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It's been an interesting week. Fall Bash very nearly got cancelled on Thursday. (For the majority of you who don't go to school with me, Fall Bash is a drinking-oriented event that we schedule this time each year for the sake of breaking the pre-finals tension that's going on with everyone. We rent out a club and set up an open bar.) The club we'd set up cancelled at the last minute (5:30 on the day of an 8 PM event), after assuring us several times that they'd be able to open up. They didn't have liability insurance, apparently.
After trying to shunt us to Bar 13, we ended up getting a place on the West Side Highway that was pretty good. The open bar wasn't solid - we didn't have every liquor available, for example, and only one bartender - but for a place on such short notice, it was pretty solid, especially after the first hour when everyone got some booze in them and quit bitching. ("No, we won't be reimbursing you for the cab you didn't have to take. Go to hell.")
I did, however, end up holding the hair of a woman who is not my girlfriend while she vomited. This did not amuse me.
It's a rough time of year, though. There's a lot of tension running through pretty much everything, and so people are oversensitive. I'm also getting to a place I haven't been in a while - thinking of myself as The Building That Doesn't Burn. I got castigated for making a lose-lose decision the other day. Without getting into too much detail, a friend of mine looked like she was going to repeat a mistake she'd made, and I texted her to remind her of that. Apparently, I didn't choose my words quite carefully enough, because I now think she's an idiot, and I had to listen to the stomach-turning "No matter how drunk I get I never lose control" speech.
FYI: "It's something I wanted to do anyway" is nothing but being impulsive when you're drunk and rationalizing it after the fact. I don't know if people who think that way think that other people just lose control of themselves as soon as they smell beer, but everyone retains the ability to make choices up through, say, the five-beer-an-hour mark. You're not special. You become uninhibited like everyone else does, and if you're claiming that justifies things you did, fine. But that doesn't mean you were acting the same way you'd act when you were sober.
I also don't appreciate the implication that I become piss-ass drunk and lose my ability to function, since - get this! - your tolerance isn't what you think it is, I've been drinking longer than you have, and I outweigh you two-to-one. I don't call you on it, but maybe I should.
But I digress.
I'm a calm, reasonable person. I wasn't always, and occasionally I do visibly lose control, though not to the degree that most people do (and certainly not to the degree that my intimate circle of friends does). I have goals, I pursue them, and I find ways to make up for potholes and missed turns along the way. I let people rely on me, I give them a shoulder to cry on, and when they ask, I give them competent, well-reasoned advice.
Nobody gives a shit, because the news is about buildings that catch on fire.
And this is frustrating. When, occasionally, I do catch on fire, I get put through the ringer for it. It's not fair, especially considering everything I do for the people around me. It's not that I'm the first person in my family to get anything past a bachelors degree (yeah, my sister has a masters in ceramic engineering. She's a secretary. It doesn't count.), it's that my grades aren't what they should be. It's not that I'm the first in the family to actually make something of myself, it's that being academic isn't an "honest job" like unloading trucks. My cousin failed a year of pharmacy school, for god's sake, and he's still lionized by everyone... but I don't own a car, so there must be something wrong with me. (I'm. In. Manhattan.) I don't know if I'm just setting myself up for a bigger fall by not being more impulsive or what, but the crap has got to stop.
Oh, and by the way: Do you know what the difference is between the Supreme Court and a regular court?
- The Supreme Court comes with cheddar and bacon bits.
It's been an interesting week. Fall Bash very nearly got cancelled on Thursday. (For the majority of you who don't go to school with me, Fall Bash is a drinking-oriented event that we schedule this time each year for the sake of breaking the pre-finals tension that's going on with everyone. We rent out a club and set up an open bar.) The club we'd set up cancelled at the last minute (5:30 on the day of an 8 PM event), after assuring us several times that they'd be able to open up. They didn't have liability insurance, apparently.
After trying to shunt us to Bar 13, we ended up getting a place on the West Side Highway that was pretty good. The open bar wasn't solid - we didn't have every liquor available, for example, and only one bartender - but for a place on such short notice, it was pretty solid, especially after the first hour when everyone got some booze in them and quit bitching. ("No, we won't be reimbursing you for the cab you didn't have to take. Go to hell.")
I did, however, end up holding the hair of a woman who is not my girlfriend while she vomited. This did not amuse me.
It's a rough time of year, though. There's a lot of tension running through pretty much everything, and so people are oversensitive. I'm also getting to a place I haven't been in a while - thinking of myself as The Building That Doesn't Burn. I got castigated for making a lose-lose decision the other day. Without getting into too much detail, a friend of mine looked like she was going to repeat a mistake she'd made, and I texted her to remind her of that. Apparently, I didn't choose my words quite carefully enough, because I now think she's an idiot, and I had to listen to the stomach-turning "No matter how drunk I get I never lose control" speech.
FYI: "It's something I wanted to do anyway" is nothing but being impulsive when you're drunk and rationalizing it after the fact. I don't know if people who think that way think that other people just lose control of themselves as soon as they smell beer, but everyone retains the ability to make choices up through, say, the five-beer-an-hour mark. You're not special. You become uninhibited like everyone else does, and if you're claiming that justifies things you did, fine. But that doesn't mean you were acting the same way you'd act when you were sober.
I also don't appreciate the implication that I become piss-ass drunk and lose my ability to function, since - get this! - your tolerance isn't what you think it is, I've been drinking longer than you have, and I outweigh you two-to-one. I don't call you on it, but maybe I should.
But I digress.
I'm a calm, reasonable person. I wasn't always, and occasionally I do visibly lose control, though not to the degree that most people do (and certainly not to the degree that my intimate circle of friends does). I have goals, I pursue them, and I find ways to make up for potholes and missed turns along the way. I let people rely on me, I give them a shoulder to cry on, and when they ask, I give them competent, well-reasoned advice.
Nobody gives a shit, because the news is about buildings that catch on fire.
And this is frustrating. When, occasionally, I do catch on fire, I get put through the ringer for it. It's not fair, especially considering everything I do for the people around me. It's not that I'm the first person in my family to get anything past a bachelors degree (yeah, my sister has a masters in ceramic engineering. She's a secretary. It doesn't count.), it's that my grades aren't what they should be. It's not that I'm the first in the family to actually make something of myself, it's that being academic isn't an "honest job" like unloading trucks. My cousin failed a year of pharmacy school, for god's sake, and he's still lionized by everyone... but I don't own a car, so there must be something wrong with me. (I'm. In. Manhattan.) I don't know if I'm just setting myself up for a bigger fall by not being more impulsive or what, but the crap has got to stop.
Oh, and by the way: Do you know what the difference is between the Supreme Court and a regular court?
- The Supreme Court comes with cheddar and bacon bits.