Do the stair roll! Do the stair roll!

My sister got married last night. It was the end of a crazy week of busting ass. OK, so it was much more my mom's doing, but Dani and I helped a lot, too.

Got hardly any sleep, working on scanning, cropping, and printing old photos of them, then putting them into spray-painted dollar-store frames. That was my primary duty.

Well, that and the programs. Mom typed them up on me computer, in Word. The problem was, I don’t know Word all that well to be printing out of it, and she didn’t do the paging correctly. I’ll give her some slack, she was working on about 4 hours of sleep in the previous 4 days, and for chrissake she’s 62. Just being able to use the computer is awesome enough. She overall very kick ass awesome. I hope to be that cool and with it when I’m rocking my sixties. 2035 I turn 60.

Goddam.

Ok, back to the subject at hand. The wedding was fun. Well, I take that back, the ceremony was a full church service. That was… OK. The reception was a lot of fun. The decorations looked cool. I can’t get too excited, cause I’m a guy, right? Right.

There was a DJ, and open bar, and dinner buffet. Better than Phoebe Buffet. Well, maybe the Friend is funnier, but the one here was tastier. Well… …nevermind.

We were supposed to have rented a 15-person van for the entire wedding party to take form the church to the reception. (It was kind of a drive.) But some brother of hers messed that up. Wait, what? I’m her only brother? Dammit. I didn’t remember they closed at noon on Saturday. It was their stupid fault for having horrible business hours.

Anyway, so my mom calls me and says she has it taken care of, and boy did she! We came out of the church to a super-stretch Excursion totally done up inside. TVs everywhere, a huge chrome and mirrors bar. Coolers full of beer. Neon lights all across the ceiling, slowly changing form one color to another. It was very nice.

So, we get to the reception hall, and being to throw down. They started by introducing the whole wedding party. That was neat. Made me very glad I was paired up with Dani, it would have been weird to be intro’d with someone else.

After the first dance, eating, that bit, it was time to hit the bar in earnest! And we did.

I had been to the reception hall before with Wittne and Mom. They have a once-a-quarter open house for folks who have the place booked, so you can learn about the food, and become comfortable with the place. In my previous visit, I got to talking with the bartender. He was a cool guy, plus he was serving me well-poured drinks, so it made me talkative. (like I need help.)

So, for my first drink, I ask for a whiskey and coke. (what I tend to drink when not rocking beer. This was a liquor event, I could just feel it.) I was offered Jack or Canadian Mist… or Crown, can’t remember. Is there a difference? No, I’d guess. But I went with the Canadian. After about 3 or four of these, I ask the bartender (Joel was his name. In my life, a name of a good guy in most cases.) “Hey, didn’t you have Maker’s Mark last time I was here?” He explains briefly that Makers is part of the ultra-premium pack, one step up from what we ordered. (Goddam. There is a step ABOVE $28 a person? Christ.) Oh. OK. I guess Canadian will do.

Joel glances left, then right, like we were in a spy movie. He leans in, and says to me in a hushed tone, “But YOU can get Makers if you want.” I pause, wondering what the catch is. Assuming (hoping) there is none, I respond with an affirmative, “Sure.” He reached down below the bar back, and pulls out a bottle of Makers, rips apart the wax, and pours me a healthy drink. Wonderful. Drinking what I like to drink is excellent.

So, through the night, I am asking him for, “that special mix of whatever it was you gave me before,” and he nods knowingly, and pulls out my secret bottle of the good stuff. Knowing a bartender and having it work out in your favor is a think of the past in this day's corporate, count the level in liquor bottles environment, but I just hooked up. Joel is a good man.

We had the facility for 4 hours. At the end of hour 3, it is obvious that the party is just getting nice and cranking, and we need more time. My mom actually brings this to my attention. I wholeheartedly agree, and tell her I’m happy to take care of business. I ask how much she has in mind to pay for more time, and she gives me $400 to work with. I start with the DJ, just cause I ran into him first. Goes simply, I ask, he says $100. Done. The facility conversation takes a bit longer. I find the wedding planner-organizer-person and ask her how much for another hour. She goes to the back, comes back, and tells me “$695” Whoa.

I say to her, with a chuckle, “OK, so that means you really don’t want to be here another hour. Do you guys have a movie to make?” She gets that I’m mostly full of shit most of the time, and chuckles back.

“No, that’s just our hourly rate for the bar and the service people.” To be fair, the service has been impeccable. I give them credit for being attentive, and keeping serving containers full, and drink glasses bussed. But $695? I ask her if she can do any better than that, cause that’s out of our budget. “Let me go ask the owner.”

She comes back out from about 45 seconds in the back and tells us they can do $400. In fact, the owner comes out. I shake her hand, thank her for working with us, and confirm that we do, in fact want to take her up on her offer.

One hour left? There is an open bar! I must get our $400 worth! (Screw the DJ’s time, other people like dancing way more than me, let them get his money’s worth.)

Jermel and Matt and I spend some time talking with Lance, right by the bar. I realize that time is getting too short, and I negotiated way to soundly with the reception hall, so I needed to get my drink on.

I go to the bar and ask Joel now for a glass of Makers and a glass of coke. I’m doing my own shooters. This, in case you were not sure, is a bad idea. Well, bad in the aspect of that I cannot walk after my second glass. In between glasses, I go out to the dance floor where Dani, Toni, and Wittne (in decreasing order of drunkenness) are dancing with many folks I don’t recognize. I dance a bit, and then return to the bar, where the men are, and order up a second glass of makers.

Here is where the evening gets a little cloudy. OK, so the evening wasn’t cloudy, but my memories of it sure are. When ordering my second glass of Makers, Joel tilts the bottle all the way over, and the last of it drains into my glass. He tells me I finished it, and I’ll have to be on Canadian from thereon. (I don’t need another drink it turns out.)

At some point, we realize Wittne and Matt have left. We didn’t get to blow bubbles (but somehow I have a vial of bubble solution in my pocket the next morning. I don’t know how.) We decide it is time to call the cab, so we can get to the hotel where we plan to crash.

Mom rented two rooms for the bridesmaids to stay in, and checked out of one by 11am Saturday, but didn’t want to check out of the other till wedding time, and they wouldn’t allow a late check out, so it was available. Why not use it?

Waiting for the cab, I go outside. There are about 6 stairs down to the pull-through in front of the place. I go to sit, which I do. But I don’t stop moving downward, and end up slowly rolling down the stairs. At no point did I achieve much velocity, but I also didn’t come to a stop till the bottom. Drunk and relaxed, I really didn’t hurt myself too much. I had a bruise on the outside of my left arm, and another in the inside of my right knee. Odd places, but that’s all I found in the shower. I never saw my back, but can only assume Dani would have told me if I had anything purple back there.

Finally at rest at the bottom of the stairs, I decide in my hazy logic that horizontal is comfy. So, I don’t get up. I just lay there in my tuxedo, jacket and all. I vaguely remember Toni walking out, going by, and fertilizing the bushes. Though, I’d imagine this process should more accurately be described as killing the weeds, because I can’t imagine this toxic mix would be found to be very friendly by any growing thing.

It is a rare instance that Jermel, Toni, Dani and I are all drunk at the same time. Knowing you have a taxi and a hotel allows you to party more freely. It also allows at least half of your party to “sell fords,” “commit Technicolor yawns” or “reverse swallow.” After hearing Toni engage in the “excretion of nutrients” I didn’t feel so good either.

This concludes my explicit memories of the evening. Later, I find that I apparently rolled down the window of the cab and “exposed my evening’s dinner and drinks consumption” down the side of the cab and onto the road. We also apparently brought a 5th person with us, and dropped him off at a bar that his buddy was supposedly at. Apparently this was a kind-hearted gesture to help prevent a former co-worker of Matt's from committing an act that could perhaps result in his 3rd DUI in under a year. We are nice people. He apparently paid for almost all of our cab ride, though Jermel tipped the guy heavy since I left partially digested ravioli alfredo down the side of his door.

Woke up in the hotel bed, in my underwear and t-shirt at 6am to Dani going to the bathroom. Wow. I drank a lot last night.

There I go, with my talent for understatement again.