8 … 7 … 6 … 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 … 1 … HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Backing up though, my new year celebrations didn’t start out all that great when Kerry changed our plans at the last miniute. Candice had been talking about celebrating down in Long Beach at the South African Bar thats down there but neither Kerry nor I had the money to make the trip. I was also talking with Keith and Matt about celebrating in the Bay Area (where Matt lives) so when Kerry finally told Candice that we wouldn’t be going I made arangements for us to spend the night at Matt’s place.
Well, I guess Candice wasn’t going to be able to go on her own down to LA so Kerry’s Mom twisted her arm and offered to pay for the hotels if she would go with her sister down to LA. However, that didn’t really fix the other problem I had with going to LA, I had to work on New Years Eve until about noon, and be on-call Friday. There was simply no way I was going to drive 16 hours for one night in LA, even if it meant I wasn’t going to be able to celebrate the new year with Kerry.
So I picked up Travis from Shingle Springs after I finished up my morning job, and we made the trip out to Oakland. We got to Matt’s place around 5pm so we killed a few hours with the XBox. The original plan was to head into San Francisco and bar hop over there, but since we were a realativly small group (Matt, Kelly, Travis and Myself) we decided it would just be easier to bar hop locally which turned out great since Matt & Kelly live within walking distance of a bunch of bars.
We headed out to get some dinner around 7pm at Filippos, a corner Itallian resturant that I highly recomend to anybody. I had the Ravioli di Spinaci with their homeade alfredo, it was amazingly good. Matt, Kelly and Travis shared a bottle of wine with their meal, I stuck to water. Wine seems to often give me hearburn, so I figured it would be a bad way to start a night of drinking.
We then headed up the street to George & Walts, a sports bar on College Ave. It was dead in there. Including ourselves and the bar staff there was maybe 12 pleople in the bar, and the median age was hovering somewhere around 55. We got a pitch of beer anyway and played a game of pool. Travis and I skooled Matt and Kelly. More people started comming in the bar as we finished up our game, but it was time to move on to another bar.
Our next stop was up the street a bit at a bar who’s name escapes me. We didn’t stay long, all of us were in need of cash, but the ATM at the bar wasn’t working, so we shortly headed back out to get some cash at an ATM around the corner.
After getting some cash out, we stopped into another bar (again, I’m hoping Matt will pop in here and tell me the names) for another pitcher. Again, not a ton of time spent there, enough to enjoy the pitcher and move on.
Our finaly stop was at Water. And compared to the other three bars, this place almost felt snobby. The nice thing though, is that Matt and Kelly are regulars there and although it was small, we were all able to sit at the bar. This is where the bulk of the drinking for the night happend. I had a Margarita on the rocks, some similar mixed drink that Matt recomended, a rum and coke and obviously a glass of Champaign. Matt & Travis started with that mixed drink I mentioned earlier, then they both had a milky absynth (AKA, the Green Fairy). Travis threw in a shot of Taquilla somwhere too and they both had Champaign. I think Kelly stuck mostly to Champaign.
We ran into a couple of friends of Kelly’s, Steve and Sarah (hopefully I remembered their names right). They seemed like a fun couple and it was nice to meet them. We brought in the new year at Water and Travis stole a kiss from the bartender with really nice hair. We stuck around for a little while then headed home, making a short stop at Kelly’s dad’s place to wish him a Happy New Year.
We got home just about in time too, because the alcohol caught up with Travis in a bad way and he spent a bit of time “purging the demon”.
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I woke up with little more than a headache at around 8am. Travis on the other hand looked a little worse, and was definitely hung over. Kelly wasn’t feeling 100% either. We watched some Myth Busters and Always Sunny episodes while we all waited for excedrin to make things better. Keith and Meghann showed up around noon, and Keith, Meghann Matt and I went out to pickup takeout Chinese food while Travis and Kelly recovered.
After lunch, we played a couple rounds of Balderdash (Keith and Meghann won) and we hung out for a bit. We had dinner at Filippos again. I un-originally ordered the same thing I had the previous night (it was too good to pass up). And after another short period back at Matt’s place, Keith, Meghann, Travis and I all headed to Meghann’s place in Davis. She gave us (Travis and I) a quick tour of the place but we didn’t stay. Keith took Travis, and I headed home where I fairly promptly went to bed.