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Trivial Matters, Damn the Man, and Out and About Town
I've been meaning to blog this week, but I have been either running out the door on my way somewhere else or asleep within fifteen minutes of my shift ending. Oy.
Tuesday was trivia night at The Flying Saucer, so I went to pick Kendall up over in Rice Village. Thanks to taking the back way into town, we were even early enough to be able to stop in at Sambuca for a happy hour priced apple martini.
I must go off on a tangent for a minute because within the last month or so, I've become one of Sambuca's regulars and all my drinks and, also importantly, all the drinks of my friends who are with me, are now happy hour prices. That's right. Instead of paying $8.00 for an apple martini, I pay $4.50. And those martinis - they are mighty tasty. So, with cheaper drinks and live music every night, Sambuca's in way beyond my favorite downtown place to hang. I just love it there.
After the drink, we met Melissa at The Saucer and got ready to play trivia. I was a little nervous when it was just us (the last time that I went to trivia it was just Melissa and me and we got our asses beat; normally, our team places, so it was humbling), but figured I'd have some bacon cheese fries (Mmmmmm. Cheese fries.) and it wouldn't matter.
The format of the game changed, but it's way more fun in my opinion. What was really cool is that we got all of the questions right in the first round except for one (the one we missed was how many verses does Don McLean's "American Pie" have. I thought it was six, changed it to five since it was a better sounding number, and missed it because it was six. Damn!) and we were the leaders at the end of the round so we got a free round. Seth got lucky and walked in like two seconds after Rita, the trivia girl, announced it, but she was sweet and let him have a free drink anyway. Yeah!
The second and third rounds sucked since we only got one question right (Where was Rudyard Kipling born? India.), so going into the final question - where you can bet up to twenty points - I was slightly discouraged. We figured we didn't have much to lose, though, and went ahead and bet the full twenty.
Discouragement quickly turned into despair when we hear the question: Within ten years, guess the combined ages of Sandra Bullock, Tom Hanks, Marlon Wayans, Shannon Elizabeth, Denzel Washington, and John Lithgow.
I couldn't believe it, but thanks to some superior guessing skills on our part, we came up with 263 and the correct answer was 264. Since we were the only team to get it right, we catapulted into first place for another $30 win.
Irfan showed up pretty soon after that and Marc called, so we all took off for better drinks and live music at Sambuca. Carol Fran was singing the blues, so we all laughed, drank, danced, and had a fabulous time until closing time.
Never ones to go home early, we then retired to Twelve Spot for more merriment until they closed. After that, I was starving so we all headed to Katz's for breakfast. Finally, the night was over and it was time to go home.
The next day was the day that I chose to fight my bogus parking ticket. Long story short: parked in an area where parking after 6:00 is permitted, but I got a ticket - the only car in a line of about six to get one. I even stopped a cop and he said he couldn't figure out why I had one. Needless to say, I was pretty pissed.
Since it was only $35, I was just going to pay it, but then I saw on the ticket that you can get a hearing within a half hour of requesting one, so I figured what the hell. I'd taken pictures of the other cars without tickets, the parking sign, and even the cop that we stopped, so I figured I didn't have anything to lose.
I headed down to Lubbock Street, finding the building easily enough (my internal map of Houston is finally becoming complete; I'm so proud of myself). I went down to office in the basement, found the place, and there was only one guy in front of me.
After about ten minutes, I got to see the judge and I explained my story, showed him the pictures, and, remember advice that I've heard on like a million television shows, resisted the urge to babble at him and shut the hell up.
He asked a couple of questions ("Is this the sign post in the picture? How far were you away from it?"), but after about five minutes, I was out of there with the ticket dismissed. Yeah! Damn the man! Take that, you shitty ticket system!
The El Orbits were playing at Sambuca, so I headed down to listen to them, have a drink, and chat in the Technology Bytes IRC channel since the show was on at the same time. Whoever Matt is, his wireless connection is still unsecure, so I can totally get online from the bar.
Have I mentioned lately how much I love The El Orbits? My god, they rock. I can't wait for them to resume their Monday night gig at The Continental Club the first Monday after Labor Day. An Evite will be going out soon. If you live in Houston and want to come, leave a comment or something.
After Technology Bytes ended at 9:00, I went over to The Flying Saucer to meet Sat, philktid, Barrett, and Marc.
The Saucer was having some kind of birthday party and between that and the people from The Astros game, it was completely packed. We managed to get a seat outside, but it was hot as balls. I should have lost like twenty pounds, I was sweating so much. Nothing like it being a million degress outside with 1000% humidity at almost 10:00 at night.
After a quick drink and some cheese fries, I made the executive decision that it was back to Sambuca since they had both air conditioning and The El Orbits. We (minus Barrett) headed back over there, just in time to snag seats at the corner of the bar.
More drinks were drunk, more songs were sung, another arguement over whether or not the song playing was Telepopmusik's "Love Can Damage Your Health" was had (It is, damn it!), and basically we just talked about random shit as we're all prone to do.
Next thing we knew, it was closing time (or rather the bar had been closed for thirty minutes, but the bartenders - the lovely Lara and the cute Carson - didn't make us leave) so we headed to Twelve Spot again. We're party animals, I tell you.
Again, more random conversation, another drink (or half a drink, in my case), and again it was closing time. We wanted to hang downtown for a little bit more, but nothing was open. We ended up in front of Kaveh Kanes since my car was parked there. Pete, the guy who works there, was just locking up and he confirmed that nothing was open, but he happened to have a bunch of pastries. Did we want them?
Hell, yeah we wanted them! So for about forty minutes, I sat on the hood of the car, Sat and Marc stood on the sidewalk, and we people watched (I swear, those girls were making out in that limo) and talked some more. Finally, it was time to call it a night. Or rather a morning since it was almost 3:00 am. Oy.
The next night it was out with Nermine and her friend Deanna to Tumbleweeds to do some country dancing. It's so weird, but whenever I start thinking that I need to go dancing, Nermine e-mails me to ask me if I want to go.
OMG, I had so much fun. I haven't been dancing on a Thursday in forever, but I still knew half the bar. Lots of good dancers were in attendance, including Adam and Buelle, so I got to dance pretty much the entire evening.
I had forgotten just how incredible it feels to dance. I took lessons for years and kicked around going into competition last year, so I'm pretty good. It's an absolute joy to dance. Nermine, Deanna, and I had such a blast, I hope it's something that we start doing at least a few times a month. I wish more people in our cirle of friends enjoyed this; I would love to get a huge group of us going regularly.
Friday I was going to meet Elaine and some others down at Onion Creek, but I totally crashed from all the late nights and was asleep by about 5:30. I woke up around 9:00, but just couldn't muster the energy to get ready and go down there. I hate living a million miles away from everything.
So far, the rest of the weekend was spent with me working yesterday (I work Tuesday through Saturdays now), catching up on a lot of stuff on the TiVo since I haven't watched television in like three weeks, I finished the latest Stephanie Plum novel, and just took it easy.
Anyway, this is why I haven't blogged in a few days - too damn busy being a social butterfly! :-D
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Comments
Oh! We need to make a QaF date! The stuff will be off the cable box soon, so we don't have much time. Let me know what you think. We could split it up over a few days, and I have the last 2-3 episodes on the TiVo!
.: Christine said on August 22, 2005 07:18 PM :: link it :.When did they start having trivia night there?
.: Thomas said on August 25, 2005 07:11 PM :: link it :.You're too early! Come back at August 21, 2005 08:54 PM to see this post.
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