cerebral discharge

My old best friend from high school got married last night, hence the trip to the big MD.

I volunteered for DD duty. My options were sleep on the floor of a hotel room full of all my drunk friends, or stay sober and drive home to a good night’s sleep. I chose the latter.

I have big plans today; I intend to head into the city (we call it “DC”, you all call it “washington”) to visit a few landmarks of interest to me (and very few other people.) I’m sure I’ll be going alone, which might be fun, or maybe boring. We shall see.

So anyways, I got to play designated driver last night. This was a first for me, as I don’t drink often, don’t go out with drunk friends often, and when I do, don’t ever have to drive.

But this time, I had a couple gin and tonics (open bar!) and stopped drinking at about 7pm, just in case I might end up driving. Sure enough, everyone I was with got completely sauced, and I was happy that I quit way early.

I gave up on three full hours of open bar time, and I didn’t even nearly regret it; My friends are probably still passed out, and will wake up with a two-day hangover.

I ended up driving four people I didn’t know to their hotel, which was an adventure to even find. Since it was St. Patrick’s Day, taxi’s were taking an hour to come pick people up. So I drove around Annapolis, looking for this hotel, which was supposed to be a mile away, but ended up being six or seven miles.

All around, the drunken revelers celebrating St. Patrick’s Day were stumbling about, looking for a bar that wasn’t already full to capacity. Outside of each bar, a huge bouncer sat on a stool, keeping a throng of already-drunk wish-i-were-irishers trying to have a good time from coming in, as every bar in town was packed so full of people that the fire marshals were going around making sure no one was breaking code.

After a police officer gave us directions to the road we were looking for, we headed out of town to find it.

At some point on the drive (in between their repeated statements of “thanksh…..shooow much, maaaaaan! yurrr like, the besht…duuude, i mean…this is soooo nice of you! yurrrr like, maaaaann, yurrr like a saint!”) one of them realized that my name was Patrick, and it was St. Patrick’s Day, and they were calling me a saint. Then one of them said “you should get, like, your own day for being so nice….like you know, like saint patrick’s day two!”

One of them ended up giving me six bucks for driving them, which should cover my metro pass into the city today.

I should have asked for 20.