Black Coffee Friday

Tonight wound up quite the fiesta by my standards. After the parade (I got hit in the head by saltwater taffy thrown from a float) and a warm-up buttered rum at Summit Pets and some pink wine at Jim's and Bonnie's store (a frou-frou extravaganza), I got shnockered at Kate's (A Place for Libations and Conversations) with Jo and Don, who are delightful at any hour but extra-super-great when they're shitfaced. It's fun to watch the faces of people they know light up when they spot them. For some reason younger people gravitate towards them. They're just young at heart, I guess.

We wound up at the Flying J having breakfast entrees and black coffee at 10:30pm (which is the weekday Evanston equivalent of 1:00am anywhere outside the state of Wyoming). Jo will say anything and Don can't hear a word, and I love them dearly. I don't know what I'd do when she retires in five years, if I was still stuck here. Go crazy, I guess. Fortunately, I won't be. The only drawback to tonight was that I had to Febreze my head when I got home, and if I hadn't been wearing my favorite irreplaceable Vigoss jeans I would incinerate them. Smoking in an establishment is still the proprietor's prerogative here. If I'm not close enough to a cigarette to make my eyes swell shut, I'm ok, but I still can't sleep smelling it. I'll have one hell of a smoke hangover in the morning even though the half-dozen rum-and-cokes won't touch me. Thanks for the drinking gene, Dad, and the anti-smoking gene.

I'm going to use this weekend to regroup. After ten minutes of trying to scrub the black circles off underneath my eyes I realized it's not mascara. I'm tired, but I'm happy.