New Year's Eve

I've never had a good New Year's. Last year I was recovering from an illness and couldn't get my drink on. The year before, I was getting text stalked by the girl I'd just dumped. The year before that, I drank high lifes in State College, PA with a bunch of college students and felt very old. The year before that...you get the point.

I had a variety of options for this frigid evening but, of course, I'm feeling sick. My plan of attack? Drink a shit-ton of grapefruit juice and hope I rally. Otherwise it's going to be another sad evening of staying home and watching Dick Clark's corpse counting down to the new year. Please pray for me. I must have a good time tonight.

It's Been a While (Part Deux)

I actually survived New Orleans. Last year, I drank too much, didn't sleep enough and got sick. This year, I followed the same formula but miraculously remained healthy. All credit goes to Aaron Joachim for sharing with me his magic hangover remedy (gatorade and alka seltzer, yum!).

Following my NOLA shenanigans, I flew up to Boston to see my pregnant sister. She was due to give birth to a girl on the 23rd. The arrival of baby Alissa would make me an uncle for the first time and no longer the youngest member of my entire family tree. Understandably, I had mixed emotions about this.

Being the youngest has its perks. For example, I received many more presents from Santa than any of my other siblings due to my constant denial of his nonexistence. I also managed to parlay my status as the youngest into years of getting out of chores ("but Mom, I'm far too small and weak to mow the lawn! that's older sibling work!"). Naturally, my larger and less gifted (spoiled) older siblings resented my status as the youngest (greatest), but to the victor (youngest) goes the spoils.

On the plus side, the arrival of Alissa meant I no longer had to suffer the indignity of being introduced by my mother to anyone and everyone as "the baby of the family." For a while, people responded to that introduction with something along the lines of "Awwwww," or "he's a little large to be the baby, no?" but that soon gave way to, "is she serious?" and "does she know he's 27?" Now I can rest easy with the knowledge that when she says "isn't my baby adorable?" she's referring to the tiny girl in pink (Alissa), not the huge dude in pink (me).

When Alissa finally arrived on the 26th, I was relieved. My sister made it through like the 5'2" champion that she is and Alissa came out healthy and beautiful. I've gone from being the little brother that might to the big uncle that could. That tops anything that I could have milked out of Santa.

It's Been a While (Part One)

Finals+relief work in New Orleans+becoming an uncle= no blogging for a month. I'm back and worse than ever. My New Year's Resolution is to post at least once a month. This dramatic increase in posting will hopefully allow me to reach my 2009 goal of 12 blog views.

Over the last month, much has happened in the life of Pay the Money and Take a Shot. I took two brutal law school exams. One was fair (corporations) and the other was a disjointed piece of shit (crim pro). I then frantically assembled a sixteen page answer to my take home health care final and turned it in an hour before it was due.

Having finished three exams, I celebrated by getting absolutely smashed at a friend's party and then further smashing myself at the law school end of semester party. This resulted in more than a few drunk texts, one embarrassing drunk dial, and a carefully crafted apology email. Yaaaaa....

This still left me with a paper to write for my public corruption class. My goal had been to finish it before I took off for New Orleans for a week of relief work (drinking). After feverishly writing ten pages on Saturday (the 13th), I quickly realized my goal was going to go unmet.

I did the logical thing and flew to New Orleans the next day, met up with my friends, and further smashed myself on Bourbon Street. I then locked myself in my hotel room for the next two days and banged out 21 hopefully coherent pages (and 170 footnotes!) about the misdeeds of William Jefferson.

Unfortunately, my lockdown cost me two days of working in the lovely NOLA sun (and two drinking nights!). There was only one way to remedy this; working and drinking myself into oblivion over the final three days. The results? Hours of cleaning, drinking hurricanes, denailing, taking shots, hauling wood, slamming beers, and getting kicked out of the pool area later, mission accomplished!