Butch, Sundance and Bojangles

I had a fantastic day today, got a raise (not a huge one, so don't go asking me to buy you dinner) after being told in my yearly review that I was the bomb diggity. I'm sort of uncomfortable when I'm the focus of a conversation, even when its good, but I was pretty stoked to be told by my boss that I was doing a good job and would be getting 8% more money each month. Anyway on with the weekend overview.

The weekend started like the others. Relaxing afternoon off from work. Fast food. Tennis in the Hamptons (no not really). Video games. After all that I drove on down to Clemson, stocking up on a four pack of Red Bull on the way to hopefully ward off the case of the yawns that usually catch up with me unusually early on a Friday night. Also I heard murmurs about having to get up at 8am on Saturday for another 12 hours of tailgating which sounded much better with an infusion of caffiene. I arrived just in time for Jeb to show me a new game he had rented before dinner. This game was called De Blob and consisted of moving your little paintball around this cartoon city and bringing color back to the area. Surprisingly very fun and very addictive. But 8pm rolled around and we decided to go to the Japanese place for dinner. BMS ordered this appatiser that appeared to be sugar snap peas with salt on them. She had some fancy name for them but they certainly weren't jalepeno poppers or anything. She put us to shame with her ability to open them with her mouth (no not in a dirty way) and we all ate up on Japanese for a while (with a mixup which involved a trade of squid for soup and a wasabi eating dare). Afterwords it was BMS late, so we dropped her off and headed downtown. We did the usual Nick's/Griffin's jump, both of which were surprisingly full. Plenty of eye candy but very difficult to fight my way through to get a drink. We had a good time. Sundance and Jeb's bald asian friend Chris showed up and we all but stayed until closing. When we arrived back at Jeb's, he was very interested in going to Walmart to get a straw cowboy hat for some reason and I decided to tag along and maybe get some food to calm down the influx of liquor that was rolling around in my stomache. However like any usual trip to Walmart, things didn't go to plan.

Things we didn't get:
Straw cowboy hat

Things we did get:
2 copies of a zombie video game
2 personal pizzas
1 microwavable gumbo

How these things arose out of a cowboy hat, I will never know. We also played Rock Band "Eye of the Tiger" which was for some reason set up in the men's clothing department. After this randomness we returned to the house and passed out at 3am.

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Flash forward 5 hours and arise Michael: King of the Undead. I had the worst hangover ever and seriously contemplated not going to tailgate again (a thought that enters my head every tailgate morning). In addition I was told that it was really cold outside, making me even more likely to spend my day on the couch. But after a shower and the promise of muffins shaped like tiger paws, I was out the door. I was sporting a nice yellow backpack full of liquor and my rock star sunglasses, despite it being a really cloudy day. We tailgated for a while and I was rewarded with lots of bacon (although I didn't ever get to see the elusive bacon-wrapped hot dog). I had pretty much given up on getting a ticket though, so after a trip downtown where Jeb and Butch got matching ridiculous hats, I went back to the house to chill and either watch the game on TV or paint cartoon slums. I was just about to settle into bringing joy to pasty little mediclorians when I got a call saying that some people didn't show up and I suddenly had a ticket. So I hoofed it back to the stadium and got to watch the game in person. Sadly however I apparently missed out on the UPS goody bag distribution. After our offensive line folded like laundry and we eked out a narrow loss (why do people still run onto the field after the game when we lose?), we headed back to the tailgate. Sadly the mythical bacon-wrapped hot dog never appeared, but the food was incredible as usual. After a little rain scare caused us to pack up, the guys still wanted to head downtown.
We start heading down there and its immediately very obvious that Bald Asian Chris is super intoxicated already. He's getting sick in the street, talking with a Boston accent and asking passers by if they have some coffee for him. He wanted to go to a bar that we never usually go to, Loose Change. Loose Change is a cramped little hole in the wall, a grungy little place that frat boys for some reason love. So I pretty much leaned up against a wall to stay out of the way of the drunken frat boys with homosexual tendencies wrestling with each other until it was happily time to leave. While Bald Asian Chris didn't cause a disturbance like I was hoping, there was a comical moment when he started chatting up this girl who had the funniest deer-in-the-headlights look on her face the whole time. After Loose Change we retreated to Griffin's again, where the First Couple of Polo showed up for approximately 20 minutes and then left. Eventually our group dwindled down to Jeb, Sundance, myself and a girl that I was introduced to as "Jen with one 'n'" (I don't think I've ever seen someone throw a double "n" when shortening Jennifer). Jen with one "n" was way too drunk to drive back to Easily, but wanted to go home. So we all left. Sundance and Jeb took her home while I went in and made my pizza that I had bought at Walmart the previous night and then passed out on the couch.

Sunday involved a trip to Bojangles (sorta disappointing side items, decent chicken) and easily getting talked into staying much longer than I was planning with a combination of Blue Ray Indiana Jones and Pizza Hut pasta. I was told that in the upcoming weekend that I "would be going" to Charleston. Not a question or a request. I'll be there. So that could be a good time. But I still always have a great time hanging out in Clemson and this weekend was definitely a good one.