Margarita, cha-cha-cha

So Thursday night D and I went out for margaritas and enchiladas with a good friend of mine, Drew, who'd just gotten back from being in Tonga over New Years.

I've known Drew since freshman year of college, when we both studied abroad in Florence for one semester and met on the plane en route to Italy. According to Drew I was super annoying at first because I "wouldn't stop talking." (Ha! Typical. I left a similar impression with D when we first met) After listening to me "talk about Britney Spears for the first hour on board," Drew says he remembers looking out the window somewhere over Idaho and thinking that it was going to be a loooong flight. But by the time we touched down in Milan for our connection to Tuscany, he'd come to find out I was hilarious and amazing. Which I am. We hung out in the streets of Florence and Rome for the rest of that semester, inseparable in a best friend kind of way. Later, back in the states, we ended up (coincidentally) living a block apart through college in Santa Barbara, and though we lost contact for a few years after graduation, I'm happy to report that we're back to hanging out more now, mostly because he lives part-time just down the freeway from me. 

I say part time because Drew's a little famous. Not like Brad Pitt-famous, but he was in a band that went gold (which actually surprised me since I think their music sucks) but I'm still proud of and inspired by him. He stuck with his band through college, when I used to watch them play at house parties, to now being all over VH1. It's a trip, to say the least.

But over margaritas on Thursday night, he wasn't so happy. Apparently there's a growing rift in his band that's reminiscent of what happened in Almost Famous -- you know, one or two key players ends up a drug addict, drags the entire band down with him and tries to cash in on all the royalties himself, etc. etc. It's the typical band-breakup story. To add salt to the wound it sounds like Drew's lawyer is in cahoots with the drug-addict-royalty-stealer and so we discussed for hours over margaritas and enchiladas about how D could properly represent Drew and get him what was rightfully his. (D's first potential client!)

I know nothing about law, so aside from the errant "yeah, that's right!" between my sips of margarita, I didn't have much to add to the conversation other than what Drew's already heard from me YEARS ago and what I echoed again at the dinner table: That Mr. Coke Head is a selfish asshat who never had Drew's best interests at heart -- even when he pretended to be his best friend. And really, who wants to hear, after all these years, that I was right and they were wrong? So after I reiterated my told-you-so's, I lost count of my 'ritas, till before I knew it I was home singing Prince songs in the shower. ...And I had to wake up at 6am for work on Friday. Ugh.

Basically, I looked like this the next morning at the office:

Not fun. I slithered in past reception and into my uncomfortable office chair, unwilling to start the day. Being the first one in I had the luxury of sitting at my desk with my face in my hands for a good 20 minutes, catching up on some semblance of sleep before my terribly annoying and uptight coworkers came in all prim and bunged up, like they always do. Ugh, whenever I see them I think of how Ferris Bueller describes Cameron: "Pardon my French, but Cameron is so tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you'd have a diamond." Obvi I'M not the one who needs a drink. 

When the FGC finally came in he remarked that for being hungover I looked fabulous, which I'll take (bless his rhinestone-studded heart), and the rest of Friday at work I read celebrity news online and looked for another job on Craigslist (on my smartphone, of course. Mama doesn't want to have that awkward conservation with her superiors if her web-browsing activity is actually tracked and they see she's getting paid to find a different employer). Come to think of it, they wouldn't fire me if that ever came to light...I've found that no matter what people do at my company they don't fire ANYONE. I'm starting to think one day en route to the coffee machine, I could blatantly slap one of my coworker's butts like I used to do with handsome men on the streets of Italy and I still wouldn't be fired. So strange. 

The point was Friday was a blur and I am SO THANKFUL this is a three-day weekend. I spent some time at the beach with D and got to hang out with my brother and his girlfriend for a while Saturday night, wherein my brother forced us to watch a marathon of MSNBC's "Lockdown: Raw" -- a prison reality show illustrating the violent dramas that play out between incarcerated men of all walks of life. Five minutes into the first episode I was hooked, although I seem to have more of an affinity for the "Lockdown: First Timers" episodes, where prison newbies are filmed during the first days of being in jail, and what happens to them when guys with neck tattooes and names like "Clyde" initiate these first-timers into "the life." Fascinating, to the say the least.

Also, in an effort to keep my new year's resolution strong, I've started a journal of what I'm thankful for every single day. I know, sounds totally cheesy, right? But it's actually a good reminder of what to be happy for, even if your day seems to have royally sucked overall. Every day I just list the date and a quick sentence or two of what I'm thankful for in this cute blank book a friend recently bought me:

Totes adorbs. D's happy I've thought of way to work on being more positive, but I told him that there was potential for this Project of Thanks to backfire, in that I could start writing things like "Today I'm thankful for how amazing I am -- everyone at the grocery store was acting like a sour-faced jerk" or "I'm thankful I was never an ugly baby, because I've seen my fair share of them today." But I'm not writing those kind of things...yet. For now they're positive reaffirmations that remind me not to be so cynical, which I have a tendency to be. I'm thinking maybe I'll even post my "thanks" once in a while on here...