I'm pretty hungry right now. It's not even 10 AM. I have a doctor's appointment in two hours, and I was told not to eat anything for a good 12 hours beforehand. It's surprising how tough that's been. Anyway, what I should be concerned about is how much work I have to do today. I took the day off yesterday, and so the work has piled up, beginning with stuff I tried to finish on Friday. Speaking of Friday, on Friday night after work I picked up the rental car, and immediately starting honking the horn at annoying drivers and pedestrians. Then in the evening, I drove with Caryn and Nate into Williamsburg to see the Sleater-Kinney show. It was a fairly rocking affair. Mostly new songs were played, which was kind of disappointing, but it did give me something to talk about later when talking about the show and wanting to sound like I knew what I was talking about. The drive was probably as much fun as the concert. After the show, we did a slow cruise back to the highway whilst blaring "Jack and Diane." I really love driving.Once back in Park Slope, I jogged down to Bar Reis, where Jed was sitting with Holly and Rachel. Rachel was visiting from Ohio, where she goes to law school. It'd been a year since she left New York, and it was really good to see her again. Bar Reis has undergone quite a few changes, and I'm not so sure I like them anymore. The new downstairs section is a little too hip for me. The bar used to be pretty quiet, a nice place to sit around calmly and drink. Now it's turning into hip-hop hooray zone. It's clearly becoming part of a "scene." And it used to be such a nice place. There goes the neighborhood.
On Saturday I spent a good portion of the afternoon chauffeuring Geoff around the Upper West Side of Manhattan. I had the car, and he didn't want to bring all his stuff to Brooklyn early the next morning. So I had to go up there, drive him to the dry cleaners, back to his apartment, and then over to East 86th St. across town. This angered me, because I was in a particular hurry to get back to Brooklyn. You see, the Preakness was being run that afternoon, and Jed and I were anxious to get down to the Off Track Betting center and place our bets. After the Kentucky Derby a few weeks ago, we've caught the bug. So we picked up Matt and went down to the OTB. Here's what happened: We all placed our modest individual bets. Then, perusing the race form, did a little math. There were 13 horses running. We were trying to figure out if we could still come out ahead if we bet on all the horses. Obviously, the answer was no. But if you took out the three horses with the lowest odds, like 3-2 or 9-5, there were only nine horses left. So we split them up, and each bet two dollars on three horses. So at the very worst, if one of those horses won, we'd each make 67.7 cents. At best, around 80 bucks. And we all had bets on the low odds horses, so there wasn't a horse we didn't have money on. So we went back to Matt's place to watch the race, certain that in we'd have to return to the OTB for one reason or another. Our individual bets were exactas. We picked three horses, and if any two of the three finished first or second, we'd get like 200 some dollars. To our amazement, with the race 9/10 over, the horses Jed and I had our money on were 1 and 2 coming down the stretch. Then, out of literally fucking nowhere, this shitty, long-odds horse comes blazing down the track into second place, and almost beating the eventual winner. Needless to say, jaws dropped. And, though seemingly mathematically impossible, although we bet on every single horse in the race, not one of our bets yielded any money at all. Nothing. Not a cent. So we didn't have to go back to the OTB. That was a small consolation. Fucking horses. The horse that came in second, Magic Weisner, was mercilessly mocked on ESPN the day before the race, when one of the "experts" picked him to win the race. I thought long and hard about betting on that horse. Just my kind of underdog.
So in the evening, Jen came over, and she, Matt, Jed, and I sat around Jed's room for a few hours and drank Budweiser "tallboys." Honestly, I think it was the first time I drank Budweiser from a can in about six years. It wasn't as bad as I remembered. Almost pleasant, actually. But for all these years, that red and white can has had such negative connotations that I neer bothered to try it again. But at $1.25 for 16 ounces, that's cheaper than a Snapple. And we are bargain shoppers.
So 'round midnight we went upstairs, where our neighbors were having a party in celebration of two of their birthdays. They had a boatload of food and drink, and even a DJ. If they were trying to make us look bad, they were doing a pretty good job of it. Our parties usually feature one or two bags of salty snacks, and maybe a jar of salsa. They had bean dip coming out of the oven at 1:30 in the morning. Anyway, the party was generally fun. Or at least, pretty interesting.
An overhead shot of Jed, Matt, Jen, and myself. Would you believe that Jen is holding the camera? She's got very long arms. Ok, that's a fib. Anyway, this is around 3 in the morning. Jed is wearing the remnants of a candy necklace, which were plentiful at the party upstairs.
So Geoff came over around 4:30 in the morning. We had to leave for Philly around 7 AM, so he was going to stay over. After eating something to soak up all that alcohol, we went to sleep a little after 5. We probably should've just stayed up. I set two alarms to wake me up at 6:30. When I woke up, I noticed that there was more daylight coming in my room then there should have been. I also noticed that my cell phone was in my bed, meaning at some point I had grabbed it and turned off the alarm. Then I noticed that it was exactly 8 o'clock in the morning, meaning that Geoff and I were dead, dead, dead. The trip was supposed to take just over two hours. What woke me up was the vibrating of my phone. The mom calling. I didn't answer. She called again five minutes later. So I did a quick hair inspection and teeth brushing- no matter how urgent a matter, I can never seem to forego certain standards of personal hygiene- I zipped out the door, my dirty laundry in one hand and a pair of pants in the other. Naturally, when we got out of the car, we pretty much out of gas. I blamed Geoff for making me drive him around and burn that gas on city driving. Anyway, thanks to some 90 mph theatrics by Geoff, we managed to get there a little after 10, in time to see Bill Cosby get another honorary degree and yuk it up for the crowd. As far as my brother Galvin goes, I was pretty worried that when he crossed the stage to get his diploma, he was going to do something idiotic, like rip open his gown. He didn't. But he did make an idiotic face when they took his picture. The mother was not pleased.
So the day at home was very pleasant. I went for a drive before the evening meal on Sunday, a quick jaunt around my favorite old scenic roads, listening to music on Garrick's iPod. Nice little doohicky. And I bought some pants. Dinner on Sunday was not so good. We went out to this sort of steak house down the street from our house. The most notable thing about the dinner was that we managed to talk solely about matters of grammar for about 15 minutes.
Traffic coming back on I-78 was a goddam nightmare. I moved about 4 miles in one hour. So I got back to Brooklyn later than expected. Jed was returning from work when I was unloading the car, followed shortly by Dylan. We decided to go play a little basketball down at the playground on Lincoln place, and picked up matt on the way. We're all pretty bad at this point, so the games were competitive. None of us have a lot of stamina. Well, maybe Matt. But we're all super-competitive, so it makes the games fun. In case you're curious, Dylan and I split the two games with Jed and Matt. I dominated the game of HORSE in between the two games. I like to think it was due to my sheer athleticism. And the more I think about it, it was.