy to excuse myself four stops later. Enough already.
I joined Sarah and Anna at Friday Klatsch “already in progress” when I arrived, and it’s always fun and affirming to see their reaction when they see me arrive.
And although Roger wasn’t around, I arrived armed with three rhetorical items in mind, one to share, and two to discuss:
- Shared: My find of the concept of “Lavender Linguistics” to describe the sometime use of feminine pronouns by gay men when referring to themselves or each other. Appropriate squeals and questions followed that could only come from a group like salon.
- Question: Is that joke about YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook merging to become YouTwitFace a pun? Both Anna and Sarah quickly answered, “No,” but a thoughtful inquiry followed.
- Question: Does the product “Centrum Silver Ultra Men’s” use that apostrophe appropriately?
From Mission Joe’s, I walked across the street for a meeting with Trish Palmer, a colleague of mine in another unit of our IT organization, about our upcoming IP Telephony project, and what part my communications department might play in rolling out IT telephony to the university.
It was a good meeting. I had never met Trish, and I liked her immediately, because before we left her office to go to a little conference area to talk, she said, “Would you like some M&Ms?” She grabbed us each a little one of those bags like you give out at Halloween time. Sweet. Literally and figuratively.
Let me start off this section by saying that I started drinking at 4:30 this afternoon and didn’t stop until 1:00 in the morning. Geez.
I met my colleagues, and friends, Jason, Jen, Nick, and Garrrison at Natty Greene’s in Glenwood South, where they had beer and I had bourbons and diet, along with an order of their killer, killer, killer Mesquite Fries described as follows:
| Mesquite-seasoned fries topped with housemade cheese sauce, chopped applewood-smoked bacon and scallions; served with ranch dressing. $7.50 |
How could that be bad. It wasn’t.
From there, I drove Jason and Jen over to Flex, where I left my car for later, and we caught the R Line on Morgan Street and got off (shut up, Jen!) at the convention center downtown, and walked up and down Fayetteville Street, which was cordoned off as part of the Raleigh NHL All-Star Weekend celebrations.
Jason and Jen had their hearts set on a beer garden that was somewhere down there, and surprisingly en route to it, we came across a guy selling mixed drinks out on the sidewalk in front of a bar/restaurant. Most of the bars/restaurants had something on the sidewalk in front of their establishment, and I stepped right up and ordered a Canadian Club & Diet Coke. Sweet.
We finally got to the beer garden, but ended up passing it by to wait for a few other people that Jason and Jen were going to meet. The three of us ended up at Isaac Hunter’s Tavern, where we bought drinks and played a game of cornhole. (I hate, hate, hate the name of that game.) Jen used her “slut boots” to convince one of the guys working there to be our fourth.
As we started playing, the outdoor bartender slipped into a little something more… well… green:
It would appear that he dresses directly down the middle. And if you think that’s impressive, you should have seen his ass, which was totally hot. If you go for that sort of thing, and I do.
Eventually, Jen’s friend Heather, and Jason’s friends (four of them whose names I can’t recall) joined us and we headed to the beer garden. I went in, but since I don’t drink beer (unless under duress), I didn’t pay to get in, and I left after a little while, telling Jen goodbye by instant message. I love having such technologically-connected friends.
I caught the R Line back to the stop in front of The Borough on Morgan Street, and had a couple of drinks there, sitting next to, and on and off talking with, Gene.
Phil and Joe came in after a while, and Joe had just gotten his Legends membership, which was where I was heading next, to do the same thing.
There was such drama over there when I got there, that I’m not going to get into here. The bottom line was that the new VIP memberships are not yet available, but I ended up filling out an application for it to get an old one that I can use until the new ones come in in a few weeks. But, they didn’t have an actual old card to give me either, as the owner had to bring one in from home tomorrow. Whatever.
I hung out there, on the dance-floor side, near the dance-floor bar, which was being bartended by Richard. Tonight’s “show” was actually the “Entertainer of the Year Contest,” where the 12 winners from the First-Friday-of-the-Month Amateur contests throughout 2010 are invited back to compete for entertainer of the year. Thank god only five of them showed up to compete.