The Napkin Diaries

My birthday was supposed to be February 28, and I mean, it happened, but not the way it was supposed to. I ended up driving to Delaware with Dave to go to my Great-Grandmom Talley's funeral - she made it to 100!
We stayed with Jen and Pete and rocked out to Sing Star. And on my actual birthday, I was with almost all my family members on my mom's side of the family, which was cool because I've never spent a birthday with them. We had some cake (that had beer shaped candles on it) and just hung out. It was nice.
I had planned to go out full-force in Charleston so when that didn't happen, I knew there was only one thing to do: reschedule. So we did - for Friday the 13th. We had a big cook out at the house with 14 of our closest friends, then went to meet up with our favorite Sniders at Pearlz downtown. I was already a bit lit and I made that painfully obviously when I dropped the bottle of wine on the floor before ever leaving the house. It put a dent in the kitchen floor. Sshhh, don't tell Dave.
We had our obligatory oyster shooter(s) at Pearlz and caused a scene. Screaming "BIRTHDAY" continued on for this weekend too. We really scream it every weekend. But maybe we should come up with other two-syllable words to shout.
Birthday do-over did not end there because the next night, Dave, Michael, Billy and I were out for Winnie's birthday and then we partied at Bucca's. We were the loud kids in the corner that needed to be put in time out.
This night was particularly entertaining because we thought that taking camera videos was a great idea. Well, it was for everyone except for Michael who ended up being the entertainment on the other side of the lens. The four of us were toasting our little teeny shot cups and Michael managed to tip his over and spill it all over the table. Well, that's alcohol abuse so we had to make sure he could enjoy his shot and asked our waiter to bring us 1 straw. I'm sure he was like "WTF," since we all had beer bottles in front of us. Eww, beer through a straw. So when I said, "go" Michael began sucking up Royal Flush from the table. And I began filming. And then he began to nearly barf. If any of us had been anywhere close to sober we would have realized how disgusting this was. Instead we found it wildly amusing and encouraged him to keep sucking. When the "pre-puke face" showed up though, I was like "Nooooo. Stop! It's not worth it! Stop now." So he did. Even though Billy pointed to the spilt mess and just said "Finish it."
We obviously spent Sunday recovering by watching Role Models and Madagascar II (Rooooooaaaaaarrrrrr)
Dave and I took off Monday and my brother stayed in town, so we started drinking again. What else is there to do on your day off? Billy came over with his super fun new girlfriend, Sally and we raised hell. We started off with a game of truth-or-dare Jenga which led to Moonshine cherries being eaten, which led to Sally licking a pine cone, which ultimately led to Sing Star. Dave and Michael did a wonderful rendition of "99 Red Balloons" that I happened to accidentally video tape... ah, the camera video recorded. Gotta love it. All you can see is them dancing from the back, like Party Boy of course, and screaming the words to the song at the top of their lungs while trying not to laugh hysterically. I heart video.
I also heart birthday do-over weekend!

I had the most amazing birthday celebration this weekend! My 24th birthday was last Wednesday, so Dave and I just went to dinner and had a low-key night. The debauchery was to begin Friday night. I was supposed to be at Mad River at 7:30 Friday night -- that's all they told me. I walked in to our little private room to see a slew of fabulous people screaming Happy Birthday at me! There was a humongous cake that could have fed Ethiopia that had blackmailish pictures of me all over it and to wash this cake down, we had 3 hours of freaking OPEN BAR! Let me take this time to thank the one and only Catherine Reid for planning, arranging and organizing this amazing event. Seriously, thank you - no one has ever been so thoughtful or done anything like this/that for me.
As you could imagine, the cake became a face ornament, in that Megan DuPree started another food/beverage fight. She's good at that. Hahah. Needless to say, approximately half of the party ended up with Cake Face. Niiice. Tasty, though. Miss Megan was also responsible for ordering the shots and passing them out... haha. Her response was something like this, "Well, I'm not drinking them, but I'm still damn good at ordering them." And she is - I was buzzed by 8:45.
Jayson delighted me with the funniest freaking birthday gift: the magical Box with a Hole in it for No Good Reason. The hole is actually for penises. Refer to pictures for visual aid.
There was supposed to be a Mystery Guest of the night. I had no idea who to guess, so Catherine surprised me before the Mystery Guest arrived and told me that the MG of the night was none other than DeAnne!! Holy crap, I finally got to meet the girl! Our "club" was complete. We took pictures.
After basically all the under-agers were kicked out or about to be kicked out, we moved on to the Purple Tree. We immediately took over the corner couch and then ran to the bar. I informed our favorite bartender, Jody, that we were celebrating my birthday and then instructed her to create a shot for us. After I ordered the 7th round of Mystery Shot, I asked Jody what the name of it was. She screamed something, but all I could hear was "Alter Ego." And so the birth of the Alter Ego Shot. Mmmm. Red Bull, Vanilla vodka and Peach Schapps. Try it, bitches. You'll love it.
After what should have been $200 dollars worth of Alter Egos, I transformed into stripper mode and insisted on giving everyone lap dances. There are pictures to prove this as well. Damnit. I now understand why the bottom of my foot was bruised... I danced all night, quite possibly on only one foot...
My tab turned out to only be $36. I have no idea how. I love bartender Jody. We moved on to none other than Thee Southern Belle. Duh. I found us some good seats, but then proceded to get unnecessarily angry when I contracted the hiccups. Like I was really mad -- Dave basically smothered me to get rid of them. It worked. We spent the rest of the night informing our friends which strippers were good and which ones we should give our money.
We all woke up with hangovers. Big surprise.
We didn't move until Poe's that night - we had to show everyone the fabulous bloody burgers we so adore. Our waiter was cool - we wanted to be his friend. He chops down trees and shoves them through cat doors when he's drunk. He also buys limos and starts yard fires. He is also fined by the police for these actions on a regular basis.
We laughed all damn night. The entire ride there, brother Michael cracked us up by telling us stories of how he's hurt himself or been hurt over the years. Personal favorite: Michael slammed his own hand into the door of the Big Blue Van we used to own. He began screaming, as slamming one's hand into a large metal object could inflict pain, thus resulting in screaming. Our mother assumed Michael was screaming in fear and began questioning about the "bee." "Michael! Is there a bee? Where's the bee, honey?" No bee, Mom, just Michael's hand rapidly breaking in our massive van door...poor Michael.
The Cononies apparently overdid it Friday night because Michael and I were asleep before 11:30. Losers. Dave wasn't far behind. This sleeping did not sound appealing to Joe, Bill and Catherine, as they ventured back to Thee Belle for the second night in a row. Rumor has it Catherine is detoxing after this weekend. I support and understand this decision.
I realize that I have not included any of the hilarious sayings that were said over the course of our drunkness. Why, you ask? I was too drunk to remember and too drunk to remember to even write the funny shit down. Please post in the comment section any funny shit you need us to remember.
Thank you again to Catherine, Dave, Megan, Joe, DeAnne, Michael, Jayson, Liz, Noel, (Shawn and Elisabeth for trying) and any other maniac drunks that were part of this weekend. My friends kick bee ass. Love you, you sluts.

i will write a big awesomely hilarious blog in a few hours, but first i just have to rattle off a few thank yous:

1. catherine -- thank you SO much for planning such an awesome birthday party for me. open bar? how awesome are you, seriously. no one has ever done something so very thoughtful. you are a wonderful friend -- i am so lucky.
2. david -- thank you for managing to keep all this a secret! i love you and i am so blessed to spend the rest of my life with you.
3. megan -- thank you for being here and helping plan this weekend. and especially thanks for providing the blackmailing photography that was posted all over my delicious cake. ha. i love you, girl.
4. joe -- every weekend is always better when you are with me. the end.
5. michael -- i seriously think that everyone gained ab muscles this weekend. thanks for always cracking us up and being the life of the party. i have one cool ass brother.
6. jayson -- your birthday present was the funniest damn thing ever, hands down. thanks for always being so much fun.
7. deanne -- thank you for coming to charleston! it was a complete surprise and i am so glad that we finally got to meet each other!! you and liz are so much fun and i cannot wait to play with you guys again really soon. i think it's so awesome that you, catherine and i have such a crazy little bond. you're awesome, girl.
8. bill -- you were a huge surprise this weekend, too! thank you for always being so supportive of dave and me and for just being such a freaking great guy. we're lucky to have you around.

i love you people. i have great friends. thank you! thank you! thank you! fun blog to come soon! mwah!

Dave and I were in Clemson this past weekend to celebrate Joe's 24th birthday! Yay, happy birthday, Joe. We hung out Thursday night, drank a lot of beer, ordered pizza at 2:00 am and then Joe and I were the only one's left standinng at 4:00 am talking about everything from baby names to tanning beds. Dave crapped out sometime after the moonshine shot, which caused Dave to forget his childhood. He took the shot and immediately said, blank faced, "Now I can't remember my childhood."
Friday we ate Esso lunch - ohmygah I forgot how much I loved the 9000 calorie country fried steak meal. Mmmm. I want one right now. Then we started drinking. Ha. We grilled out that night... still drinking... and then went back to Joe's to drink more. There were 11 of us there, 10 of us were drinking. Poor Dave was suffering from reflux/heartburn/Thursday night, so he couldn't play. We started to play card games, but realized quickly that there were too many people, not enough table space, and definitely not enough attention span to play anything with cards. Enter: Michael the Genius. Michael is like "I know! Let's all have a number, 2-11, when your number is rolled, you drink." We ended up coming up with a whole list of rules and even a name... and so is born Death Dice Twice.

Rules:
1. Everyone gets a number (in a clockwise circle)
2. When your number is rolled, you drink
3. If you roll doubles, you roll again
4. If you roll doubles twice, you have to roll the Death Dice -- this is the 3rd die that is brought into the game, and whatever number you roll, you drink that number
5. 12 is social
6. If you roll sloppy dice, you drink. (Sloppy dice means that one or both die have rolled off the table.)
7. If you roll your own number, you drink and roll again
8. if you roll your own number twice, you finish your beer. (As Candle says though, "I can't do that! I have acid reflux!" We still made her drink it. Ha, sorry girl.)
9. Go through 3 rounds of Death Dice, the person who drank the most amount of times will then start off as #2.
10. Start Death Dice all over until everyone is wasted and incapable of drinking more beer.

Michael, you should seriously patent this game and go make us millions. Genius. In the midst of the weekend, I constructed a beer box hat. It's pretty flashy. It also causes Shawn to sweat profusely. He claimed it didn't breathe well, it probably didn't. But it was really funny to sit next to him on the couch and watch him wipe the sweat off his forehead. He finally had to give up and give the beer box hat back to Michael. Ha. Good weekend. Thanks for the Clemson fun. I miss you guys.

last night we celebrated catherine's belated birthday. first we went to the mustard seed in mt. p with a group of her friends for some dinner and drinks. well, actually dave and i went for a bottle of wine. we were drunk by 9:00. we're lushes. and honestly, i'm still drunk. and its noon. i'm "working from home" today. so is dave. poor catherine. she's working at work.
okay after the mustard place. catherine, dave and i went to gene's. her friend charlie joined us, but he only made it through one jager bomb and one pumkin pie tasting beer before he peaced out on us. us three, however, closed the place down and made friends with bartender miranda. the curly haired one. you know, well, you probably don't. sorry, im drunk.
i came home with three receipts worth of funny shit. so here come the stories...
okay really, we started ordering shots like they were providing us with life. like, if we didnt drink them, we would die, when in actuality, because we drank so many, we might all die today. we really have to remember to chose life... well, catherine ordered the "chocolate cake" shot. eww. it actually does taste like chocolate cake, but i have issues with clearish shots (eww, i might not be able to write this blog right now because typing "shot" makes my stomach flop around a little.... time out)

okay, time in. well, the chocolate shot arrived and dave was like, "is this going to hurt my tooth?" see, dave has this tooth, a sweet tooth if you will, that makes him unable to eat anything chocolate because it hurts. sometimes i wish i had this tooth because i would be like 40 pounds skinnier... whatever. so he asked if it would hurt his tooth and my response is "no. it's going to hurt your world." i wasn't lying.
catherine got her pen out at this point and started to try to write on the table. well, instead of ink... it just kind of carved instead, so she went with that. now half of all of our names are on the table in genes. her logic was that if she only wrote half our names, no one would know it was us. i blame the chocolate shot for this logic. well catherine is carving and dave threw his knife onto the table...
dave: that's all i do at work!
both cather (as she so carved her name) and i both said at the same time: carve?
dave: no. i'm in a knife club.
the conversation continued. the shots continued as well. we had some royal flushes and bomby bombs and more vodka/waters, vodka/tonics and jack/cokes... and i guess we were talking about how dave might have to travel for work. this conversation happened:
dave: i might have to be in japan.
nic: ohhh??
dave: yeah. i told you about okanawa.
nic: okanawa is in japan? ... i thought it was like, in missouri...
catherine: okanawa, missouri.
all the while, keep in mind that we are shoved into this teeny booth back in the corner where miranda would sporadically appear with more drinkies. she came back with a fresh round and i started squeezing my lime so my vodka would taste like lime vodka instead of regular vodka and i completely squirted catherine in the eye. i know because she said "you just hit me in the eye!" i said, "oh noo!!" but catherine then told me, "no! i liked it." so it was okay that i hit her with acidic juice in her pretty little eye because she loves me.
between the three of us, we racked up a $133 tab. god we were drunk. we decided to walk back to catherine's house. its right behind gene's... i turned into a flippin thief. maybe i shouldn't tell this part of the story... oh who cares. so we're walking down the road and i yank this tiki torch-like candle pole out of some store's potted plant. then i sprinted while screaming, "uh oh! i hope i'm not on video!" i then came across a sign that said "vote for someone" in another potted plant. or perhaps a yard. i took that too. then i took a road cone. but then i traded it for a prettier road cone. i left all three objects next to catherine's door. um, happy birthday? we ate some cool-pops or icy pops or freezy pops or whatever the fuck pops you want to call them. and we just continued to laugh and be drunk and look at myspace and tell each other how much we love the other one. dave continued sharing his funny ass stories from high school that consist of how people got pooped on... he actually told that story because i think catherine said something like "i got spit on" and we heard "i got shit on" so then dave told the story of how a lot of his friends actually did get shit on at the same time by this guy in high school. eww. thats gross, im not tellng anymore of that. ask dave for details if you want them, what the hell was i talking about before this? damnit now i have to go reread what i wrote. oh yeah, cool-pops. they wer delicious. then we all walked back to gene's to get our cars. what the fuck, i know. why we didnt just take them in the first place is beyond me too. oh, before we left cather's house, haha, cather... i tried to stick the tiki pole into her yard. well, i failed to notice that the top part had this ceramic frog like fixture attached to it and so when i slammed it into the solid earth below, the fucking frog split in half and inevitably split my hand skin in half too. now i have this freaking cut across my hand. for a minute i thought i needed a hospital. im gay. the cut is less than a tucker scratch. and i probably deserve it for stealing the ceramic tiki frog pole anyway.
catherine told me that she tried to go to mcdonalds but even though they are open 24 hours, they were closed. fucking liars. but a number 10 is chicken and 11 is fish. thanks, catherine. told you so, dave! ha.
dave and i passed the fuck out. and apparently i took off all my clothes in a corner. i dont know why i stood in the corner, but i did. we woke up drunk as shit. seriously, catherine, i'm so sorry you had to work today.
that's disgusting. i was silly morning drunk and started clapping my feet.
nic: have you ever clapped your feet like a seal? (proceeded to make seal-barking noises)
dave: seals dont have feet!! gah! and then he rolled over on the floor and grunted at me. yeah, he just laid on the floor for like 2 hours this morning. mostly because i was diagonally across the bed and tucker kept attacking my toes so he was probably safer down there. then i tried to sit up, but i had to lay back down because i was too dizzy. nic: ooooh! i feel like a weeble wobble! don't you feel like a weeble wobble??
dave: i feel like crap.
nic: weebles wobble but they dont fall down!
now we are both laying on the living room floor reeking of vodka and death. i fucking love you dave and catherine. i love you too gene's. and vodka. and cool-pops. i fucking love cool-pops. the end.