What I Learned This Summer (2013)

You know the drill.

This is the fourth one of these posts that I’ve done in the past five years. If two is a coincidence and three is a trend, then four is definitely a standard. Which is ironic, since I’ve often been accused of not having standards. *cough* Moving on…

I love summer, and since my childhood I’ve worshipped it with a reverence typically reserved for favorite grandmothers. Ice cream truck jingles, pickup baseball games, and firecrackers started the romance in my days of innocence. Pool bars, bikinis, and outdoor happy hours have kept the flame alive after all of these years. For me, summer air carries a certain magic with it, be it real or imagined.

My list of memories from the Summer of 2013 feels a little less extensive than in years past (maybe that’s a blessing in disguise, though, given how long some of those posts have been). That may be due to shoddy note-taking (as always); or, maybe, it’s due to fewer shenanigans being had. Working 50 hours a week has worn me down over the past year, and as a result most Friday nights I’m too drained to get turnt up at the bars. I hate it—it’s like I’m being force-fed adulthood—but, unless I hit the lotto or marry a beautiful heiress, that’s life.

So, with no further delay (since it’s, you know, November December January February March [fight me]), and in no particular order, here are my lessons from the physically painful, mentally exhausting, emotionally dulling summer days of 2013 that I would gladly relive if given the chance.

• If a drunk friend runs away from you, let him go; if he comes back, it was meant to be. If he doesn’t…at least you won’t need staples in your leg. Yup. June 22, 2013 will go down in history as the dumbest day of my life. Well…top-5. Who would’ve thought going to a country concert tailgate wouldn’t be the stupidest thing I did that day?
  
  
• Parents always know when you’re being stupid. I limped into my mom’s house the day after the accident, expecting hysterics and motherly lectures. Instead, she reacted with a measured, cool demeanor, and calmly told me she’d dreamt the night before that I was in the hospital. That’s some ESP for your ass. At the same exact moment I was laid up in a hospital bed—in the same ER room, coincidentally, that she’d been in a little over a year before that—getting 16 staples put in my leg, she was having a dream about me being in the hospital. Our bond is tight.
  
  
• Stupidity is expensive. The bills for the ER visit and multiple follow-up doctor appointments were not cool. Perhaps worse, though, was buying more medical tape and gauze bandages every week. Somewhere out there is a mid-level manager at Johnson & Johnson who should shake my hand for sending his or her kid to college.
  
  
• There’s something scarier than 16 staples in your leg: Sobriety. My leg became infected during the recovery period. That meant antibiotics. That meant two weeks of July spent sober, praying PowerBall and modern science would rescue me with an infection-fighting rum that could only be found on a tropical beach populated by beautiful, sexually-adventurous women.
  
  
• Finding the right party means making tough decisions. Armo hosted a pool party in mid-August, but unfortunately it didn’t command the same attendance demographics (see: lots of morally bankrupt people, many of them in bikinis) that similar parties have in the past. Alex suggested, as the night set in, that we all head for life rafts and paddle back to Shadyside, where the season’s third and final “Jam on Walnut” was roaring to life. Armo refused to leave his place, vowing to go down with the ship. He’s a valiant captain. At least, that’s the thought I had as I fastened my life preserver seatbelt.
  
  
• When you’re friends with someone, there’s usually a pretty good reason for it. Alex, Tony, and I were the three mutineers that night. As we walked from her place to Shadyside Saloon, Alex tripped over the uneven sidewalk ahead of me. I began chuckling—fully intending to grow it into a self-righteous LOL—when I felt myself stumbling over the very same sidewalk bump. Just that quickly, my feelings of superiority had turned into dejected realism. As I stopped and collected my shattered self-worth, I heard Tony trip over the bump.
  
  We’re idiots.
  
  
• Only a drunk idiot puts a drunk idiot in charge of pizza. After the bars closed that night, we grabbed a couple of pies at S. Aiken Bar and Grille. For reasons unbeknownst to any of us once the sober hours arrived, I was given the responsibility of carrying the pizzas from there to my apartment. Alex instructed me not to eat any until we got to our destination; that rule might’ve held some weight with someone who hadn’t been drinking for most of the day, but…#drunchies. We weren’t even a quarter of the way to my place when she and Tony turned around to find me with sauce and cheese all over my face.
  
  
• What some call binge drinking, I call efficient packing. Each of the summer’s big three holidays—Memorial Day Weekend (MDW), Fourth of July, and Labor Day Weekend (LDW)—saw my friends and I squeeze three or more days full of crazy into one small calendar entry. As natural as such mini-binges have been over the past 15 or so years of my life, it took until just now for me to realize that those were the only three-day calendar entries of the summer. Far from being a symptom of alcoholic dependencies, those multiday adventures were actually a symptom of adulthood. We’ve found ourselves clinging ever-so-tightly to the windows of liberty shared by our calendars as we’ve grown older (especially as, in turn, those windows have grown increasingly-rare). It’s the life of busy adults trying to get the most out of the infrequent times when they were free from responsibilities.
  
  

• Responsibilities are Father Time’s rapey minions. Like many people, I often daydream of winning a huge PowerBall lotto payout. But I’ve come to realize that it’s not necessarily the financial freedom that fuels those fantasies, it’s the freedom itself. No alarm clocks, no project deadlines. No bosses. Just living life as it comes to you each day.
  
  
• Not working can be hard work. Of those three holiday weekends, LDW was arguably the least hedonistic. But it might still have been the shortest on sleep.
  
  We kicked it off with the Oddball Comedy Festival that Friday. TD, Boy Toy, Armo, Weatherman, and several others joined me in some parking lot imbibing (read: pounding beers like they were cheap sluts earning rent money) in the summer sunshine, followed by throwing back tallboys of Heineken inside the First Niagra Pavilion grounds in the summer moonlight. Dave Chappelle, Hannibal Burress, Kristen Schaal, and everyone else killed it, while I killed every beer and shot that came within 10 feet of me.
  
  
• Following your dreams is scary as shit. And I haven’t even done it. But I’ve stood at the edge of the cliff, looking down at the ground below, and wondered how I could ever fly above it. I have endless respect for those who’ve taken that step forward. I pray I man up and follow you soon, before it’s too late.
  
  
• When you do make a bold decision, don’t half-ass it. In July TD and I, out of the clear blue sky, decided to go on a bar crawl—after a whiskey distillery tour. And when we come at you, we come hard. (Wait…)
  
  
• Life is what you make it. Seriously, we wrecked shop that day. Nine bars. Nine bars AND A WHISKEY DISTILLERY. And we never really broke a sweat. In fact, all of us handled ourselves like all-stars the entire Fourth of July weekend, going strong four days straight. That was one of those moments where you find yourself smiling at all that just took place, as you lay on your couch in agony on Sunday afternoon.
  
  
• LDW is officially fantasy football Christmas. Saturday of LDW—as is tradition—featured the annual W&J draft at Armo’s house. It was one of two that I attended that weekend. Finn, Chief, Esq, BBB, Tony, our friend Keith, and others met to bust each other’s balls and select fantasy teams over lots of pizza and lots of beer. I don’t know if it’s due to football having dominated that weekend for numerous years now, but hearing “LDW” just triggers images of the game in my head, like saying “Fox News” makes you picture a monkey throwing its own shit at a wall.
  
  
• The better you are at something, the more you suffer for your art. This year saw me manage six fantasy football teams of my own, and consult two of my friends’ teams. Every godforsaken day from mid-August through the end of December saw me dividing up the free time I don’t have between fantasy research, eight leagues, and the CS pages. Who needs a love life?
  
  
• Love lives are second-class citizens in a world that’s home to fantasy football. One of those friends who employed me as a consultant was Dupa. He flew into Pittsburgh late on the Saturday night of LDW for his league’s draft, which would be held Sunday afternoon. By early Sunday evening, he was on a plane headed back to Houston.
  
  His girlfriend lives here in Pittsburgh. He didn’t visit her during the approximately 20 hours he was here. …She was not happy.
  
  
• Getting drunk with your homies is like riding a bike. On his one night in town, Dupa dialed the knob to “full turnt.” He drank himself silly on the plane, and then led Tony and me to Shady Grove straight from the airport. In the 20 minutes after we walked through the doors, we consumed a round of Long Islands, a round of Jager Bombs, and a round of Heinekens. By the end of the night I was taking pictures of Dupa sitting alone on a city bench with his arm around a pizza, as he made sex faces at it.
  
  
• Fuck fire hose fittings. Seriously. To this day I feel myself get nervous and twitchy each and every time I walk near a fitting sticking out of a wall or a hydrant on the sidewalk.
  
  
• I don’t know how Pak’s wife does it. For reasons only known to divinities of the universe, I spent three consecutive weekends hanging out with Pak in Shadyside. Week 1 was two homies wanting to drunk; Week 2 was the summer’s second Jam on Walnut; and Week 3 was the annual kickball tournament that turns my friends into booze zombies. Safe to say, Mrs. Pak hated me as much as I hated Pak by the end of that stretch.
  
  
• It’s possible to be a bigger drunken spectacle than Pak. The second of those weeks, the Jam, found Tony in his drunkest form. Pregaming at my place, drinking beers on Walnut St., and downing shots and drinks at Shady Grove did in the homie, who was an irrationally-angry mess—a.k.a. “full-on Irish”—by midnight.
  
  Realizing that his night had reached its peak, I walked him home. Along the way, we passed various random bands of revelers strolling through the neighborhood. And each time someone in one of those clusters would raise their voice in excitement over whatever it was that they were discussing, Tony’s reaction was to accuse them of talking shit on him, and to attempt to dart in their direction.
  
  
• With age comes experience…and shame. The following week—that of the kickball tourney after party—Tony balked at Pak’s and my suggestions that he come catch up with us. He was worried that most of Shadyside would remember him as the blotto fool he had been the previous week. He finally relented when I reminded him that all of the people that had seen him be a drunken asshole that night were, themselves, drunken assholes that night.
  
  
• Fate is a woman. Related: Women are cruel. The postgame partying after the kickball tourney saw some wild sights, including our girl Liz expressin’ herself on the wall at Mario’s East Side. The star of the night, though, was Armo.
  
  It’s rare that we get the Italian Stallion to venture outside the five-mile radius encircling his house (as evidenced by the fifth bullet point of this post); his average is about once a year. On this uncommon night, he met a cute blonde girl at Grove, who talked him up for most of the night. Keith and I watched from nearby barstools, sipping our beers like proud parents. At close, her friends pulled her in the opposite direction from the one our collection was headed in, so Armo and blondie did the whole huddle-on-the-sidewalk-away-from-your-friends-while-exchanging-phone-numbers ceremony. She then made him a tongue-wrestling practice dummy in front of their friends and the world.
  
  
  That Monday he texted her to see if there were flames to fan. She mentioned that she has a boyfriend. A boyfriend with whom she lives. Armo considered that maybe once-a-year was too often to venture out into the world.

The Summer of 2013 may have turned into November December January February March [fight me] as quickly as it appeared, but we’ll always have the memories.

…And the scars.

Drunks Say the Darndest Things 2

If you think there is a limit to the amount of idiotic, ballsy, or plain-outrageous things my friends, family, and I will say when marinated in alcohol, let me reassure you: there isn’t. Last year’s posting on this subject was one of my favorites of the year, and not long after it was published I began remembering additional stories and fantastic lines that I had not included. Not to mention the new ones that we were busy living on an almost weekly basis. Many of those have been part of much larger stories, and therefore have already been told (a case of mistaken identity by “The Ex”—nee “Girlfriend”, Dupa’s testimonial to his lovemaking abilities, T.C.’s diffusion of a tense elevator ride, LRG’s dating arithmetic, etc.). But there still remain others that have been executed just as flawlessly, but have remained amongst our crew…until now.

• The day after Thanksgiving, my friend Steph invited me to a party at her house in Mt. Washington. When I arrived, though, the house was seemingly empty. I knocked on the door, but to no avail. I called her up to politely ask, “WTF?”
  
  Steph: *noticeably tipsy* “I’m at Carson City Saloon. I came down here this afternoon with some of my friends to watch the early [college football] games. We’re leaving here in like ten minutes.”
  Me: “Okay, but isn’t anyone at your place?”
  Steph: “Bill (my boy, who is also her roommate) should be there. Did you knock on the door?”
  Me: “Yeah. No answer.”
  Steph: “Well kick that fucker down!”
  
  
• When I was about ten or so, my dad’s side of the family held a 75th birthday party for my grandfather. As we all sat around a table in the private room of a nice Baltimore restaurant, some of my aunts and uncles discussed the different milestone birthdays while enjoying their pre-dinner cocktails.
  
  Someone: “Well 25th is silver, and 50th is gold. What’s 75th?”
  Uncle Red: “Marble!”
  
  
• In May 2004, Tony celebrated his birthday with a raucous cookout at the house he lived in with his boy, K-man. Late in the night—after a keg and two bottles of Jager had been polished off—we were all pretty hammered, but the birthday boy was easily the drunkest. Chief showed up with Mudd, who none of us had met before. And Mudd, who is black, was wearing a cowboy hat.
  
  Tony: “Chief—you brought me a black cowboy for my birthday!”
  
  
• One fall night in 2001, BlahBlahBlah and I were out in Shadyside with our friend, “Em”, and two of her girlfriends, “Pin-up” and “Badonk”. All three of the girls lived in The ‘Side; Em had an apartment on Walnut St., and Pin-up and Badonk lived in a large house a few blocks away with two other girls. After the bars closed we all went back to the girls’ house to continue drinking. Although BBB and I were supposed to stay at Em’s apartment that night, things were going swimmingly between Badonk and I, not to mention between BBB and Pin-up. So when Em decided to call it a night, expecting us to be rolling with her, she got two peace signs to the face. For whatever reason, though, neither of us hooked up; instead, our party of four ended up passing out in a girl-guy, girl-guy lineup in Pin-up’s bed (she had a queen-sized mattress, but quarters were still pretty cramped—if we had rolled over in our sleep, the poor lasses would’ve suffocated).
  
  Early in the morning, I felt the bed shake, and looked up to see BBB getting up and walking out of the room. I looked back down to find a sexy chick sleeping next to me in the same bed, and another one a BBB-sized space away from her. Still drunk, I shrugged it off and went back to sleep. An hour or so later, all of us were awaken by a blaring smoke alarm. Pin-up hopped up and ran out of the room to investigate; the rest of us got up, BBB and I plopping ourselves down on a couch in the middle of the bedroom. When Pin-up returned, she said that a candle had been left burning in the bathroom and the smoke from it had set off the alarm. “It was probably our roommate—she’s always lighting that fucking candle!”
  
  She left the room again and Badonk followed her. Alone for the moment, BBB started chuckling.
  
  Me: *whispering* “What?”
  BBB: *whispering* “I lit the candle!”
  Me: “Wha…Why’d you light the candle?”
  BBB: “I took a shit!”
  
  
• BBB’s confession wasn’t going to be the last great line of the morning, however. He and I walked back to Em’s place, giggling and still tipsy. When we rang the buzzer for her apartment, she came to the door and opened it, and looked up at us like a lost toddler.
  
  Em: *dejectedly* “Did you fuck my friends?!?”
  
  
• A couple of Christmases ago, several of us spent Christmas Eve Eve (the 23rd) drinking at Shadyside Saloon. At the end of what was a blindingly-drunk night for Hollywood, the last four or five of us were drinking beers in my apartment. As he perused my liquor supply, he happened upon my bottle of Glenlivet Nadurra, a 16 year old scotch.
  
  Hollywood: “‘Glen-li-vay’. Nice.”
  Me: “Thanks, but it’s ‘Glen-liv-it’.”
  Hollywood: “No it’s not; it’s ‘Glen-li-vay’.”
  Me: “It’s ‘Glen-liv-it; it’s Scottish, not French!”
  
  
• On a Friday night last November, Tony and I were sitting at a table in Shady Grove, finishing our drinks and casually watching some of the night’s talent walk past. Then a passing petite blonde with a nice bottom got Tony to thinking.
  
  Tony: “If I was Vinnie Chase, I’d pull an average chick like that, and then I’d send someone out to buy a bucket of sausage gravy, and I’d eat it out of her ass.”
  
  
• As TD and Baby Joey’s 2008 Labor Day party wound down, I received a phone call from The Ex, who at the time was still a mysterious and little-known “Lady Friend”. I answered the phone and sat down on one of the couches in the living room while I talked. 1L, as I reported once before, was confined to the other living room couch by the effects of the day’s drinking. Mind you, she was wide awake and had been involved in the conversations going on between TD, Joey, Tony, and I; she just couldn’t keep herself upright while doing so. The Ex was out of town, but wanted to call to see how my day had gone. As I was involved in the phone conversation, I was absent to the group’s discussion, and was unaware as to where it had wandered off. But I was about to get a strong idea.
  
  As I talked with The Ex, I suddenly realized 1L’s slurry voice was projecting in my direction. “Hey!” I glanced over, and saw that she was leaning towards me, stretching to show me her cell phone; on the screen was a crisp, clear photo of a well-sculpted butt (which, I’d learn later, belonged to none other than 1L herself) in pink and bluelace panties. I tried to ignore her and focus on The Ex, but 1L was determined to show off her booty to me.
  
  1L: *louder* “Hey! …I bet that girl you're talking to doesn’t have an ass like this!”
  

Working Hard Over Labor Day Weekend

The booze. Oh the booze.

Friday, Saturday, and Sunday were a marathon tag-team wrestling match: in one corner were me and my common sense; in the opposite corner were beer and liquor. I’d say we won, but I’m not really sure if there is a winner in that kind of battle. I started the weekend downing Patron straight from the bottle at a birthday party. I ended it facedown on a futon in Baby Joey’s computer room. In between were some stories (of course), but my consistent incoherence will only permit me to remember a few of the many. I’ll go over them to the best of my ability.


Friday

I kicked off the weekend with my friend TK’s birthday party, which featured about twelve rowdy guys and…two girls. You’ve got to love those 6 to 1 odds. Correction: 11 to 1 odds (two of the people at the party were a couple). It’s not like I ever put women before booze, though, so it really wasn’t that big of a deal to me. And it didn’t seem to slow down anyone else, either. When I arrived, Dupa and another guy were heading out to pick up a second keg. After I walked into the apartment, I was immediately directed to the ice luge—oh yeah. Some of the guys chugged beer out of a boot-shaped glass named “Das Boot.” My boy Cap [not TJ’s Cap] ran outside after tangling with the Boot, bent over in TK’s front yard, and pulled the trigger, unleashing a torrent of digestion. Then he went inside, washed his hands and face, and filled up Das Boot again.

Eventually, our group made it over to the Saloon of Mt. Lebanon—much to the dismay of the people in the bar. The birthday boy drank directly from his own pitcher, one of our buddies decided to drink while standing with his pants around his ankles, and we all took turns sexually harassing the only female in our group (the couple left before we got drunk enough to try to drive a wedge between them). To put it succinctly: good times.


Saturday

I started the day still drunk. Of course, it wasn’t until I got to the barbershop that my inebriation really hit me. My barber probably needed to chug some water after inhaling alcohol fumes for 20 minutes while doing my fade.

Then it was off to a live draft for one of my fantasy football leagues. The 2008 season for the “Playa Haters” can go either way—on the one hand, I stocked up on some pretty decent talent; on the other, a lot of that talent plays for the Colts. One good cocaine-&-hooker party in Indy, and my season’s done for.

I had a couple of beers at the draft, but by the time I got home that night I was half-certain that I wanted to take it easy until the next day’s cookout. And the thought of saving some cash was appealing, since I have a bachelor party of epic proportions coming up at the end of the month (Chief’s). And it’s not like I could find a place to get obliterated on a Saturday night without spending much money, right?

Wrong. My boy Nate called me from his girlfriend’s apartment, which is in The ‘Side, and said that he was thinking about hanging out in my hood that night. This made me remember that a friend of ours now works at one of the better bars in Shadyside. Oh f—… Several rounds of Long Island Iced Teas, Red Bull & Vodkas, shots, and beer later, the three of us had a combined tab of around $45. Nate’s girl (NGF), who is all of 5’2” 0lbs, was silly-drunk. As he and I sat at the bar talking, she would be on the other side of him giving a thumbs up like Borat. I’d laugh, he’d snap his head around, she’d stop and giggle; he’d turn back around to continue the convo, and she’d do it all over again. During the walk home, he and I often paced out ahead of her. We’d turn around to check on NGF, who was usually laughing hysterically at everything or nothing, and then slow down so that she could catch up. Once, when we looked back to see what her laughter was for, we found her laying on her side in a front yard after losing her balance and falling. The next afternoon, I sent Nate a picture of her Borat pose; he responded, “Yeah, she’s feeling it today.”


Sunday

The weekend’s centerpiece, its marquee event, was the now-annual Labor Day Party at the house of Baby Joey and his girlfriend TD. Kegs, Jell-O shots, young pros at this drinking business, and… a Chihuahua? (I’ll explain shortly.)

Joey and TD haven’t been chronicled all too heavily in this blog. But, just in case you have any question about their ability to party, I call your attention to the picture to the right. That’s the actual welcome mat that greets you as you walk up the steps into their house.

And Joey’s pedigree, in particular, is impressive. He is the little brother of Esq (whose comments and exploits have found their way onto this page in the past), and a son of a woman (“Delightful”) more than capable of holding her own in a conversation. Delightful is white, but Joey and Esq are each half Black. While talking to a group of us early in the evening, Delightful paused, looked at Joey, and declared, “You could’ve been Obama!”

Our friend (“Hollywood”) does some landscaping, and adorned Joey’s backyard with a dollar sign (right) for the occasion. And that’s not just a random nickname crafted by yours truly—he was actually calling himself “Hollywood” last week. This is hilarious to me, because: (a.) it reminds me of Meshach Taylor’s character from “Mannequin”; and (b.) I already tease him about his metrosexuality on a consistent basis. He advised Joey’s 10 year old niece to tell her baseball coach that she didn’t want to play catcher anymore, because it’s inherently bad for the knees. My retort—though I had to say it low enough that only Hollywood, and none of the minors running around, heard—was, “Yeah, you should listen to him; he’s been a ‘catcher’ his whole life.”

Speaking of questionable orientations… Ashhad was in attendance—rather, a shell of what used to be “Ashhad” was in attendance. When I arrived, he was seated at a table next to his girlfriend, who was holding a little Chihuahua puppy…in a pink and blue dress. You just can’t make that up. I later looked over and found him holding the dog, and I nearly tripped over myself running over to snap a picture. Just about every one of our friends now has a copy of it. And Ashhad absolutely hates me for it. Hey, it wasn’t my choice for him to show up at a Labor Day party looking like a Pakistani Mugatu. And women wonder why I’ve avoided getting into a serious relationship over the past few years. What guy wants to end up like that?

Early in the evening, though, I came to a realization. This is the third party that I have attended at Baby Joey and TD’s house, and at each the first half of the day has been a “family” segment. Little kids run to and fro while the adults make a futile effort to curb their language and drunken mannerisms. My suggestion (with absolutely no consideration towards the hosts’ finances, time, and effort) is that they hold a family party on Saturday and the adult party on Sunday. Need further evidence that this would be a good idea? Joey’s aforementioned-10 year old niece tossed a frisbee around with another child. She eventually threw it when her playmate wasn’t looking, and the toy sailed straight into the face of a much younger child standing behind him. Hollywood, Ashhad and I watched it happen, all wincing and stifling laughter. When the toddler began crying hysterically, and the older party guests all asked who threw the frisbee, the ten year old turned and pointed at me. And despite the fact that the toss had come from about a foot below my arm reach, adults all around the yard began chastising me for beaning a little girl in the face.

As the night wore on, we slowly polished off the better of two kegs and all of TD’s Jell-O shots. Tony and I played some inspired beer pong, and reaffirmed our place among the top duos in the game. With Joey and Hollywood down to their last cup in one match, I declared, “This is over!” and sank the shot. Then I walked into the house, and on my way to the restroom announced to the guests gathered in the living room, “I am the greatest beer pong player EVER!” Did I mention that I drank a lot of beer and Jell-O shots?

Hollywood persuaded Baby Joey and I to make a run down the street to the bar for shots of tequila. I think his eloquent sales pitch consisted of, “C’mmooonnnn.” After tossing back the first one, I wondered why I hadn’t just stayed at the party. Then Tony, TD, and several other girls from the party walked in, upset that we had gone without them. And I remembered that I run with drunks; staying at the party was never really an option.

Another round or two of shots went down, and we all returned to the house. One of TD’s friends, “1L,” was drunk enough that she had to lie on her back on a couch while talking to the rest of us, who were all standing. TD, who is by no means a large girl, packed away the last of a dessert dish. Hollywood, who had brought an overnight bag and a change of clothes, waited until none of us were looking and stumbled off to his car, peeling off down the street on his way home (he made it there safely, amazingly). And if the level of a person’s intoxication can be measured by how out of character his or her actions are, then the award for “Most Hammered” goes to Baby Joey, who stood at the sink, casually washing the dishes.

And with that, goes the summer. It’s been an interesting one, to say the least. Now I have to brace for months of cold, snow, and ice. I’m taking a bottle of Glenfiddich to a cave—someone wake me in May.