So last Friday was to be the day of CHAAAAAAAD!!!-ing. My excitement was palatable.
... ... ...
Yes, of course I mean palpable, but when I was drafting this entry in my mind whilst half asleep this morning, said half-alseep mind came up with palatable and that just amused me, yo. So there you have it.
Of course, I was all in a dither about what to wear. Because the plan was brew pub, dinner, CHAAAAAAD!!!-ing, karaoke, clubbing. What to wear that would be suitable for all occasions? For clubbing, the slightly tarty look would be good, but karaoke-ing requires a more dressed down look.
I ended up settling on...um....you know what? I can't even remember what I wore. Dayum....all that agonizing and now I have no clue.
Anyway, I arrived at Smed's hotel room and knocked on the door. He answered and I said, cheerfully, "Hi, my name is Bitch and I'm here to set you up."
Of course, housekeeping was right outside. Hee.
I then realized something. I had brought a small black purse for use whilst clubbing, but I also wanted to bring my regular, industrial sized handbag for the karaoke part of the evening. Wanted to be able to have the iPod and camera with me. Again with the what to do, what to do angst.
Then I realized I could just stuff the little purse inside the big purse, if I could just get rid of all the other junk. Which I did, tipping the entire contents of my handbag out onto Smed's bed.
Much to his shock and astonishment.
You'd think he'd never seen the inside of a woman's handbag before, eh?
So off we go, into the rain and drizzle, in search of this little brewpub that I'd heard good things about. And that was close to the hotel. It takes us a few moments to get our bearings but we find the place and I am cold and chilled while that darn Smed had had the presence of mind to bring a jacket, durn him.
So we arrive, we drink a few drinks, consume some sweet potato fries (okay, I consumed the fries), send out a few random "CHAAAAAAAD!!!" texts, conversation was had, Zon arrived, more drinks, more conversation, it was all good.
Eventually we leave to meet Krumpet at Hard Rock Cafe. I steal Smed's jacket while he's in the rest room but then I felt guilty so I returned it to him. And froze my (exceedingly cute) ass off.
We get to Hard Rock, there's a half hour wait, not too bad, I thought. We browse the gift shop, lots o' cute stuff but I ain't paying that much, no sirree boblett. Krumpet arrives, introductions are made, she seems to get on famously with Smed. Until we tell him we want him to sing Paradise by the Dashboard Light with us and he refuses, saying it's trite. Or tripe. One of the two.
So he gets the death glare from us.
Prom kids come in. Us ladies were marvelling at the prom dresses. They were lovely, and the hair and makeup were also beautifully done. I remember not so long ago seeing a bunch of prom kids and they were just totally skanky.
So Krumpet and I decided we needed to encourage this behavior and we went up and told the girls how pretty and classy they looked. That made us feel good.
In the meantime, poor Zon is getting hungrier and hungrier. I don't know how long the wait ended up being, but it was certainly over half an hour. One of us went up at some point to find out how much longer and were told there were four tables ahead of us. That didn't seem like much so we continued waiting. And waiting. And waiting.
Finally, it was our turn to be seated. Except not. They had to taunt us a little bit. They led us to the bottom of a ramp that led to a smallish room and then we had to wait.
Then they took us to the top of the ramp. And we could SEE our table. And again with the waiting. Not sure what the whole point of this was.
As we were seated, YMCA started playing. People stood on chairs. I stood on mine briefly but....well, I'm not the most graceful person and I feared if I didn't get down on my own I would be likely to FALL down. So I sat.
And we waited. By the time our waiter came to take our drinks order, we were ready to order everything. And we did. And then we amused ourselves by singing bad (or good, depending on your own personal taste) 70's and 80's songs. Loudly.
And then we discussed Rick James. Who is dead. And one of them, Zon or Smed, can't remember who, said, "James Brown..." and Krumpet and I both, in unison, said, "...is dead."
And they were like, "Really?"
Um. No.
So food comes, we eat, you can see the improvement in Zon once she gets food into her. Her color comes back and she's animated again, like the Zon and I know and love.
We finish up and head out to the parking garage where Krumpet had left her car. It's drizzling quite nicely by now. I huddle under Zon's umbrella for a while but really, it's a one person thing. So I ended up with water dribbling down my forehead which Scott helpfully wipes away.
Or at least, he THOUGHT he was being helpful. Except, DUDE! You totally smeared my makeup and left me with a big ol' pale spot on my forehead. GAH! Do you men know NOTHING????
Right then. We get to the car, we exit the garage, we try a few tentative CHAAAAAD!!!s even though we're not in Federal Hill yet (site of the original CHAAAAAD!!!-ing), we start making some calls and texts and finally, FINALLY we reach Federal Hill.
The windows go down, we call, "CHAAAAAAAD!!!", the windows go back up again (did I mention the rain?)
The windows go down, we yell, the windows go up. This continues for a while, as do the phone calls and texts. We tried to get Jackie on the phone but ended up leaving profanities on her voicemail.
Also called Smash but got his voicemail too. Which lead me to proclaim in astonishment, "HEY!! The voicemail lady is speaking in BRITISH!!!"
Also also found out that one should not annoy Krumpet whilst she is driving in the rain because she is likely to open the moon roof and let the rain fall right down the back of your neck.
So we leave Federal Hill behind us and head out to Jim's Hideaway for karaoke. Except somehow...we...um...got lost.
I don't know how this happened since I've been there many times, but we did. I kept saying, "Okay, NOW I know where we are!" and "No really, I know EXACTLY where we are" and "I know this gas station!" and "Okay, I know there's a left SOMEWHERE" and finally we ended up calling the bar and they kinda sorta guided us in.
Of course, we got there and walked in a DIFFERENT door than I usually go in and I was all discombobulated again. "Um....Vicki? There's no karaoke here," said Krumpet.
"Oh no, there HAS to be karaoke, I think Smed may very well KILL me if there's no karaoke"
Yeah, turns out we were in the dining room which was remarkably well soundproofed. We ended up getting escorted to the bar side by one of the waitstaff, after I kinda sorta accidentally wandered into the kitchen
So we found karaoke, had some drinks, Krumpet and I sang, "I Love Rock and Roll" and this really COOL dude sang "88 Lines about 44 Women" and really, how cool is that?
There were some pretty awful singers there too, but since I count myself in that category I won't get all snarky about that.
We weren't able to stay for very long. What with the long wait at Hard Rock and getting lost on the way there, we only had about an hour before we needed to get Zon back to the city to catch her train.
So we leave, we take Zon back, we drop Smed at his hotel, all is well and CHAAAAAD!!! is now part of the history books.
