So: I've decided to give up drinking for good.

Not that I was much of a lush anyway. I've been, at best, a wannabe drunkard. I won't go into the whole crummy story, but it involves a 95-degree day in Phoenix, potato salad, an outdoor rock concert, free tequilla, and me throwing up repeatedly in front of my aunt & uncle, several cousins, one of my aunt's coworkers, and at least 12 people I'd never met.

That was my Saturday evening. Sometime during the 48 hour hangover that followed-- and which is indeed still ongoing-- it occurs to me that drinking alcohol is just socialized self-poisoning. In the span of a few minutes, it can turn a fun evening into a life-or-death situation.

I broke my best pair of sunglasses. I lost the umbrella craze had given me-- not that it was a particularly special umbrella, but it reminded me of the last time I'd lost an umbrella, under similar circustances and whilst suffering a similarly catastrophic hangover. In a weird stroke of deja vu, I later realized-- since being incapacitatingly nauseated gives you lots of time for reflection-- that I was even wearing the exact same clothes I'd been wearing then, right down to the socks.

The whole synchronicity of it seems like Karma somehow crossing the line, beating me over the head with how I'd said "I'll never do that again" last time. The trouble is I'm too much of a string bean to handle much liquor, and too much of a crowd-follower to stop when I should. After two lost umbrellas, two nights spent clinging to life in a booze-soaked Hawaiian shirt, and another great weekend ground to a halt, I'm starting to get a hint that the universe is trying to tell me something. Actually, the message seems pretty clear: Stay off the devil's elixer, kid.

So that's that.


Before my weekend got obliterated, I was actually planning to write a completely different daylog here, about my moving to Seattle in a couple months. But right now my body seems more interested in remaining horizontal.

Thanks for putting up with a brief but important tangent, friends. Stay tuned.