getting up

i got up before 7am three times this week. you're probably saying holy shit right now. i don't even start in on the lap of luxury (watching sports center in my underwear) until 10 at least. but i'm getting in shape for running season. that means (a) start swimming, (b) stop eating so much, and (c) don't bother running, stretching, or buying the inserts i need! yes, 1km of lap swimming in two weeks is certain to prepare me for the kentucky derby (half) marathon. this is the marathon that gives you two free passes to churchill downs just for participating! you have to use them a week before the derby, but i bet it'll be electric there without all those horses and people to distract us...from that electricity.

yes, 6:30am, three times. 1km. that's 500m a day. you do the math...that's 1000m total, into two days...carry the two...that's only two days! why was i up so early the third day if not to swim? why, drinking! oh yes, friday was unofficial st. patrick's day at the U of I. the famous local holiday invented because some drunken paddies felt cheated one year when the real st. patrick's fell on spring break. and on many (most?) lucky years, the real day is not actually during spring break, so we celebrate twice! the best thing about unofficial is that the university continues to function, even though half the campus starts drinking before 10am. a couple years ago unofficial somehow coincided with engineering open house. every 17-year-old engineer considering a promising career in nerddom at Illinois had to (got to? no, these are engineers) had to wade through a sea of drunks to get to their programming contests and poster presentations. classes continue, and many people go...drunk. they say in some of the bigger lecture halls you'll see a few diehards in the back still drinking through class.

sadly, my class was at 12:30, so i skipped it. it's usually very easy to make a 12:30 class on a friday, but not when you've been drinking since 8 (it would have been 7, but we had to settle for breakfast until the bars opened). andy and british matt had to give a presentation at 9:45, which means they'd been guzzling green beer for an hour and a half. there's a bunch of old jokes about a priest drinking vodka at the pulpit to stay relaxed. this was probably similar, but more pathetic than funny. neeta and my new friend pete showed up to carry the torch, and we played our first hand of cards at about 10:00 with a group of strangers who'd known somebody or other. matt and andy showed up, somewhat sobered up, and we switched bars for some lunch at 11:30. having been in a bar over three hours, i was astonished to walk outside to warm sunlight, the most beautiful day yet this year, and hordes of people in the streets. at the lunch bar i saw two Carries: current carrie (caroline) and last year accident carrie, who buzzed her hair with a #4 guard a few weeks after we made out and jacked her face on something, and then had a friendly fistfight with lexi a month later, which is a great story for another time.

lunch made me feel sick and exhausted. matt found some girls to take our pitcher, and i napped on neeta's bed while she and matt watched harold and kumar. when matt found me 30 minutes later i was in the fetal position hugging a pillow. drunk and adorable. sour kraut ben had shown up, which spellt the end of a nice morning. andy and pete had left to spend the afternoon in meetings, half drunk, smelling of booze, and sporting over-21 wrist bands. we returned to lunch bar (legends) without neeta, now having acquired maureen, by all (three of) her friends who haven't slept with matt, and a nice guy named sam. and we played cards and drank more horrible green beer uneventfully until dinner. the streets at this point are still full of people, mostly now those who have only been out since their classes ended, the first wave having long since gone home to bed. i saw tessa working at jimmy john's. she came in drunk because they needed her, the rush was so bad. they sent her home later because she threw up. full of pitas, we went to yet another bar, and feeling that it was now dark outside and we'd been drinking all day, if we were going to make it really feel like night time, we should switch to whiskey. at this point the day starts accelerating because i remember less of it. we left that bar for murphy's at 10:00. what better place to spend the last four hours of unofficial? here the jack and cokes were the same price we'd been paying, but they were now doubles. i met a hot welsh girl. mo's friend showed up, upon whom she quite plainly had a big girl crush. at some point there were shots. andy and pete came back, this time with more fun: boston ben. boston ben is way more fun than german ben, but sadly not as tall. his lack of stature and confidence stop him from impressing girls (actually just the confidence) but not from trying. he struck out a few times but left with a sweet girl we all liked, whose name must have been kate, since that's what was on the back of her shirt.

and the night ended in lexi's room high atop the dirtiest house in urbana, our group whittle down to me, ben, matt, and maureen. finally settling down to pbr and rum straight from the bottle. liquor lost the power to affect us. i fell victim to dana, a sad sad girl who never gets tired of talking about how messed up her boyfriend is. she tried to tell matt about astrology, and he responded by reading her palm and telling her it was in her stars to be gullible. me, i just disappoeared when she went to the bathroom.

and that's how it all ended. no sex, no adventures, just 21 hours of alcohol. and i wonder why i'm getting stupider.