Day 43: Time Off for Bad Behaviour

I've been a bad, bad girl. But it's all good.

I seem to have taken the week off. From the blog, from exercise, but I've kept my eating on track for the most part. I didn't weigh myself when I got home from the cruise. I just didn't want to see the damage wrought. I know I didn't eat a lot at dinner, but the problem was that the buffet lines were so freakin' long on the ship that it was often easier to go grab a pastrami sandwich, or a burger and fries or pizza. So not so much with the salads.

I drank a lot of my calories, stuck mostly with gin because that gives me a clean and happy drunk. I've read that if you're going to drink alcohol, gin is one of the lower (not low,but lower) carb alcohols. I strayed from gin a little on the last night in the piano bar. Some of us in there made it our mission to get the piano man drunk. Because a drunk piano man is a funny piano man. So after watching Peter slowly nurse the beer I bought him, we decided to step it up to shots. And we let Peter call his shot. SoCo and lime.

Oy! I haven't drank Southern Comfort since my freshman year of college. With good reason. The last time I drank Southern Comfort, I don't remember much about the party the night before but I remember the morning after. I had been working on a journalism project that was due by noon the following day and then studying for a Russian test I had the next day at 9:55 am. I had finished the project and was starting the studying when a friend called and said "everyone" wanted me to come over. I hemmed and hawed a bit then gave in (pretty easily). Well everyone was half in the bag when I got there so I thought I should catch up...oh boy. Like I said, I don't remember much about the party, except that there was an excessive number of Southern Comfort and cokes. I woke up the next morning, half undressed, splayed on my bed at 10:10 am! The exam had started at 9:55. I changed clothes in a panic, ran down to the class, grabbed the test from my teacher as he gave me a strange look. Started the test about 10:20 finished it by 10:45 before anyone else, handed it in, ran to the bathroom, threw up. Then I walked over to the Journalism building, handed in my project and walked slowly back to my dorm, breathing the cold Indiana air in, hoping to clear my head. Got back to my dorm, threw up again and went back to bed. By the way, I got a B+ on the Russian exam. LOL! Talk about rewarding bad behaviour! For a long time, I kept an empty SoCo bottle around to remind myself of that awful morning.

And that was the last time I ever touched Southern Comfort. Until the last night of the Victory cruise. It's only polite to join the person you are buying shots for, so there was a group of us doing them along with Peter. We had a lot of fun in the piano bar that night, getting extremely silly along the way. Around 2:30 am we all headed up to the Lido Deck for pizza and had a good time chatting and munching. Peter and I left together and I rode the elevator with him down one floor. I remember saying good bye to Peter and getting off the elevator. And that's when the shots really kicked in. I don't remember much of anything after that. I don't remember the long walk from the very back of the ship to our room all the way at the very front. I apparently made it. Scott says that when I came to bed, I was going on and on about completely nonsensical things. I woke up the later that morning at 7:30. We had breakfast, well I had toast and some melon, and then we waited to get off the ship. I was surprised at the lack of hangover until I realized, I was still a little drunk. And I had to go straight to work from the ship. Oy!

We ran into several people from the piano bar who all asked if I was going to make it to the office. We waited for them to call our number, because even though we had our luggage, self assist was a madhouse. We finally got off the ship around 10:30. At this point we were some of the last people off the ship so we breezed through customs and hopped in a cab. I made it to the office a little before 11. I did fine until my body decided it was tired and had enough around 4 pm. The last hour was torture.

I really expected to fall back into my routine, but the past week has been busy, catching up with work and recovering from my vacation and I was less than motivated on the exercise portion of the show. Friday night was spent in a cleaning frenzy as I prepared for the arrival of one of my best friends, My Brian. He's come to visit for the better part of a week. I'm just hoping my liver can survive it. We usually have one night where we go out and just get ripped and happy and have fun. That was last night. We went to Sweet Caroline's a dueling piano bar in Times Square and had a lot of fun. And a lot to drink. Brian is the man who introduced me to tequila shots way back when and tequila always seems to make an appearance when we get together and last night was no exception. We left the bar quite happy around 2:15 am and hopped a cab back to Hoboken.

It's funny, but reading this makes it sound like I'm a total lush. I'm really not, I don't drink much in my day to day life. Occasionally some wine or a couple of drinks with dinner over the course of a normal month. But when I get on vacation or once every couple of months when I cut loose with friends, I party it up. I don't expect to be partying this hard again until my Legend cruise in September. Although there are rumors of a Sweet Caroline's happy hour in August. Hmmmm... the two words that spring to mind after that happy hour back in May... pole dance. Perhaps I better skip this happy hour...

I'm hoping to get back to more regular blogging this week. But there are no guarantees, because Brian doesn't leave until Thursday. We are going to see Billy Joel on Wednesday night at Shea Stadium.

Thanks for your patience!

And a quick PS - Thank you Joanne for the Churchill's recommendation in St. John! It was nice and not crowded with other cruisers and the food was terrific! The best meal we had all weekend.

Ooooo a blog about alcohol. Not the blog I hand in mind, but I'll save that for later.