My first recreational drug

was grape cough syrup. Yesterday (or "Yest-ah-day" as my Pops tends to pronounce it) started out with my hands being numb, then my knee, and eventually my brain ;) Amanda called on her way home from work and asked if we should go ice skating at the indoor campus ice rink. I was so excited I could hardly stand to wait for her to get home. We started out with a beer and some delish appetizers downtown and then made our way to a bar by the rink for a quick shot before we got on the ice (I tend to skate better with liquor).

I took a spill and injured a non-important part of my knee -- non-important, because it wasn't the kneecap, it was below it and off center. It did swell up and turn purple but the worst part was that I was completely unprofessional about it. I didn't pop right up and continue twirling about the ice, instead, I sat there for a moment, stood hunched over for a moment more, and leaned on Amanda for a moment after that. We both fell once, which we decided was perfect. Not falling would mean we weren't trying hard enough and falling a lot would be painful and detrimental to our egos.

I did, however, feel pretty damn good about my Lutz Jump and my spins by the end of the hour, even though, there was a six-year-old out there who was totally showing me up. See, that is the problem with having skated on a pond BY MYSELF for most of my life. I was the only one out there, most of the time back then, so of course I thought I was the Ice Princess. Watching a six-year-old with more skills than you'll ever have kinda puts things in perspective. Well, at 23 I learned the Lutz Jump, but, at 22 I taught myself to do a back-flip off of the diving board so at least I have professional diving to fall back on.

After our ice time was over, Mandy thought we should grab a drink at a bar in the old 'hood and take a cab home. Even better, I suggested we grab a drink in the old 'hood and do a Monday Night Bar Crawl to the current 'hood. We met some interesting folks and made friends with a few bartenders. It was really quite fun, even if we only made up 1/4 of the people in any given bar. In our last bar (WE MADE IT TO 7 total), Mandy almost got a chunk of law school paid for by a young gentleman who she let use her cell phone as he had apparently just "come into" 1.2 million dollars and I got into a discussion about ideal jobs with some folks. The bartender there said he'd ideally be a professional poker player and then we met a kid who supposedly was a professional poker player.

This guy told us to think of any person in history and his friend would guess who it was. It took about 15 seconds on average and he got it every time. I asked if there was a system and they admitted that there was. I told them that that was all I needed to know as I didn't want to ruin the magic of it by knowing the details. Mandy, on the other hand, had to know the details. On the way home she tried to explain to me that by using the cue of "Are you ready?" and snapping his fingers three times he had accurately told his friend, in code, that my historical figure was Sacagawea. We were a little tipsy at this point so she could have been explaining how to FOIL equations and I would have been just as perplexed ("F-O-I-L. First, outer, inner, last!").

It was a stellar Monday, to say the least.