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First March Column Ever

And it is a Guest Column...Kinda

*****BIG ANNOUNCEMENT***** Please go to my new message board.

March 8, 2004
About a month ago a group of us went to Austin for Jeff's birthday, Valentine's Day, and the Austin Marathon (Amy, Chris, and Kevin were running). Since I knew I was going to be occupied (read: drunk) for most of the weekend, I asked Blake to document our experiences in Austin. Make sure to read it here...

Three Other Notable Events from that Weekend
1) As Blake so eloquently put it, I was schmammered on Friday night. Snoring the entire 45 minute car ride out to Blake's parents house sobered me up...slightly. Once we got out to the house, Jeff immediately passed out while the rest of us gathered in the kitchen. After a few minutes of raucous conversation, I noticed an appetizing looking fruit basket on the counter. A mischievous grin came across my face as my inner id started to take over. Unable to control my base instincts, I grabbed a tomato and threw it at Blake. That might have been pretty funny if I a) had better aim and b) didn't throw it as hard as I could. Unfortunately, I missed Blake, instead hitting a drawer handle and exploding the tomato all over his parents' kitchen. I tried to help clean up, but I was too drunk to realize that wiping a paper towel across the floor once wasn't an adequate cleaning job.

2) Jennifer and I shared the dinner from hell on Saturday night. The restaurant we went to had an interesting Valentine's Day set-up. Instead of taking staggered reservations like restaurants usually do,

READ MY COLUMNS
2-25-04 - Headlines
2-23-04 - Meaghan's Birthday Thoughts
2-18-04 - Columns Revisited
2-3-04 - 2003 Movie Awards (Updated)
1-29-04 - 2003 Movie Spectacular (Updated)
1-28-04 - A Year Remembered
Archives

10 Songs
1) "Mr. Blue Sky" - Electric Light Orchestra
2) "Never Let You Down" - Kanye West
3) "Immigrant Song" - Led Zeppelin
4) "Danger! High Voltage" - Electric Six
5) "Your Ghost" - Kristin Hersh
6) "Use Me"- Bill Withers
7) "Words So Leisured" - Franz Ferdinand
8) "Strict Machine" - Goldfrapp
9) "Bluelips"- Joseph Arthur
10) "Ride" - The Vines

Contact me if you have anything to say.

this place had mass seatings at 6, 8,and 10. This seemed a little odd, but since we were in the first seating, we were ready to roll with it. Things started out well...we were seated promptly when we arrived, there was water and bread already at the table, and the ambience was nice. It took ten minutes to get us our menus and another 15 or so to take our orders, but we weren't really concerned. We understood that they were busy and understaffed, and we're kind, sympathetic people. Over the next forty minutes, we started to grow more impatient. Some of the tables around us were receiving their main course while we didn't even have our salad yet. A couple of the tables behind us grew so frustrated that they got up and left. Finally our salads arrived, followed by our appetizers not two minutes later. With our appetites a little more satiated, we again became the kind-heated, wonderful people that you all know us as. But then the minutes startted to pass by slower and slower...by 8:00, we still had not been served our main course. By this point Jennifer had gone from good humored to slightly crazed with hunger...she had a look in the eye that reminded me of the "zombies" in 28 Days Later. She strongly believed that we were the only one of all of the 6:00 tables that hadn't been served yet. So I did what I always do in these situations...I went to the bathroom. On the way back, I walked by the bar area where all of the angry 8:00 reservations were drinking free champagne that was their consolation table for having to wait. At least they were getting free alcohol while they wait...When I got back to the table, our food still wasn't there, but our friend Catherine was. She lives in Houston, but randomly happened to be "dining" at the same restaurant. Thinking we had 8:00 reservations, she initially warned us that she was in the 6:00 group and we would likely have to wait awhile for our food. When we told her that we were in the 6:00 group too and still were waiting, she gave us a plan. She and her boyfriend Andrew complained about the service and were comped a free bottle of wine. When our food finally came five minutes later, we were comped too. Now that we had our food (which was actually quite good) and free alcohol on the way, our spirits increased exponentially. By this time, we decided to make our point and finish the bottle of wine, thus not allowing the restaurant to turn over our table. By the time we left with our boxed desserts at 9:30, we were full, drunk, and happy.

3) The main reason for our trip was to cheer Kevin, Chris and Amy on throughout the Austin Marathon. This part of our trip was an unequivocable success. All three runners PR'd, and each placed in the top 10 in their age group. Chris and Kevin finished 48th and 50th place out of approximately 700 runners overall. Although I'd like to credit each of them for the thousands of hours of training that they have put in, I think that more of the credit should go to Hari, Blake, Jeff, Michelle, and Rob for their innovative signs and chants. Do any of us really think that they would have finished as strongly if not for signs such as "Kevin Rocks My Face", "Chris, Good Luck on That Ace", or "Random Hot Girl...You're Hot!!" or chants such as "Fuck Karen Adler!!". I think we all know who deserves the real credit.

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