Friends In Low Places

So it was Tanja's and my anniversary last night! Hooray! We celebrated the morning by grocery shopping! And I found a glass drinking game that I had been eyeing since before Christmas had been marked down from twenty dollars to five. So I bought it. Huzzah. It's like Naughts and crosses, but with shot glasses. Very posh looking. Oh, and we booked a holiday to Noosa in Queensland. Lovely and wonderful. But the drinking game. THAT was the big event. ;)

So, then dinner. We had some Chandon bubbly, and some lovely Thai food (money bags, choo chee prawns and ginger pork *drool*), and toasted our lovely relationship. Then headed off to meet the usual suspects at the Bank Hotel. Very crowded, a few misdirections, a badly mixed apple martini or two (shocking when standards slip) but everything turns out ok. We have a few cocktails, a few laughs, and changed tables at least three times. I was finally able to give Anna her Christmas present (a Hot Hot Heat t-shirt), and get my Wee Free Men book back. She also said my Killers t-shirt looked just like her official one. Huzzah! A bootleggers dream! We then (we being Craig, Ted, James, Catherine, Anna, Annie, Mark, Marcel, Tanja and myself) then headed off to Kelly's for Karaoke Night. We get in, find a table, and grab a drink.

Then as we're going to sit down, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and there's this big guy I don't know. He slaps me on the shoulder, says "How ya goin', mate?" And then the world spins, and I'm deaf in my left ear and sitting on the floor. Looking up at him. He'd hauled off and decked me in the side of the head. It happened fast enough that Tanja didn't even have time to get up from the table and I was down. I was so disoriented that I couldn't even get up, just sat there holding my ear and yelling, "What the fuck is wrong with you? What'd you hit me for?" etc. Well, I raise my glass to the bouncers and bartenders of Kelly's, who bundled the bastard straight out into the street and on his way. I was ok, as my hearing and equilibrium returned, and suffered a fat lip from my own teeth and a slightly damaged sense of tone (which may have assisted my singing later). The weird thing was, another guy I didn't know came up to me later and asked if I was ok, and then explained that he worked with the idiot who hit me, and how he's not a bad guy, but he "had a few screws loose". Hoo boy.

We recovered nicely from this event (I was assisted by a shot of Sambuca {thank you Jimmy!} which the bartender wouldn't let me light on fire), and went on to have a pretty good night. I sang Zoot Suit Riot by the Cherry Poppin Daddies despite it being much too high for me (I think the outer ear damage helped me in this respect). Marcel perked up his courage and sang Paint It Black by the Stones and did great. He had been practicing all week, poor guy. We tumbled home at 1:00 or so, sadly missing James and Craig singing November Rain and Chop Suey, respectively. We kept trying to push Tanja into singing Roxette or Ace of Bass, but to no avail. Maybe next time. Very fun night, all in all.

So this morning I wake up with a whopper of a headache and a voice croakier than Gavin Rossdale. Before she went to work, Tanja got me some water and some tablets (brick potato llama), and after two discs of Seinfeld and two pieces of raisin toast, I'm feeling better. I still called in for work this afternoon, because of my voice. Who wants to buy raffle entries from Leonard Cohen's younger cousin?

Now where's that coffee? 'Cause these pretzels are making me thirsty!