Weekend Hijinks

I love that word. My weekend started early, when on Thursday we all met at Grisanti's to celebrate an old buddy visiting from Virginia Beach. I had an excellent meal of their spinach salad (though the best is the wedge) and the steamed mussels. Many bottles of wine later, everyone else had left the non-smoking room and we completely took it over as our private party room. It's fun to know the employees and you can be as ill-behaved as you like & they still send you free cocktails. The funniest part of the night was looking at pics of my friend & Crunchy Blac (yes, that Crunchy Blac from 3-6 Mafia)---they'd run into him at Side Street Weds. evening. I promise to post them if she ever sends them to me! On Friday night we met up late at the Bayou & squeezed into their bar. I saw a reformed lesbian crying on her husband's shoulders in front of her old girlfriend---regretting the conversion, perhaps? Several hours and several beers later we shut the place down as I heard the bartender telling someone, "It's last call, but you can get 5 beers if you want to---just pay for them now" so I'm not sure when they actually closed. We left & the rest of the crew headed to a friend's house in Cooper-Young to hang out, but I was sure if I didn't go home at 3AM, I'd never make it by daybreak. Late Saturday I met another old friend at Old Zinnie's for our ritual of rum & diet cokes (I mixed it up with vanilla vodka & diet coke, which---small wonder---just tastes like a vanilla coke). We intended to just be out long enough for a cocktail or 2 but I'm sure you all know what happened (we ended up out until almost 4am again). Sunday was, of course, the pumpkin carving for which I will have some photos later (trans. when I get around to it). I made yummy hot cider in the crock pot and we roasted pumpkin seeds in the oven, so my house smelled lovely and fallish. It was a fun afternoon, and a nice change from the way I usually see a lot of these people (out at bars or stuffing ourselves at dinner). In other seasonal news, I had to turn on my heat for the first time this fall. I think it's really not very cold yet and I am just a wuss, but I'm not freezing for a few measly pennies. Or hundreds of dollars, as it's supposed to be very costly to heat with natural gas this winter. It's only money, after all.