I have had some internet problems this week, so here is the long awaited sequel...a few things have become fuzzy with time, so bear with.
So I stayed at Adam's that night. The next morning, we woke up at 10:45 to get to his noon meeting, and I drove him up the school. After that, I drove over to Pete's house to giveaholla. We hung out for a while, played "Name That Tune", and then Pete decided it would be prudent for him to attend his last class session of the semester at 1:00. I talked to Jake (roomate/second cousin) and I whupped him in Tiger Woods Golf. I rule at that game. Seriously.
After giving Jake the beating of his life, I decided I'd go down to Pete's room and burn some CDs. He has these really cool CDRs that look like vinyl, and he also has the recording of the Pearl Jam concert that he and I and a few other friends went to last summer. 2 and 2 = me getting a kick ass concert on cool looking cds.
So, as I was burnign cds I checked who was online, and lo and behold I found Nutter and Mel. I decided that seeing it was a GORGEOUS day we should go have lunch. We agreed that lunch would be good, but of course there was dissension among the ranks as to where we should go. I wanted to go somewhere outside...Mel suggested the Hacienda Del Sol (great little Mexican place in downtown Duluth). Nutter had been drinking since February or something like that, so he didn't think Mexican food would be good for his continual hangover. He suggested the Anchor in Superior, and Mel rejected it out of hand (that's what she does...she doesn't need to give an excuse for why, she just demands it. And, usually, she gets her way.) We finally decided on Sir Ben's because they had fair priced sammitches and a stunning view of Lake Superior, plust the outside dining I so craved.
When we got to Sir Ben's, we were a bit taken aback by the full bar they just put in. As luck had it, the grand opening of the bar was to be that afternoon, and we just happened to show up. It was about 2:30 and Happy Hour started at 4. We ate our lunch, but these stupid balloons kept blowing in our faces. Nutter was getting visibly upset and was abou to throw a temper tantrum when a brilliant idea struck me: move the chair that the balloons were tied to! I did, and it was good.
After lunch, we decided it would be a good idea to buy some smokes. The day was nice, so we decided to walk to the nearest gas station. Mel and Nutter walk at a faster pace than my stubby poles can keep up to, so I had to jog or they had to wait every few hundred feet. Anyway, Nutter bought three packs of smokes (buy two, get one free) and the hallowed Backwoods cigars. "Why did I buy three packs of cigarettes?" said Nutter. "I won't smoke 3 packs of cigarettes in 3 weeks." As it turns out, it took us less than 24 hours...but that's getting ahead of the story.
So by the time we got back to Sir Ben's, it was just about drinkin time. Mel and Nutter and I got our drinks and sat outside. We saw an acquataince of Mel's ("Funny John" she called him) and invited him to have a drink with us. He said that he had some errands to run (or skate to, as the case may be) but that if we were still there when he came by again he would sit and have a few. It was a deal.
We
were soon joined by a few friends. We all sat and drank and basked in the glorious sun and excellent scenery. We saw a fender bender. Several fire trucks rolled by. Time, as it inexorably does, moved on.
Then a little boy came around and started handing out tickets for the drawing. Awesome!
Nutter: "So, when's the drawing?"
Little Boy: "I dunno."
Nutter: "What are they giving away?"
Little Boy: "I dunno."
Tom (aka Jay-Z): "Alright, little man. Good job. Thank you."
At about this point I needed another drink. I went inside to the new bar and ordered a Captain Coke. The flustered young man at the bar mentioned something about having to run glasses through the washer so it would be a few minutes. I had no problem with that. I had a problem when he didn't show up again. So, I asked another apparently new bartender if I could get a Captain Coke. She looked at me and pointed to the already busy 3rd bartender: "She's the expert" she said. C'mon, people, it's a Captain Coke. It's Captain. It's Coke. It's not rocket surgery. So, I had to wait for the "expert" to get done so she could finally wait on me. Ten minutes later, I was back outside asking all my companions what exactly was in a Captain Coke. They all passed admirably.
People kept coming around asking if we had our tickets. Nutter, the lying bastard that he is, kept saying that no, he didn't have one. So, of course, they kept giving him more tickets. I think he ended up with three, maybe more. The honest of us had only one, and a few of the slightly more dishonest of our crew had two.
The time came for the "christening of the bar:" We all went inside and hung around for a few minutes for the drawing to begin. I started talking to this old lady at the bar (I forget her name, but Nutter I'm sure remembers it) and it turned out that she was the mother of one of the bar's proprietors. They christened the bar, and Old Lady put up a fuss because they didn't take a picture. So, they pulled out a camera and tried to take a picture...Old Lady grabbed my arm and moved me first one way, then the other, and kept saying "I want you in the picture, but you have to be in the right spot!" I'm still not sure if the picture was taken or not, and if it was taken if I was in that right spot. If you ever go to Sir Ben's, and if they have a picture of the bar's grand opening, I will undoubtedly be the one person doesn't look quite right, like I was in the wrong spot.
The drawing. Our crew tore that drawing up, y'all. I'm pretty sure one of us won every other prize. Old Lady won a Sam Adams baseball hat, but seeing she was part-owner or whatever she gave me that hat, which Mel promptly stole and wore for the rest of the night. My ticket won a 3 month pass to Anytime Fitness. I Woo Hooed. The woman looked at me and said "Are you really gonna use it?" What's that supposed to mean? Nutter said "C'mon, he obviously needs it!" 98 pound bastard. I told her that, in fact, I did not live in Duluth and I would very shortly be moving out of the country, so she gave the prize to someone else.
Now it was getting to be about five-thirty o'clock, and the RAs who were drinking with us had to get back to campus to be on duty at 6. So Mel and I went outside while Nutter talked to Old Lady for...we're gonna say it was at least an hour. Mel and I talked the talk, y'know, the sentimental stuff about how much we thought the other rocked and how sad we're going to be at the prospect of not seeing each other for quite a while. We promised we would write: She to me from Chile, and I to her from Kiribati. Odd how two people from Minnesota who decided to go to Duluth for college and were hired by Residence Life would soon be writing to each other from continents different from each other and the place they grew up. Shows how every decision you make leads to others...if not for Res Life, I'd not have met most of the wonderful people I've been telling you about.
Anyway, "Funny John" walked by again around that time. As promised, he sat with us and had a few drinks, which of course turned into more than a few. Nutter joined us a bit later, and this is where the conversation took a decided turn toward the borderline indecent. We talked about a lot of risque topics. This is how most of the conversation went:
Nutter: "So, Mel, do you [sexually explicit]?"
Mel: "Nutter! Inappropriate!"
Funny John: "Well, do you?"
Mel. "Yeah."
We must have talked about that sort of thing for a good two hours, moving inside when the sun temperature fell. At about 8:15 or so, Nutter was picked up by his friends so he could bowl in his intramural game. Mel had a paper to write, so I dropped Funny John (turns out, he didn't like to be called Funny John, because it was a name his roommate had given him for blah blah blah, so we called him Johnny Allday, his pornstar name, instead) at his house and Mel and I went back to campus so she could finish her paper. While Mel wrote, I made my rounds and said hi to some of the people I had not seen. I stopped by the front desk to talk to Amelia, who was on duty, and then I went up to Rob's room to hang out for a while. I convinced Rob to come out bowling with us (well, we drank, Nutter & Friends bowled). I told Rob I'd go to Mel's room and call him when we were ready to go.
So I went back to Mel's room, and she was just finishing up her paper. I sat on her gigantic papasan and she read me her paper. It was a "position paper" for her Human Sexuality class (Mel didn't intend the pun, but I sure did). I don't really remember if it was good or not (sorry Mel) because my brain was kinda fuzzy at the time. Anyway, she did her girl stuff and got ready to go out again and I told Rob to meet us downstairs. We headed up to Skyline Lanes.
Not too much interesting happened there. Nutter's team won or lost or something. We ate food. It was good.
Andy was on the team (another friend from Housing) so we sat and chatted for a while. We smoked the Backwoods. Rob and I tried to explain to Mel the difference between "Hot","Pretty" and "Cute". Rob and I decided that we prefer women who are not hot, cause all you want them for is sex. Pretty, Cute, Beautiful and Gorgeous are the ones you really wanna hang on to.
It was time to go, and we all poured out pitchers dry. Nutter had more beer than I did. When he went to bowl his last frame, I sneakily drank all the beer in his cup. He noticed this when he came back.
Nutter: "Looks like someone drank all beer."
Chris: "God! Who would do that?!"
Nutter: "You."
Chris: "Oh, yeah."
And that was pretty much the end of the night. Mel went to bed and Rob and I went up to his room and watched the Sandlot and passed out. We were woken up by a telephone call from nutter just as we had both drifted off around 2 am. He was calling to make sure we were gonna be ready to go to Shultzy's at 6 am the next morning.
Aye carumba.