How I Got Free Waffle House On New Year's Day

You may have noticed the absence of a post about my birthday.  Or you may not have a clue when my birthday even is.  At any rate, I had one, and it was EPIC.  I won't be blogging it, however, because it ended with poo, and as it turns out, I can't draw poo.  Seriously.  It either looks like a pile of meatballs or like soft-serve ice cream, and I really don't want to ruin my good feelings toward either, so there you have it.  But you can't have a birthday without cake, so BAM!

Moving right along...I started the New Year off right.  Waffle House right.  I firmly believe that one must always begin a new year with WaHo.  This is partially to absorb all the booze and partially just because it's awesome.  The only thing that makes WaHo MORE awesome is when it's free and with great friends.  And mine was.  How did I accomplish such an amazing feat?!?  Well, there's a story...

As any good drinker knows, and as is customary in my social circle, we started off the New Year in the required fashion for all major high BAC holidays (and for those of you wondering, that would be New Year's Eve, St. Patrick's Day, Mardi Gras, and whenever I feel like it).

So yeah, car bombs it was.  Pre-gaming thus accomplished, Ric, Katie, and I  went downtown, which involved sitting in the car on Broadway for-stinking-ever waiting on traffic to move.  It also involved Ric locking the windows to contain our shenanigans to the interior of the vehicle.

Did I say "OUR" shenanigans?  I meant Katie.  So after for-stinking-ever, we make it to Picasso to hang out with Mork and Mindy.  And Ethan.  What, did I forget to mention he's officially home for good?  Yes, he's back.  He spent most of the night trying to pick up chicks.  Some things never change.  Clay and Steph came in a bit later, and Katie gave all of us a lesson in why it's bad to wear clothes with zippers around drunk people.

Steph didn't seem to mind, though, and I guess all good evenings must start with a flashing, so we were off to a proper start.  Oh, and no, her tattoos aren't actually "TATTOOS" AND "MO' TATTOOS."  I just respect the art of a tattoo artist enough to not butcher it on my blog.  But back to NYE.  I *think* Slacker was there, too.  I say *think* because sometimes I wonder if I hallucinated the Slacker.  He has the Waldo gift.  What the fuck is that?  Well, he comes in, he greets everyone, grabs a drink, then...

And nobody ever knows.  He just vanishes into thin air.  I think he's a secret spy or something.  He's a nice guy though, so he's kind enough to not take all the Guinness with him.  Or he could just be perpetually drunk enough that he forgets to take it with him.  Either way, we continued drinking.  After a while, we decided to head next door to ring in the New Year at the Tap.  Twice, might I add, because the DJ wasn't on the same time as the TV, so rather than wait on the TV to count down the official year, we just decided to cheer, kiss, and imbibe twice.  Heather the Silly String Satan managed to douse me in enough Silly String that my drink tasted like aerosol.

Naturally, I drank the rest of it anyway.  There's sober children in Africa.  It was the right thing to do.  Then back to Picasso because my heels were starting to fight back, so the need to sit was getting crucial.  For me, anyway.  I sat.  Katie took advantage of the pole that holds up the patio ceiling.

This is how we made the vital discovery that the only way I know how to get my camera to stop video-recording is to turn the power off.  Katie having sufficiently amused us for the time, we decided to go to 85 to find Clay and Steph, which required that Katie and I trade shoes in the road.  Luckily for us, we stumbled upon Clay and Steph (again, in the road) before walking all the way to 85, so we went back to the Tap.  Clay pulled Ric to the side to tell him some Jerry Maguire, I love you man, you're the wind beneath my wings kind of stuff, and Steph and I talked about marzipan until a good gust of wind came along.

Perhaps it was such a fun night because there were multiple flashings of assorted parts that night.  I think Ric managed to be the only one of us to not flash anything.  I might be onto something...so yeah, after the bromance returned, they danced, we laughed because they're both morons...

I told you.  Sometimes, a real picture is just worth a lot more than a badly drawn cartoon, ya know?  Anyway, we came to the conclusion that it was time to take it to the house for the free booze.  This involved trading shoes with someone again, but by this point, Katie had wised up enough to know that she really didn't want to wear my pink heels again, cute though they were, so Steph traded with me instead.  You know your heels are killing you when you'll put on someone's earlier-vomited-in boot just to get out of your heels!  Well worth it, though, as Steph couldn't stand up in them.  At all.

She just wobbled and matrixed in place.  I, on the other hand, was in comfy shoe heaven.  My new mission is to buy a pair of those boots because they're friggin' awesome.  Anyway, while we were waiting, Katie also decided that the ladies had flashed enough on this particular occasion, so she took the opportunity to find out whether Clay was wearing anything under his kilt, and that marks the final flashing of the evening.  Ric pulled up the car, honked at all of us to get in, and then...a miracle occurred.

Yes, that's right.  The previously unable to stand in my heels Stephanie takes off in a full sprint into the road.  Forget that she was going in the complete WRONG direction.  Or that the woman can somehow run without the top part of her body moving at all.  She was hauling ass in four inch heels, and she was unstoppable.  Well, at least until we got in the car.  So we make it back to the house uneventfully (unless you count Katie talking to a box on the way home as must-know info).  If we had brains, we would've decided that all of us were good for the night and no more drinking needed to take place.  But if we had brains, I wouldn't ever have anything to blog about, so be glad that we're all idiots because we all had another car bomb as soon as we got in.  Naturally, the only thing that can possibly complete the wonder and magic of a night of car bombs is spaghetti.  Have I ever mentioned how much I love drunk people who will cook for drunk people?  Utter contentment.  It was like a happy little plastered dysfunctional family, the five of us.

We all inhaled our spaghetti, completely oblivious to our glazed over eyes and disheveled appearances.  I thought things had mellowed after that.  Clay and Steph went to bed, Ric went upstairs to tinker with the computer, and Katie and I hung out for a bit before I decided to crash, too.  As soon as I walked into the bedroom and saw Ric's face, I knew something was amiss.  Rickety was NOT happy.  I just raised a brow at him quizzically.  "Clay's throwing up."  "Okay...."  I wasn't really sure yet why this was particularly detrimental to my plan to go to bed.  ""Right there."  Ric points into our master bathroom.

Sure enough, my darling idiot friend had stumbled out of bed, out of the bedroom we put him in which had a perfectly good bathroom attached to it, into our room, and was throwing up spaghetti.  Not rainbows.  In the sink.  Without a colander.  Thanks to this episode, I have decided to outfit all our sinks with colanders for future drunk nights.  This is to prevent having to scoop noodles out of the drain with my hands as they WILL NOT go down on their own.  Needless to say, even demon seed Clay knows to feel bad when someone is elbows deep in recycled pasta.  This is how I coerced him into buying breakfast for everyone the next morning.  I heart you, Waffle House, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!