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It’s odd to me how some adventures begin. The Friday before last for example, my buddy Scarsi and I were getting a cup of coffee when he mentioned that a friend of his was going snowboarding. Upon hearing this, the two of us decided we should go snowboarding that weekend too. This decision literally took us all of one minute.

We booked a room in Louisville, KY and headed out right after work. Once in Louisville, we got free passes to some local bars where we hung out and proceeded to have a great time. The next morning we woke up, drove 45 minutes to Paoli Peaks, IN and snowboarded all day.

Keep in mind when I say we snowboarded all day, it was more like we fell down less and less as the day progressed. Snowboarding is a really hard sport to learn. However in the five hours we were out there, we went from barely being able stand on the boards to ridding down the mountain 3-4 times.

Then on the way back from IN, Scarsi and I decided since we were being impulsive we should stop at a casino at the state line. Even though I lost $20 playing video blackjack, Scarsi and I had an arrangement that if either of us won over $50 they would buy the other person dinner that night. He won $65.

That was some of the best Arby’s I’ve had.

Unfortunately since my Thanksgiving weekend wasn’t completely sunshine filled, I decided to write this recap so you could see the whole picture of how I spent my time off of work.

Wednesday evening, my mother, my little sister, and I went to the Opry Mills mall to celebrate my little sister’s 12th birthday. Also, since that side of my family is somewhat small, we decided to consider that dinner our Thanksgiving as well. You’ll be happy to know that I now think the fish tacos I got from the Aquarium Restaurant would be a great addition to the standard Thanksgiving Day menu. Also, while we were there we decided to see the Christmas lights at the Opryland Hotel.

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Thursday (Thanksgiving Day), I ran a 5 mile run in Belle Meade called the Boulevard Bolt in 44 minutes and 28 seconds (an 8:54 mile pace). Afterwards I drove down to my grandmother’s house in Hohenwald for lunch, took a nap, and then drove to my Aunt and Uncle’s house in Bellevue to eat dinner and compete in my family’s first ever Thanksgiving Day cornhole tournament. Also, since my work girlfriend* couldn’t actually be with her family this year I was really happy that she took me up on my invitation and came and ate dinner with mine.

Friday (Black Friday) evening was spent among friends. However it eventually lead to the first not so good thing of the weekend. Long story short, I drove everyone (seven people) downtown. In the process of dropping everyone off in front of the bar, somehow my camera disappeared. Since I’m sure none of my friends are kleptomaniacs, I imagine it simply fell out of the car onto the ground. I’m hoping that it was able to find its way into herd of other digital cameras roaming free on America’s Great Plains. Perhaps even into the hands of a deserving homeless man who just needed that extra boost in his life to get him though the upcoming winter months. Either way I’m never going to see it again and the lesson learned is that accidents do happen and mistakes are made. My camera is my responsibility and I now know to be more careful. It still sucks though.

Saturday I went with a friend to her little cousin’s birthday party. Surprisingly it was a lot of fun. Since it was at the bowling alley she and I ended up slipping out of the party a little early, bowling a few games, and drinking a few beers. All and all it was really nice.

Sunday (today), I called the called the lovely redheaded girl and ended things between us. While I really like the lovely redheaded girl and enjoyed every minute we spent together; she and I have been dating now for right at about three and a half months and ultimately she didn’t want to be my girlfriend. Our relationship simply wasn’t going anywhere. I just felt that the whole thing was just the prolonging of us hurting one another. I know I didn’t want to have to come to her sometime down the road and tell her I was picking some other girl over her. Needless to say it wasn’t an easy decision and so far I am regretting it a little bit. I guess we’ll see…

On a positive note, I got my Christmas tree up:

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Also, No Shave November is officially over.

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*Work Girlfriend is defined as a colleague — your lunchmate, IM partner, email buddy, etc. Nonromantic, purely platonic.

This past weekend my little brother, Kyle, came to visit. Aside from just wanting to visit his awesome older brother, he and I planned to go to the Vanderbilt Tennessee football game on Saturday.

Friday however, we to this bar in Nashville called the Flying Saucer with our cousin and some of our friends. I figured my little brother might like to experience the huge beer selection that the Flying Saucer has to offer.

As Kyle and I were actually walking into the Flying Saucer a guy came up to us asking for money. He went through his whole spiel about how he just got out of jail that day, he wasn’t really a bad guy, he was really hungry, he just needed to get some food because he was a diabetic, etc.

It’s really dependent on the situation whether I give people on the street money or not. However this guy sold me with his diabetic statement. I just know that it is a big deal for diabetics to keep their blood sugar level up and I’d hate to be responsible for someone slipping into a coma. I just can’t have that on my conscience. So I reached in my wallet and fished out three dollars.

After I gave him a few bucks I fully expected him to be on his way. Oddly enough though, this guy then proceeded to start on another spiel about how he had these things he’s trying to sell. He said he had them before he went to jail but now he was just trying to get rid of them because he didn’t need them anymore blah blah blah.

Fully expecting this guy to try and sell us drugs and/or guns, I was completely surprised when he pulled out roughly 8 porno magazines from the pocket of his hooded sweat shirt. Then trying to further sweeten the deal he proceeded to tell us that all of these magazines also included DVDs. It should be noted that these magazines were still wrapped in plastic and looked like this guy had just stolen them.

Kyle and I couldn’t help but laugh. We were more shocked that this guy was completely serious. We just told him we’d buy some next time and wished him luck with his new business.

Here is a picture of us from that night. Steve (the cousin) is on the left, Kyle is in the middle, and I am obviously on the right. In case you missed the memo, we all have beards because it’s “No Shave November”

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Note: Parts of the following story have been paraphrased for the purpose of making this narrative read more fluently. Also, because it’s quite detailed, you’re going to have to read several footnotes.

On Sunday I had the following text message conversation with my buddy Big Red(1):

Big Red: Hey dude! You going to the Kings of Leon concert on Wednesday?
Me: I don’t think so. I really want to, but I’m kind of broke this week.

No response.

Then today Big Red and I have this conversation via text message:

Big Red: Hey I’ve got an extra ticket to the Kings of Leon concert tonight. I’ll cut you a deal since I know you’re broke.
Me: Ehhh. While I appreciate the offer I kind of already have plans to go eat pizza with the roommate(2).
Big Red: Come on. Surely you can eat pizza some other time. I really don’t want to go to this concert alone.
Me: Let me check with her. In the meantime see if you can find someone else to go.

About an hour later.

Big Red: I can’t find anyone to go. Everyone else seems to have terrible taste in music. Please come.

Now presented with this dilemma of the invitation to a concert that I really want to see verses being a douche bag to my new roommate I couldn’t help but be torn about what to do. I then send the following text to the roommate:

Me: Hey roomie! I hope it doesn’t break your heart if I postpone our plans. I just got invited to the Kings of Leon concert. I hate to be a jerk and bail on you last minute like this.

Luckily she responded with this:

The Roommate: It’s cool. I know you really wanted to see that concert. Please go! I’d feel bad if you didn’t.

Reassured that I wasn’t being an ass to the roommate, Big Red and I were off the see the King of Leon!

After a short stop at Hooters for a pitcher of beer and quick bite to eat we found ourselves standing on the ground level of the municipal auditorium; roughly 20 rows back listening to the two opening bands (one of which really sucked by the way).

Right before the time that the Kings of Leon were about take the stage, the area in which Big Red and I were standing got more and more crowed. It wasn’t long before I found myself completely surrounded by dudes and Karl Malone(3). I say this because as I’m surrounded by Karl Malone and this festival of sausages I happened to look over and see that Big Red has this tall beautiful girl(4) standing with him.

Throughout the concert the Kings of Leon are absolutely rocking the auditorium. I’m having a great time and all the while the tall beautiful girl is continuously dancing all up on Big Red. At one point the tall beautiful girl actually pulled out a water bottle of vodka, that she had snuck in, from the crotch of her pants and starts giving Big Red several shots(5).

This debauchery of heavy dancing and drinking between Big Red and the tall beautiful girl continues for sometime as again the Kings of Leon are absolutely putting on a fantastic show. However, as is the case with most concerts, some guy in front of us with dreadlocks fired up a blunt and started passing it around among his friends. Naturally the tall beautiful girl tapped the patchouli smelling hippy on his shoulder and asked if she could hit it. Being the nice guy that he was he quickly passed it to her and then offered her some cocaine; which she promptly took(6).

By this time I’m thinking that Big Red’s chances with the tall beautiful girl are pretty good, although it appears that she seems to have a problem with controlled substances, but I’m ready to bet the farm on him. However, as this great concert comes to an end, immediately after the encore, the tall beautiful girl just walks away without saying a word and just disappeared into the crowd.

At this point I’m completely perplexed by what just happened. A tall beautiful girl came out of nowhere and was all over my friend for the entire concert. She gave him contraband booze and then used illegal drugs with some hippy right in front of us. Then almost as quick as she came, she was gone.

I couldn’t help but ask Big Red if he at least got her number. It really made me laugh when he responded, “Hell, I didn’t even get her name.”

What an awesome concert that was!

(1) He is known as Big Red because he is 6’4” and a ginger kid.
(2) I am actually in the process of writing this story right now. It will be up shortly. What you need to know for this present story is that I am in fact getting a roommate soon and she just happens to be a pretty girl.
(3) Karl Malone is the nickname that Big Red and I gave this short white girl who weighed roughly 300+ pounds. We started calling her that because of the way she moved though the crowd with such force we were sure it was because she had a package that just had to be delivered.
(4) It should be noted that the tall beautiful girl is just some random girl that came up to Big Red out of nowhere.
(5) I was driving him home. She was in fact a tall beautiful girl who appeared to be into him. I was hoping that the two of them would become friend lifelong friends. Etc. I’m the wingman. Drink up Big Red!
(6) Seriously! This is just some random girl and this is honestly happening three feet in front of us right in the middle of a crowd of 1,000+ people.

Basically my Halloween consisted of dressing up a surgeon, going to a friend’s house for a “Halloween BBQ”, lots of drinking which included several Jägerbombs per the heavy influence of by my buddy Sam, having my cousin drive me to a bar in Green Hills to meet up with some friends, lots of dancing, more drinking, a cab ride with the lovely redheaded girl to her house, and then waking up the next morning with oats all over me not knowing where I was.

While not my finest moment, the lesson learned was obviously not to get carried away with the holidays. No one wants to be guy that ruins Thanksgiving and/or Christmas. However, I do think it is still socially acceptable to attempt to ruin New Year’s. It’s just kind of expected.

On an interesting note, at the “Halloween BBQ” I did see the biggest cat ever!

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Blake looked at the empty shelf with complete disbelief. Where the new Kings of Leon CD should have been was nothing but empty space marked with an artist title card that reconfirmed his disappointment that they were out of what he was looking for.

The music blared and the sound of explosions from some unrecognizable action movie thumped loudly as he scanned Best Buy looking for someone who could help him. Sadly, within the mass of media, electronics, and gadgets, only a few associates in their blue polo shirts and khaki pants were visible on the distant horizon. Clearly too far away to be of any assistance without a great amount of effort by both parties.

For the third time that day he had been let down by a store because they did not have what he had come for. Two different stores he had just recently gone into with intentions of buying pants told him that they were sorry they did not have his size and he should come back tomorrow. Perturbed by their inadequacy of inventory and their notions of him returning on a day that was not convenient to his schedule he had gone to Best Buy with hopes of salvaging his endeavor to purchase some needed items; only to be brought down yet again.

Pushing aside his initial frustration he made a conscious decision to remain positive. Blake took a few deep breathes and thought to himself that perhaps this was a sign from the world that he didn’t need to spend any money that day. With his optimistic attitude reestablished, he walked out of the entertainment superstore and headed home where he eventually said, “screw the world” as he made his purchases online.

Important background information needed for this story: I don’t watch much TV. I seriously turn on my TV maybe 3 days a week. Even then, I’ll normally only sit and watch it for an hour to an hour and half tops.  Because of this I have the most absolute basic cable you can get. Literally its channels 2 – 22 and I don’t get channel 11 which is ESPN.

With that said, Saturday night I convinced myself I actually needed to upgrade my cable because I wasn’t able to watch the Auburn vs LSU game, because it was on ESPN.

Yesterday during my lunch break I tried to call Comcast to get my cable upgraded and the woman I talked to said, “I’m sorry, our system is down at the moment. At this time I can’t upgrade your service. Would you mind calling back in an hour? Hopefully it’ll be up by then.”

I told her thank you, hung up, and took that as my sign that I didn’t really need to upgrade my cable.

Last Friday I received a call from my buddy Neil that went something like this:

Me: Hello.
Neil: What up G?
Me: Just eating dinner with my cousin. What’s going on?
Neil: We’re going to McFadden’s. You coming?
Me: For sure. What time?
Neil: 10:00ish. I’ll call you when we leave.

Since I knew that Neil was with a bunch of girls I didn’t think we’d really be heading up there at 10:00 and after I got finished eating dinner with my cousin I headed over to my neighbors’ house to hang out with them. Much to my surprise Neil promptly called me at 10:00 and said they were already on the interstate going up there. Stunned that they had left on time I said adieu to my neighbors and began my journey to Nashville.

Not one to really be late to things, I kind of rushed on my way into town. After I had parked, paid my cover, and walked around the bar realizing they weren’t even there I wished that I hadn’t.

I whipped out my phone and dialed Neil.

Me: Dude. Where are you?
Neil: We’re leaving Dan McGuiness now. We think we’re going to go to Paradise Park.
Me: Argghhhh, I just paid $6 to get into McFadden’s.
Neil: Ehhh, I’m sorry I wish you would have called when you got there. That sucks, I’ll pay you back.
Me: Nah don’t worry about it. I’ll figure something out. I’ll meet you at Paradise Park. 

It was then that I decided to chat up the girl at the door to see if she would give me my money back. I mean after all, all I did was walk around the bar and realized the people I was there to meet weren’t there. After a little discussion that involved her telling me that my friends should leave where they were to come there and me telling her she was stupid and/or crazy, she proposed an offer. She said that if I brought my friends there then she would give me back my $6, let them all in for free, and buy our first round of beers. Naturally I didn’t believe it so I asked her to put it in writing and we shook on it.

After I had met up with my friends I told them what had happened and it took all of two seconds for them to decide that we were in fact heading back to McFadden’s.

Sure enough the girl at the door held her end of the deal and it was a great start to a really fun night. It’s funny what sometimes happens when you just ask.

Tonight I decided to go to the mall to get some boat shoes. I figured I needed some basically because I’m a yuppie, they’re cool, and they’re a nice alternative to wearing flip-flops all the time. While at Shoe Carnival buying said boat shoes I couldn’t help but take advantage of the buy one, get one ½ off sale they were having and get a new pair of shoes for work.

Unfortunately since I very rarely buy anything for myself, when I do, I sometime go all out. So once I got started, this is what I got:

1 pair of boat shoes and 1 pair of dress shoes for work: 87.37
1 white canvas belt that has a buckle that doubles as a bottle opener: 21.30
2 t-shirts, 1 pair of plaid shorts, and 1 pair of khaki shorts: 44.78
Total: $153.45

Being FLY: Priceless!

Saturday I was at my mom’s house when two of my friends called and said they were going to a barbeque that night and asked if I wanted to go. As it turned out the barbeque was actually being held to celebrate another friend’s birthday. Since I both really enjoy hanging out with these friends and was happy to be given the opportunity to celebrate with my other friend on her birthday, I delightfully accepted the offer.

Although I knew and/or had hung out with several of the people that were going to be at this barbeque, technically I hadn’t been invited and I was just kind of tagging along. So I thought it would be a good idea to try and bring something. It was then that I had the bright idea that I could whip up some really great guacamole, curtsey of my friend Sam’s secret recipe. Unfortunately, Publix was having a shortage of avocadoes that day and I was trying to make guacamole for the first time. Needless to say, by calling my first ever attempt at making this really great guacamole a disaster would be such a understatement it would be ridiculous.  

I say that because the four* avocados I bought weren’t quite ripe yet and were about as hard as baseballs. Therefore they were actually impossible to mash up. So being the thinker I am, I pulled out the blender and went to town. Regrettably what I ended up with was just a mess of finely chopped avocadoes and guacamole mix. While it was oddly delicious, it wasn’t particularly pleasant to eat and I knew that there was way that I was going to bring that to a babeque and try and pass it off as something edible.

While this whole making guacamole process should have taken me roughly 15 minutes, including clean up time, it actually took right at an hour. Defeated, I decided that perhaps my notion of bringing something homemade was a little far fetched. Then to add insult to injury, by the time I had everything cleaned up and put away, I didn’t have time to run out and buy anything else. So I did the only thing I could; I decided to just bring the tortilla chips I had bought to eat with the guacamole. I figured if nothing else, perhaps there would at least be some form of dip and/or salsa.

…

When my friends and I arrived at the barbeque, I gave the tortilla chips to the lovely host of the party and explained my debacle of an attempt to make guacamole. It was then that she said, “What?!? Guacamole is easy to make. How can you mess it up?” Any sense of worth I had in my cooking abilities at that point were then crushed into to near nothingness. However, she did thank me for bringing the chips and said that she was glad that I came and she appreciated my attempt to bring something nonetheless.

This made me feel much better about the whole fiasco, and I ended up having a wonderful time at the barbeque.          

*Note: Publix only had a total of five avocados in the whole store. Apparently everyone else was trying to make guacamole that day too.