Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Miracles, and also things that are not miracles.

This weekend was the best and worst of pretty much all the times I've ever had.

Friday (day): Went to the photography market with Cindy's photographer neighbor Steve and spent my budgeted $800 on a Canon 400D digital SLR, or as Canon likes to say, EOS (whatever that means). With it, I purchased a UV filter, a 2 GB memory card, a goat hair lens brush, and a bitchin bag which is also the bag that Cindy bought because we're in love and I can't do anything independently of her. (And it was a really cool bag.) Celebrated with lunch at Whisk where I accidentally once told Cindy's mom (and the whole restaurant. Very loudly.) "that's what she said!" after she exclaimed, frustrated, "I can't pick up this coffee cup...my finger doesn't fit in the hole."

Friday (night): I met up with Ben, Tarrell, Tarrell's friend Ben from high school, and Cindy on the Bund after they had all been to Barbarosa. We rollerskated on the slippery walkway for a while, then went to I Love Shanghai and had more tequila shots than was necessary. Met up with some other teachers at Cotton Club. Michael, who is one of the new teachers here, happens to be a Michael Buble-esque crooner in his free time, so I made him my best friend forever for about 10 minutes as we talked about old jazz standards and I told many people that "he sings pretty." The night gets fuzzy after that, but at some point I fell in someone else's vomit, and my friends kept me from stripping all my clothes off in the middle of the street. Ben (the new Ben, the Ben that doesn't know me at all) lent me his sweater so I could take off my vomity clothes, and me, my leggings, and Ben's sweater were all packed away in a taxi for the long, drunken ride home. When we arrived, I rolled out of the taxi, leaving my phone inside, and passed out in the grass in front of my building for a while.

Saturday: I spent most of the day in Cindy's bed, where she, Tarrell, the new Ben and the old Ben and I all watched Family Guy and talked about the embarrassing things that happened the night before. They mostly had to do with me.

Sunday: (The old) Ben's mom is in China and we all went to champagne brunch at the Renaissance to meet her. The crew was Glenna (Ben's mom), Gale (her sister), Ben, myself, Cindy, Alex, Andrew, and Natalie. As none of us are particularly savory characters, and Ben's mom is a supercool hippie from northern California, things got ridiculous pretty quickly. Especially with me. Highlights of my Sunday drunkenness include:
  • me picking up and humping Cindy in front of a wedding party
  • me telling everyone about that one time I did coke in a brothel
  • me saying that we should go to the bar so we all could "find people to do it with"
Luckily, I have good friends that know and love me no matter what. At one point, though, I would get drunk and do things that I know I wouldn't be brave enough to do while sober. Now I get drunk and do and say things that nobody, anywhere would ever do or say even under the influence of heavy drugs. Maybe it's time to reign myself in.

Oh, and the miracle that is mentioned in the title of this post is that, yesterday, I got my phone back. Kiah called my phone and a Chinese English-speaker answered and said she'd get it back to me. I called her from Cindy's phone and went to meet her. Keep in mind, Shanghai has anywhere between 13 and 20 million people depending on who you talk to. People lose their phones all the time and NOBODY EVER gets them back. Except me. Maybe the universe felt bad because I spent Friday night covered in someone else's barf.

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