I’m too old…
February 18, 2008…for this shit. Yesterday I hit the wall. I am 31 years old and I can still party like a rock star, but my body doesn’t recover as quickly as it once did. Saturday was a sneek peak of our trip to Vegas towards the end of March and while I feel I passed this test with flying colors, I fear what is on the horizon.
Let me back up to Friday. Friday evening my wife and I celebrated Valentines day. That celebration concluded with two empty bottles of champagne and a killer hangover Saturday morning. I believe that I drank about one and a half bottles of the bubbly while laughing at a rented movie that had no business being laughed at. (Hot Rod) I don’t care what anyone says, things become a lot funnier when you are drunk.
Saturday mornings hangover really sucked because my wife and I had to volunteer on the South Side of Chicago for the Greater Chicago Food Depository for four hours. Not a big deal. We have done this in the past. This time we decided to make the hour and fifteen minute drive seperately so I could have guy time with my friends immediately following the good deed of the day. I have been to the Food depository 4 years now and I thought I knew how to get there. I googled the depository address. Here is the link and map that I quickly pulled:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=chicago+food+depository
See that map? It shows the depository at the intersection of S. Kedzie and S. Archer. The address even shows 4100 W. 42nd pl Chicago, IL 60632. So we headed out on our way to this address.
This is not the address. This is not where it is located. The strength of my hangover was tripled upon driving around for an hour with my wife following me in a seperate car wondering where in the hell is this place. I kid you not. We drove around in circles for an hour. If you are a fan of Dane Cook, then you will know what I am talking about, but after this stupid goosehunt I wanted to punch a baby. That’s how mad I was. I called the food depository. No one answered. I called information, and they confirmed the 4100 W. 42nd place. I did a driving directions on my phone and it led me to this exact same place. Finally I called on my brother in law. He pulled up the same info as I did. I instructed him to go to their actual site where he found a different address and instructions. He got us there. After more than an hour of driving around like a retard we made it there.
I enjoy working at the depository. It gives me a glimpse at what life could be like from a job standpoint if I ended up working in a factory. It is a brainless job working an assembly line and if I could find a way to make good money doing it, I would. My job was to close the untaped 26lb food filled cardboard box and push it through the machine that tapes both the bottom and the top to seal everything in. Cardboard cuts are a bitch. I have no less than 8 of them as we speak. We filled and boxed 860 26lb single family boxes of food in four hours time. The work is rewarding in that you leave knowing that the food you boxed will help feed a family that wouldn’t have a change to eat such a meal without the assistance of the food depository.
On to the rest of the saturday. The wife and I decided to have lunch and enjoy the city for a bit before I joined my friends. We went to Lalo’s Mexican restaurant. We each ordered a margarita and our server recommended buying a pitcher for 5 dollars more since it was twist the drink. You don’t have to twist my arm. After the pitcher arrived, it became clear that we had made a horrible decision based on the size of alcoholic beverage. Two hours later and 3/4 of a pitcher of margaritas in me and I had set the tone for the rest of my Saturday. The day continued upon meeting up with a friend in the city where I had my first crack at playing the new Nintendo Wii. I’m not going to describe my Wii experience now, but I could easily dedicate an entirely seperate post to my sheer enjoyment. I am now actively trying to get one in my possession and any and all recommendations as to how I can obtain one without meeting a scary man in a dark alley with “cash only” would be greatly appreciated.
We drank while we played. It was fantastic. We headed out to meet other friends for dinner at Hop leaf.
If you like beer and food, then this is the place for you. In my drunken stupor, I managed to eat some of the most amazing food ever. The Messels and Toasted Nueske Ham sandwich just might have hit the top ten in meals of my lifetime.
After dinner and drinks we went to a different bar to play NTN trivia which is always fun when drunk. After having a couple in our group threatened to be removed from the bar due to drunkeness, we decided to head to the horseshoe casino in Indiana. I can’t reveal all of the details, but the Saturday debauchery ended when I finally arrived home at 8:30am on Sunday morning.
I hadn’t done an all-nighter in a while and this drunken marathon reminded me why. I now don’t know whether I should look forward to or fear the fact that I will be doing this same thing for five straight days when we head to Vegas in five weeks.
