Fun, Then Not So Fun

Late Thursday afternoon I was invited to go to the Lightning hockey game. The owner of my company had an extra ticket, and a bunch of the executives and administrative people were going too. They had tickets to the AFS club, which is this nice area of the Forum where you get in, sit in comfy leather chairs (think along the lines of airline first class) and have unlimited food and beer at your disposal – no shit. So, I went home and changed clothes, got ready, and jumped in the car to meet everyone at one of the executive vice-president’s house. I got there a few minutes after 6:00pm.

People started to slowly show up there for the next 45 minutes, and when all were accounted for, we jumped into a couple of vehicles (we only had two parking passes, so we had to cram in), and headed off towards downtown Tampa.

We get there, get in, and make our way to the AFS club area. As we’re walking through, we’re flanked by these chrome-plated serving trays with roll-top-type covers, all filled with food. I end up grabbing a plate of rice and broccoli chicken stir-fry. We end up camping around a couple of tables for the next couple of hours, laughing, having some beer, and eating some food. At one point I stopped watching the hockey game on the big-screen TV they had in there and walked the 30 feet to the seats to watch it in person.

The free beer was coming in waves, as our waitress, Jill, was trying to keep all the execs happy – well, I guess she was trying to keep everyone happy. She was dropping off trays of 16oz. cups of beer. I have no idea what kind of beer, but I’m sure it was mostly Bud, Bud Light, Miller, etc.

Here’s where this mundane story gets interesting. At one point during the evening, I realized that I lost track of how many beers I’d drank. After 16 cups, I just drank. I was eating some food here and there (aforementioned stir-fry, some turkey, and some baked ziti), and I’ve never gotten drunk before. Those of you that know me most likely know the stories I’ve told on how I drank a ton of vodka, etc. and only got a buzz going. So, I’m thinking to myself, “Self… This is just gonna be another one of those nights where the buzz will wear off in a couple of hours and I’ll be fine.”

So, back to the Forum. Drinks are going into me like there’s no tomorrow. The game finished (Lightning won), and one of the ladies that does the sales for XO Communications (who had met us earlier on in the night), escorts us all down to the XO Club, which is this really exclusive VIP club at ice-level. We get in there and we all start watching the Virginia Tech game and the Sox/Colorado world series game on the big screens. Laughing, hilarity, fun and, yes, more beer ensues.

At the end of the Virginia game, the manager of the XO comes out and says that they’re closing and that we have to leave. We do, and we all decide to head to a bar somewhere downtown. Since I wasn’t driving and don’t know the area really well (and am normally not a bar-hopper), I don’t remember where it was or what it was called. I think it started with an “M”.

We leave the parking garage, the owner ahead of us in his Mercedes, and we notice that there’s a parking cone jammed up under his car. We all start laughing and one of the guys hangs out the window of the truck we’re in and starts calling the owner “Conan” (as in “Cone-an”). Yeah. We were drunk at that point.

We get to the bar and I end up having a couple of vodka and tonics and I finished the evening off with a Guinness (yuk – I hate that beer).

We all leave and go back to the VP’s house. I get in my car, a little buzzed from the drinks, and head home, which is really only about a five minute drive. About half-way there, I get this insane pain in my gut – like the kind you get when you have a really bad shit brewing inside and you need to dump it immediately. I think to myself, “Ugh… Here’s that burger from this afternoon and all the stir-fry coming out.”

I park the car, run upstairs, plant my ass on the toilet, and erupt like a South American mudslide. The pain eases, and as I sit there with my head in my hands (it was freaking painful), I contemplate how long it’ll be before I can get up. I was spurting in waves, stomach feeling bad the whole time.

I lifted my head up at one point and realized that I was dizzy. The word “drunk”, for the first time in my life, entered my personal vocabulary. My head was spinning so much that I leaned forward and hurled burger-stirfry-turkey-ziti-beer-vodka sludge into the sink in front of me (while still sitting). Then I did it again. And again.

I finish my business on the toilet and decide that it’s just nice to sit on the floor. So I prop myself up against the cupboards and sit there, watching the tub tilt and yaw in every direction. I puke in the toilet. At this point, I decide that sitting on the floor is just good sense, as I’ll probably break bones or valuables if I try to stand up (I’m too proud to crawl) to make my way five feet to the bed. When I came home, Shauna was awake but in bed, so I’m sure she was listening to the entire disgusting ordeal from the next room. All I needed to do was to crawl into the bed at that point, smelling as I did (just imagine), and inflict that sort of nasty on her.

I fall asleep on the floor of the bathroom. I’m not sure how long I slept, but it felt like 30 or 60 minutes. I woke up, realized where I was (and had one of my legs asleep), brushed my teeth, gargled, washed my hands and face and went to bed. A short while later (maybe 15 minutes?), I ran back into the bathroom and threw up again (the bed was spinning, you know). Repeated wash cycle, crawled back into bed where I stayed until the next morning.

I woke up with a headache (hangover! YAY!) on the right side of my head near the back. I stood up, and realized I was still dizzy. I think I got home at 1:00am and eventually fell asleep around 2:30am or so. When I woke up it was about 8:00am. I used the restroom, shaved, and got in the shower to get ready to go to work. For some reason, half-way through the shower, I decided that I needed to take a bath. So, I sat down and drew one. Then after about five minutes of soaking, I realized “Shit, I forgot I need to go to work.” So, I stood up, emptied the tub and continued with the shower. After all that, and realizing I was still dizzy (read: drunk), I decided it wasn’t a wise idea to get behind the wheel of my car, so I ended up staying home Friday although I was online via my laptop and did a bunch of work remotely. It wasn’t until about noon that my headache went away, I stopped feeling dizzy and I started to nibble on some food.

So, that was the craziness of Thursday night. I will never do that again. I now know my limit is somewhere north of 20 cups of beer. As Shauna said, “that will be the sickest you’ll ever be in your life.” I think she’s right.

Sick Thought of the Day: Cleaning the bathroom sink.

Lights. Camera. Action?

I went to a lighting shop in town today and got four new 250 Watt, 3200K tungsten floods for Suncoast Studios. I also picked up another aluminum case and tear-apart cube packing and have built out the carrying case for all of the bulbs I have. I also tested them all to make sure that they’re working fine. These bulbs are great lights, but only last 20 hours each and the color temperature starts to change after only three hours.

I’m currently sitting in the studio sipping a Diet Coke blogging, taking a break from working on the Tangible Entertainment project. I think I’ll have a 95% correct version by the end of the night. After I ship the low res animatic off to them and get approval, I’ll render it out at full 2K film resolution.

I may be doing a shoot all next week. I’m not 100% sure if it’s still happening, but I may be hired to shoot a bunch of training seminars and master them down to DVD. I think the project is a go, but I’m not sure when it’s supposed to start, so I have to test all my equipment and make sure it’s ready for whenever.

I ordered a new director’s chair today. In two weeks, I’ll get it embroidered with my name or the word “Director”. I’m not sure which yet. I’m such a fucking egomaniac. I need to buy some more DV tapes.

I’m also going to make some nachos tonight and watch the Lightning game.

Sick Thought of the Day: Grab the base, tug the neck, pull out the worm.

Games and Music

I went out today and picked up a copy of Resident Evil 4:Wii Edition for the Wii (duh) and Animal Crossings: Wild World for the DS. Both games were quite cheap, so I figured what the heck.

Resident Evil 4 is basically the same game that Capcom released for the GameCube (which I’ve never owned nor played) except it’s adapted to utilize the Wii Remote and Nunchuck and it has some new content.  I got Animal Crossing just because I heard it was a good, mindless game and I wanted to have a persistant game on the DS that used the Wi-Fi.

I also wrote a Nugget for Super Paper Mario for the Wii today.

On the music front, I picked up a copy of Fergie’s The Dutchess. I also grabbed the soundtrack to Tarantino’s Death Proof (makes me smile just thinking of it). Both albums have been ripped to MP3 already and have been added into the new iTunes library I’m building (I’m half-way through the ripping process now, and hope to have a really nice, clean library before Thanksgiving).

After talking with Millard recently, I also decided to start using Last.fm again. I added a widget to the “What I’m Up To” section of the site on the left side of the homepage. Now you can see what I’m listening to in iTunes anytime.

Time to go clean the apartment and get ready for the hockey game and Shauna coming home from work.

Sick Thought of the Day: Internal paper cut on the nad.

Easy Listening

I’ve been listening to some music lately. Over a month ago I vowed to stop listening to music because it was completely consuming my creative spark. I didn’t want to just be the recipient of others’ creative endeavors, but wanted to build on my own. Everywhere music was on and I’d hear songs in my head all day long, so I went on a sabbatical and stopped listening to it completely. This whole notion helped a lot I think and over the past couple of days, I’ve started listening to some music, mostly .977, a streaming internet radio station through iTunes. I’m going to do this in extreme moderation, as there are several projects on my plate right now the really need 110% of my attention.

I came home last night after working for 36 hours straight and watched the Lightning game. I then watched a little TV and then crashed.

Picked up a 1GB MicroSD card today at Wal-Mart for $27.00. I put it in my T-Mobile Wing and installed all my fitness and diet software on it. I need to start working out again and watching what I eat. It’s time to get that part of my life under control again.

Sick Thought of the Day: Split tendon, grinding on bone.

Long Night

Well, it’s another one of those nights where I get (read: must) stay late at the office; an all-nighter. It all started with an update to the routing of one of our client’s VPNs. That started at 11:00pm tonight and finished up around 1:30am. I could have gone home then, but I needed to stay and work out a problem with our new Windows 2003 domain. Evidently, the two domain controllers (one in Tampa and one in Canada) decided to go out of sync. Well, their AD schema did at least. So, that means that there are going to be e-mail problems soon. I have to fix it, but it appears that the hotfix I need has to be requested from Microsoft (which I’ve done). Just lovely. So, I’m keeping busy updating the DCs with Windows Updates now.

I got up around 7:00am yesterday (21 hours ago) and won’t go to bed until at least 10:00pm tonight, which means I’ll be awake for at least 39 hours straight, of which I’ll have been in the office at work for 36 of those hours. Man, I wish I was hourly. I’d be so rich that I’d just buy you. And your mom. And your first-born.

I made some more progress on the Tangible Entertainment work the last couple of days. I installed LightWave on my work laptop in the hopes that I’d get a chance to work on the logo tonight, but there’s too much going on (I really shouldn’t even be blogging now).

Shauna’s been really sick with the flu since Friday. She’s taking today off of work since she has to work on Saturday. I hope she’ll be able to get well with the downtime today.

Ninel sent some photos of her now 1-month-old, Ryan, today. What a cutie. I’m not going to share with you. He’s too cute for public consumption.

I decided to start up with the SETI@home team again and installed the BOINC client on my workstation at home. It’s processing now, and results should be posted soon. I’ll install the client on my work machine too and only process while idle (like my home machine does).

I ordered the free Wii Remote Jackets yesterday. I got two.

Sick Thought of the Day: Mangled rabbits in the combine.