A Long December

K, sorry. I suck at posting as of late. First I had nothing going on to write about, then I had too much going on to have time to write, and now...well now I'm just being fucking lazy. Cryp took a break from feeding his monkeys long enough to leave me a comment, so I figured the least I could do was get off my ass and catch everyone up (for the record, darling, my new buzzy works GREAT *wink*).

It seems I got off track right around Christmas week. This is because I spent most of it inside the warm and comforting embrace of the Tais Til 4 establishment and you all know how that goes. Normally, as you know, I would only imbibe at said establishment on Thursday night, but Christmas week does not qualify as normal circumstances. We kicked off the week on Monday night with a little party called, depending on who you ask, A Very Bosco Christmas (named for the moderately ancient, exceptionally caustic, and frequently alcoholed Japanese bartender who happens to open that night) or Honda's Holiday Cocktail Hour (named for the slightly less ancient, equally caustic, hysterical-when-alcoholed Japanese local talent who happens to voice everything from the PA system for the world champion Chicago White Sox to my late night dreams when I fall asleep watching public television). It was very cold out that night and I was tired and tried to get out of it, but the bartender and MrSteve shamed me into going. I was glad I did or I would have missed the evening's most hysterical feature: The Sue Johanson Grab Bag.

Sue Johanson, for those who don't watch the Oxygen Network at midnight, is the host of the show Talk Sex with Sue Johanson. She is about 179 years old and very in your face with the sex advice, which is both funny and disturbing being that she's 179 years old. Sue had nothing actually to do with the bag; it was just a bunch of novelty sex shop items Honda had picked up from somewhere (his sock drawer? It's hard to say). For the girls, there was an assortment of little vibrators and penis tipped pens. The vibrators required various sized batteries, none of which were provided, though for some reason, Bosco had a selection of appropriately sized batteries to hand out to the masses. There were two gifts for the boys. TeacherBoy received a pack of nudie playing cards ("LESBIAN nudie playing cards!" specified the bartender when I asked what was going on on the other end of the bar. (Which was actually not true, they were girl on girl nudie cards, and if you don't know the difference you obviously need to watch more porn.)). And MrSteve was completely unimpressed with his grab bag prize, a pocket pussy. Unimpressed and unamused. So much so that the guy who ended up with it was, um, me. I named her Sexy Sadie and with the help of Hot Heather, I am currently testing to see what objects she can handle having shoved up in there (results to be posted soon).

Tuesday night was the Tai's staff Christmas party, and while I'm not technically on the staff, I do have a tendency to paint walls in there and collect empty glasses or clean up spills on the pool table if I'm in late on a weekend, so the owner graciously invited me. We had dinner at Graziano's, which was fantastic, and exchanged presents in the gift swap (I received a t-shirt from The Alley from the bartender which reads "Fuck Christmas" and depicts a drunk Santa screwing a reindeer, who in turn is happily puffing a fat cigar). We then went bar hopping. Bar hopping with the owner is a dangerous thing, because he is an evil man bent on getting everyone blitzed beyond the point of reasonableness. We started at Augie's which was DECKED THE FUCK OUT for Christmas. My jaw hit the floor when I walked in. Huge displays of snowmen and reindeer lit up in the windows, a train running in circles along the ceiling, and behind the bar a Christmas village with literally 80 buildings running the entire length of the counter in front of the bottles. I half expected them to have found a way to make real snow fall from the ceiling. I hardly drank anything there because I couldn't get my mouth closed long enough to swallow my beer. From there we went to Lange's which was much quieter and barely Christmased up at all, but due to the lack of crowd my stealth failed me and the owner ended up tequila shotting me half to death. After a brief trip to Tai's I headed briefly for home, until a call from the bartender caused me to get back out of bed to haul his drunk ass home from Nick's Uptown.

Wednesday night I took a break.

Thursday night at Tai's was still on, and so I headed up there for the usual. Unfortunately, it was not the usual. Cap headed up early and shortly after his entrance there arrived a drunk. "Shots all around, and then I'm leaving!" announced the random drunk. "I'm on my home and trying to hit every bar on the way and buy everyone a shot. I'm fucking Santa Claus!" Later on Hot Heather showed up, and there was much rejoicing. Not so much from her coming in, because she does that, but because of our decision to make out like porn stars while the world looked on. This also earned us some more shots. Before I knew it, the lights were on, the staff was restocking the bar and Heather was rocking on her feet moaning about dropping her phone in the toilet and she has to go home. She was in no condition to go home, so instead I took her to my place and tucked her in on the couch. Around 11 the next morning the office called wondering where I was. Um.

Since I wasn't going home for Christmas, the owner had invited me over Sunday for prime rib and football. I had also been invited to Hot Heather's place, but as I had promised to loan the bartender my car to visit his mom in Galena, I decided to walk to the owner's place.

Now it may come as a surprise to you, but I sort of have a thing for the bartender. You're stunned, I know. But the bartender has no interest whatsoever, and so I've been relegated to eternal friend status for all eternity. Despite this, I had kind of been hoping to get an invite out to Galena for the holiday. The owner knew this and took to dropping hints on my behalf, not because he's such a nice guy, but because he knows the bartender gets uncomfortable with the whole "what's with you and Amber?" thing and thought it would be hilarious. This seemed to not really work, and so by Christmas Eve I was resigned to football and prime rib (a huge sacrifice, I know). That night I called the bartender to wish him happy birthday and confirm the hour at which he'd be retrieving the car, and it was at that late date that he announced his MOM didn't want me sitting at home by myself on Christmas and had invited me to Christmas dinner at her house. And since I'm stupid, I went. I had a good time, his sister is always a riot and his mom makes a fine ham, but dude, you know?

After Galena we stopped over at the owner's place, where I did get to sample the scrumptious prime rib after all, and of course, down to Tai's for a drink.

So that pretty much catches you up to speed, other than a drunken New Years party at Gongolas where I sadly kissed no one at midnight and did not hook up, though I did work on keeping the kitchen reasonably straightened up and rescued a coffee table from drowning.

Viva 2006!