Saturday, March 21, 2009

Drinking!

This is always an amusing topic and I find myself thinking about drinking today. Not thinking about having a drink, rather how people behave when they drink. Because last night, I took my sister in law out for her 40th birthday. We had planned to have dinner, but that never really happened, because we had drinking on the agenda and that was really the primary focus of our sojourn. We started out at the Wild Rover Pub in Manch Vegas. Now, I haven't been to the Rover since 1994 but the place hasn't changed one iota. Same smelly bathrooms, same wood floor covered with peanut shells, same bartender. Same Bartender? Good god, this guys been serving drinks in the same smelly gin mill for 15 years, holy crap. Talk about commitment. They should name the "john" after him or something. The guys a staple.
Anyway, we started at the Rover and moved on to Margarita's after that for.......you guessed it.....Margaritas. After a couple of rounds with Senor Patron, it was back to the Rover to continue on. Well, I can tell you, my sister in law was lit up like a Christmas Tree, which was good because that was the objective. She's married to my brother, so she normally needs to stay sober at parties to drive him home, so now it was her turn. I can say with great confidence that she had fun and that she accomplished her mission of "tying one on" I stayed sharp for most of the evening so when we got home, Jer and Ar were sitting around having cocktails with some friends, so I had the opportunity to catch up.
But, today, I feel like crap. Very tired, and hungry and a little shaky. And I really didn't drink that much. So, it just means I am getting old and can't handle my liquor. I remember the old days, I could stay up all night partying and "carrying on" (as Nana used to say) and I could drag myself out of bed the next day and work a double shift only to go out after work and do it all over again. Nowadays, if I have more than a couple of glasses of wine, I am totally shot. So I really am getting old in some ways. But that's ok, it's Gods way of telling me not to drink like a fool at my age, because there's a price to pay. (he's so smart)
I did get up this morning and go for a 4.5 mile run so that helped the situation, although I had to drink two bottles of water to get through it. So the question remains, why do we drink? If the enjoyment is so fleeting and the payback is a bitch, why have a cocktail at all? Wouldn't we all be better off if we just had an Ovaltine? I suppose, but that's not how we're wired. We want to have a drink to relax, to blow off steam, to forget, to celebrate, we don't even need a reason. And it's pretty freaking fun........every once in a while. So, I suppose if you know the price and you do a quick risk and reward scenario and your still reaching for the Corona--you should enjoy it. That's what I do......Now where is that bottle of Chardonnay?

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