Drinking Age

Friday, May 18th, 2012 | daily | No Comments

Marty here didn’t look as happy as he should on his birthday, probably because of the brain cell-killing ritual of the 21 run that he’d been on the night before.  I missed this milestone “celebration” involving 21 shots of liquor because I was living in Canada at that age and had been legally overindulging more moderately for years.  I was thinking of Martel when I was at Costco buying wine and blue cheese and John T. Edge’s The Truck Food Cookbook, which I thought might have some good Frat Friday recipes.  ”Dead serious,” the under 30 teller snapped when I asked him if he was serious about checking my ID.  ”But I’m OLD!” I said as the elegantly greying couple behind me smiled.  I have two kids over the drinking age, and I was thinking about telling the vice squad teller this so that he could mull over the riddle of how I could be born after 1991 when I had my first kid in 1985, but something about his attitude told me he was as lacking in math skills as he was in a basic sense of humor.  And what really burned my ass wasn’t that I had to fork over my geriatric driver’s license to prove that it was safe to sell me 4 bottles of wine, but that when I did so, he didn’t say, “Oh my god, you look 28 years younger than that!.”

Mean It

Thursday, May 17th, 2012 | daily | No Comments

I’m exhausting my Greek Week photos this week.  I’m not sure why I didn’t use them contemporaneously, but I think it may have something to do with my denial at the moment that it was actually happening…people half-dressed and half themselves parading through the kitchen helping themselves to double portions of french toast.  Sorority girls acting like they live here. We have a major weekend ahead, the 100th anniversary of the Alpha Sig chapter at UW, and so it was decided that we needed to refinish the floors on the main floor today.  But no one seemed to really think this through.  In the past, we’ve refinished the wood floors during winter or summer break, when it has a minor impact.  But no access to the dining hall or the dishwashing area presents serious challenges when 75 guys are trying to get fed.  ”Can I just help myself to a plate of that?” Martel asked me as he gazed at the Peanut Noodles on the kitchen counter, waiting to find a home somewhere other than the dining room.  ”And whatever else you have,” he begged as I pulled a pan of Cashew Chicken out of the oven.  ”Love You!” he called out as he headed out the back door with his plate of food.  And when I remarked that they all say that until they get what they want, he poked his head back into the kitchen.  ”But we mean it.”