Happy Birthday to Me
I don’t usually recap my weekends because, let’s face it, nothing happens. I usually wallow in my own filth and play Xbox for 48 hours straight. I am serious bachelor material. However, this weekend was great! A perfect way to cap off 2007. Sure, there’s still New Year’s Eve to look forward to but I’d be happy to end the year today.
Friday I met with friends and we dropped into Umi Sake House. The food was fantastic and they really take a lot of pride in their sushi. We had this shrimp (née prawn) sashimi as an appetizer and I can tell you it was amazing and not unlike slow-kissing a mermaid: smooth, velvety and supple with a distinctive ocean flavor. Not only that but you can ask for the heads and they’ll batter and deep fry them; it’s the perfect way to take the edge off the very robust flavor of prawn heads.
I ordered a too-big bottle of sake but luckily we ran into two guys that were happy to help us finish it off. I think I can now safely say that I can’t enjoy sake unless it’s accompanied by lots of sweet snacks and preferably around a kitchen table in suburban Japan. People are right when they say rice wine is accompanied by unusually light hangovers though.
As an aside, I regularly get hangovers now. I’m no longer 18 and bouncing back in the mornings. It’s a painful ritual of drinking water, nursing my stomach and “sweating it off” with some light exercise. I guess I’m not invincible anymore.
Saturday is probably a night I’ll remember for a long time; a post-Christmas event at The Baltic Room meant forking over a $35 cover charge and then helping myself to the open bar. Open. Bar.
In all my years, I have never dealt with an open bar before and in my infinite wisdom, I drank myself a new asshole. Mix in the fact that I hadn’t eaten since 4pm and every drink was accompanied by a dangerous amount of Red Bull, and I was well on my way down a path of self-destruction. I did split a cab with some very nice strangers and they invited me to brunch the next day.
When I got home after all that drinking, everything finally caught up to me. It’s funny but whilst gripped with nausea and rediscovering religion, all I could think of was a recent post from Molly:
Low: Waking up at 1 a.m. with just enough time to run to the bathroom before emptying the contents of my stomach every hour, on the hour until 4 a.m. At one point (sorry, this is gross) I was sitting on the toilet with the garbage can on my lap, not knowing where it was going to come out of and shaking from the nausea.
Mind you, I didn’t sit on my toilet with a garbage can but thank god no one was there to see me. I was all ready to be a melodramatic sympathy-whore: crying out for my mummy, asking for the sweet release of death and wondering if anyone has ever surgically removed their own stomach. Irony is that just earlier that night I was on the phone with my mother telling her I was only going to have one or two drinks tonight.
So today was probably the biggest hangover I’ve ever had. A hangover that should have been saved for January 1st. I managed to nurse myself back to a functional human being, attend brunch (which turned out to be an annual gift exchange thing that this group of friends do) and even meet a friend for dinner. Over pizza, I explained to him all the different components of my hangover and wondering why I still feel like shit when it dawned on me that I hadn’t slept at all. Getting home at 2, being very sick and finally getting out of bed at 8 didn’t leave much time for shut-eye. My body and I have communication issues.
All in all, a very great, social weekend. I’m going to keep New Year’s Eve to a dull roar and not touch more than a drop of alcohol. Perhaps just one glass of birthday champagne (thanks Diana!). For those that are worried, I’m feeling much better now. I’ve learned an important lesson about my limits and I lived to tell the tale so there is no need to worry about me.
Here’s to all of you: have a happy new year and enjoy the last hours of 2007. This has really been the year that I found myself.
