Adventures in the Café

Blood, Sweat, and Beers

Before I get onto today’s topic (which is really the topic of a few months ago) I thought I’d recap and offer a few random thoughts at the same time.

- Val turned thirty. To celebrate he has gone to the wilds of New Brunswick. We all hope he comes back without camping related angst.
- No one has emailed me from the link I painstakingly set up on this page.
- I played Twister for the first time in fifteen years on Saturday. It’s now Wednesday, my ass still hurts.
- Nicki and Sarah will very likely stay on CSI. Nicki slept in by accident (which is why he missed some big meeting or something) but really wants to stay on the show, I don’t know what her deal is, but who cares about her?
- I think I need a new tire.
- G hasn’t heard from the panty. She has moved on decidedly. Only girl I know who picked up heterosexually at a gay bar. Sure he was a grease ball, but still. Go G!
- I’ve yet to lose thirty pounds
- I will probably never lose thirty pounds unless my legs are amputated

This post has been a long time coming. I vowed to write a blog to capture the events of my graduation celebration, and have sorely neglected “my fans” by not putting fingers to keys.

Since I couldn’t afford a trip or anything to commemorate the completion of my master’s degree I decided to revisit a tradition I had been neglecting: drinking a lot in Guelph. I invited a select cadre of friends, namely the crew I lived with during my undergrad: Big M, Squishy, and Jenn (Frizzé is in Scotland, so she couldn’t come). G was invited, and so was Val (in addition to being one of the coolest kids ever, he also lives there).

We ended up with a last minute addition. She’s an old friend of mine and Val’s with a bit of a troubled past. To say that this girl is a bad drunk would be beyond generous. She managed to alienate everyone by the end of the evening. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

“The Girls,” a group comprised of me, Big M, Jenn, Squishy, and Frizzé started having pub crawls in our second year of university. We organized it a little for efficiency: participants got to pick a bar, the beer we were drinking, and they got to make the first toast. We would always invite some of our friends to come along on the crawl, so invariably there were a few extras in our cast.

Shockingly, the events of these earlier crawls have melded together in my mind so that I can no longer remember exactly who was at which crawl, or which events belong to which one. So here are some of my favourite stories in no particular order.

- Squishy yelling to one of our departing crawlers (who had to get up early for her new job working with autistic triplets the next day) “Good luck with the autistics!”
- Big M falling out of her chair at the Albion
- The sketchbag with the Kentucky waterfall who bought Big M a Kokanee at Wally’s Blues Tavern and then tried to pick her up with the following line, “I don’t see no weddin’ ring on yer finger.” She replied that she had a “serious boyfriend.” I remember the boyfriend, he was pretty easygoing, actually.
- Squishy volunteering me to sing the Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You” to a bar full of people when it wasn’t Karaoke night. I killed, man. We then stunned them with an abbreviated version of “American Pie.”
- Picking tunes on the jukebox at the Albion Hotel. Singing my heart out with Jenn to anything by the Beatles and to Janis Joplin’s “Me and Bobby McGee.”
- Stealing our Resident Assistant’s brother from outside of Jimmy Jazz and forcing him to come and drink with us.

This pub crawl didn’t disappoint at all. The most exciting thing that happened was that the girl I was referring to earlier (who shall go alias-less) punched me in the nose. She made me bleed my own blood. It really hurt; I’d never been decked before. One minute we’re just messing about, and the next I’m crying, laughing, and bleeding. It was just so ridiculous. It didn’t help that I was sick at the time, so every time I had to blow my nose I said “Ow,” and bled a bit. This went on for about a week. She had the good grace to feel badly about it and apologize profusely, but still, who hits in the nose? This is why shots shouldn’t be done on pub crawls; it throws off the whole dynamic. It also causes G to start randomly falling asleep on patios in the downtown Guelph core.

Big M got married last year and part of her ensemble included a tiara. It’s really very pretty, and oh-so-sad that she only got to wear it once. Or, it would be oh-so-sad if she didn’t find a way to incorporate it into every possible occasion. She brought it on the pub crawl and we all got to take turns wearing it. There are photos. There is also a photo of Squishy playing the drums, which I had no idea she even knew how to do. Then of course there’s our Jenn, who appreciates both the value of a dollar and a good beer. She took a mostly full pint in her handbag from one bar to another.

Later that night, when we finally made it home (there was some difficulty getting a cab, which I’m not going to address, ‘cause there were a few words exchanged on that subject too. Oh, except for this, ‘cause it was brilliant. Big M and I had split off from the rest of the crowd and we saw a cab coming and went to get it. Two other groups were heading for the same one, and one group had already gotten into the cab when Big M decided she’d had enough rudeness for the evening. She’s five three and about a buck soaking wet, so not all that imposing a physical presence. She grabbed the door and informed the occupants that this was our cab; that we’d called for it. They said they’d called for one too, and that they were there first. She disagreed and continued to assert her case while holding the door open with her foot and hanging onto the roof of the cab. The girl whose door it was tried to pull it shut, but M was too mighty for her! Finally the girl pleaded with Big M to shut the door ‘cause it would break. M, realizing that possession was nine tenths of the law, conceded the point. Where was I during this exchange? Like any good friend, I was standing back on the sidewalk looking incredulous). Anyway, it was late and we went straight to bed. Sadly, sleep was next to impossible because of that damn girl’s maddening snoring.

Big M stepped up to the plate again. She went to where “the Slugger” was sleeping and stood over her yelling, “____ Shut up! Stop snoring! Stop it!” She was eventually roused and stopped snoring long enough for the rest of us to fall asleep.

All in all it was a thoroughly successful night, and definitely one for the annals. At a recent dinner party Big M slyly asked when the next beer festival was. That was another one of our yearly traditions. Various local breweries in the KW area set up in the local arena and you can buy tickets to “sample” the brews for fifty cents. I’m looking into it.