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!

I Hate the Cowgirls

NOOOOOOO!!!! The game's not over, but they're sucking the life out of the Skins by pounding Marion Barber 3 off tackle. I can't take it anymore. I'm seriously considering switching over to The Notebook so I don't have to continue to watch this hideousness. 

When the Skins beat Dallas in Dallas and then Philly in Philly, the pundits claimed the Redskins were in the driver's seat in the NFC East.  At the time, I just couldn't bring myself to agree. I feared we weren't as good as we'd been playing. Now it looks like I'm right. Beating a rival on the road means nothing if you turn around and lose to them at home. 

To make matters worse, this marks about the fifth game in a row that our offense has been generally unproductive. Only ten points and barely 300 yards isn't going to get it done in the NFC East. We'll see if Zorny can get the offense going.  Right now, though, it's not looking pretty. 

Shocking

Take a closer look at that photo. Click on it even. Yes, that's our fine nation's lame-duck President flashing the old shocker. Now, I've been known to do the same (in photos), but this isn't the sort of thing one expects from his commander in chief. Was this part of Bush's shock and awe strategy in Iraq? 

I know what you're thinking, some loser spent five hours in his mother's basement photoshopping the ring finger off of about fifty people. Wrong!  That's the real deal. 

Who knows why he chose to throw down the shocker now. It would have been nice, though, if he'd flashed it during the 2000 campaign. Maybe then we'd have known what he had in store for our mother country. Motherfucker. 

This Doggy

I wants it! The one bright spot out of the 5k was meeting this lovely wirehaired dachsund puppy. She was so sweet and lovable. When my friends and I went up to pet her, she rolled onto her back and was soooo content as she got a belly rub. If I ever escape the quagmire that is law school, my first purchase will be an equally cute puppy. I can't wait.

5k = PAIN

My nipples hurt. Seriously, they feel like someone rubbed a piece of sandpaper on them. My legs feel like lead. I smell bad. Why? Because I brilliantly made the last second decision to run a 5k.

My friends are into justice. Make that equal justice.  Unfortunately, GW Law's Equal Justice Foundation was putting on a race. I learned yesterday that most of my friends were planning on running in the race. 

I explained to them how out of shape I was, how much I enjoyed sleeping, how much I hated running. But no, they insisted I come. In classic sucker fashion, I agreed to go.

3.1 miles and a piss poor half hour of running later, I'm sitting on the couch trying to regain my bearings. I'm pretty sure I have my dignity but I might have lost it on the final hill when I decided to stop running and walked for half a mile. I used to have some pride but that took a hit when a woman from the 40-49 group blazed past me. 

I took some valuable lessons away from this experience: 1) don't eat four pieces of pizza, cake, cupcakes, and drink three beers the night before running in a 5k, 2) if you're out of shape and hate running, don't run in a 5k, 3) don't run in a 5k. 

Crazy Week

I apologize to my millions of loyal readers (Sai) for being such a lazy poster. As you may have heard, there was an election this week. I spent the day doing poll watching in southern Virginia. I promise to devote an entire post to how awesome that was. 

Anyway, my tireless devotion to the Big O cost me a day of work and I've been catching up since then. I think I'm finally up to speed, but my blogging suffered. I know, I know, my priorities are terribly out of whack. The most important election in our lifetime vs. blogging and I chose election. Stupid me. 

To make up for it, I promise to blog the fuck out of this thing over the next few days.  Prepare to be have your brains blogged out! It could get blogging bloggy up in here! Blog blog blogging blog, blog blog blog blog blog blogger! You get the point...