Here it is…

Day 5: The final full day. Today is Busch Gardens day. Hilarious fact: Danielle didn’t know the Busch refers to Anheuser-Busch, as in the beer company. We laughed at her.

Sadly, I can only provide highlights, since I forgot exactly what we did and in what order, but I can say we hit most of the roller coasters and enjoyed the Hospitality Room. I conquered a rock climbing wall (almost) and we saw the Clydesdales (and the donkey).

I have many pictures, but they’re on Danielle’s camera and she gave me the wrong CD, so there’s going to be a wait on the pics.

So Day 4 begins just like the previous 3: late.

The plan today was to hit a Tampa-area beach. I forget the actual town name sadly, but we had to go through the city to get there. We pick up Adam’s friend Aaron before leaving the complex. From there, we stop at the center of the known universe (a.k.a. Wal Mart) to buy necessary goods before setting off. In our case, necessary goods including girl scout cookies (mmm…. Samoas…), a football, assorted beach toys for making sand castles (Danielle’s idea, since Real Men don’t make Sand Castles), and, or course, beer. Lots and lots of it. I get bottles of soda instead, as I still hate the taste of beer.
So off we go. The beach is about 45 minutes away, so I get to take a nap on the way there, but I can’t take a nap since Danielle and John are smoking in the car and I hate cigarette smoke.

We get to the town but we can’t park since every place has tow-away signs all over the place. We instead use the pay parking right by the beach and set up 15 feet from the water. We realize this is a public beach and that we could get in trouble for the beers but they don’t care and drink anyway. Since I have soda, I’m in the clear either way.

At the beach, we toss around the football, drink our respective drinks and enjoy the 75 degree weather we wouldn’t have if we were still in New York. I take a trek down the beach to see what’s in a building that’s down there. It’s a bathroom and a closed hamburger grill. With the nice weather I was surprised to see the grill not open. I walk back and get roped into helping Danielle make sand castles. Let me tell you: I can dig a moat like nobody’s business. It didn’t matter that my shovel was plastic and not very strong. I make the best use of all my tools. I’m awesome on many, many levels.

So after digging a moat, I take a nap. Adam, John and Aaron get back from a walk they took and we pack-it-up and go, not once getting caught by cops for drinking in public (although we did get reminded by some people that we could get ticketed for it). It should be noted that Aaron had to piss like 5 times while we were there.
To my shagrin, Danielle takes the wheel again, subbing for a drunk Adam. About halfway home, Aaron has to take another piss. Danielle doesn’t pull over on the highway or onto the grassy area on the entrence ramp, so he gotta wait it out till we get to a gas station. After getting to one, he goes in, and inexplicably, John follows (we assume he’s gotta go, too.) After they get back, Aaron says he has to go into the ladies room since a guy was dropping a duece in the guys room (and it only has one toilet). So John tried to be a dick and pound on the (men’s room) door when Aaron was in the (women’s) bathroom. So when Aaron comes out of the women’s room, John just looks at him, looks at the men’s room door… and shrugs his shoulders and goes into the women’s bathroom. Good stuff.

Dinner was at a steakhouse. Ironicly, I get the NY strip. Another one of Adam’s friends meets us there and we all get stuffed. Danielle complains that our waitress was too friendly, but I just say that it’s her job to be friendly, but she disagrees. Granted, she did sound very excited and was smiling a lot, but maybe she’s just a very happy person. Or, she’s on crack. One of the two.

And the final event of the long day, 5-man poker tournament. $10 buy in. Joe gets K9 against 33 in the final hand, 9 on the flop for the win!

Tomorrow: Busch Gardens. (Duff beer for me! Duff bear for you! I’ll have a Duff! You have one too!)

And Day 3 begins…

Day 3 starts in an odd way. John told me to wake him up at 9:00 for some reason or another, but since we all stayed up late the previous night, we were all dead tired. I slept through my alarm and failed at waking up John even when I was up at 9:30. Regardless, I fell back to sleep and woke up again at about 10:45. Adam got up at around 10:00 to buy a printer so he could print out his e-tickets for the Yankees/Reds game that day. Unfortunetly, he didn’t have the proper USB cables, and the printer didn’t come with the needed USB cables. So much for the printer idea. He burns the PDF file to a disk and goes to the apartment complex’s main office where he uses their computer to print out the tickets. He says he’s going to return the $90 printer, which is his right, but I would think it would be easier to just purchase a $5 USB cable and keep the printer.

We arrive at Legends stadium at 1:00 (the stadium is right next to the Tampa Bay Buccaneer’s stadium) and take the walk to our seats which are on the 3rd base side. For those who have been to NYSEG stadium in Binghamton, Legends stadium is about the same size. The only difference is that there is a courtyard behind home plate showcasing memorials to a number of Yankees legends (Babe Ruth, Lou Gherig, etc.) Behind NYSEG stadium is… Front Street.

(Funny side-story: Adam made a point to find the sun block lotion before leaving the apartment, but he forgot to take it anyway, and he realized this just after he was pulling out of the complex. He ended up getting sun-burnt. To be honest, my face got a little burnt too, but the damage is only visible; I don’t feel a thing.)

Anyways, we watched the Yankees take on the Cincinnati Reds in Grapefruit League action. (Edit: On the way to our seats, we pass by the bullpen where Jorge is catching, and we start the following chant: “Hip hip! Jorge!” People copied that for the rest of the game. That’s how awesome we are. We start awesome chants like that.) As John said many times after the game, “How can they expect to win a World Series when they can’t even beat the fucking Reds?” Reds win 4-1 with losing pitcher Randy Johnson giving up 3 ER in 3 IP. Then again, the Yankees only started 4 of their usual starters (Cano, Sheffield, Matsui, Giambi) and they all got pulled by the 5th inning. Most of the others are at the World Baseball Classic (which I’d like to see but can’t be arsed to find the times for.) During the game, I made some calls to friends and told them where I was in an attempt to make them jealous. I’m such an asshole sometimes (… most times). Yankees left the bases loaded 3 times, once where they had bases loaded with no outs and resulted in 0 runs scored (I think Jorge poped out and Sheffield went 4-6-3 DP). And in a moment of great comedy, Danielle says that the Reds aren’t a real baseball team. Many people in Cincinnati disagree with Danielle.

Another interesting note: I expected to see many Yankees fans in attendance. What I didn’t expect to see were Red Sox fans. In fact, I saw about 17 Red Sox fans there. It was very confusing. Granted, I thought I was going to get my ass kicked for wearing my favorite Mets shirt, but as soon as I saw Red Sox shirts and hats, I knew I was safe since if anyone was going to get their ass kicked at a Yankees game, it’s going to be Red Sox fans.

Important to note: Danielle and I didn’t drink at all during the game, and everyone else did. This comes into play later.

After that, Danielle plays Designated Driver and takes us back to the apartment. To be honest, it probably would’ve been safer if Adam, who was drinking since the beginning of the game, was driving. After all, Women can’t Drive*. Going 75mph in a 30mph and attempting to pass on the right in a lane which ends in 500 feet is PROBABLY not a good idea, and neither is accelerating towards stopped cars in an attempt to pass another car and cut it off.

We get back home (where I kiss the ground upon exiting the car) and I take a shower while Adam and John get steaks they prepared in marinade yesterday and put them in the oven for cooking. At around 6:00 or so, we sample the steaks (mmmm, good) and play some more darts. From here, Adam and I go on a liquor/cigarettes run (since I’m the only sober person left to drive a car). We pick up some Jack Daniels (so I can drink Jack and Coke later) and cigarettes for Danielle and head back to pre-game or even just hang around and drink with some of Adam’s friends who are due to come over. Indeed, they do come over and all is good. More darts are played, drinks are had, everyone is merry. Danielle orders pizza to be delivered and Adam passes out from drinking too much (after the game, he kept drinking a mixed drink which consists of Ketel One vodka, cranberry juice, orange juice and Sprite (or 7up, one of the 2). Apparently, it tastes very good, so he kept drinking it until he passed out on the bathroom floor.)

At around 11:30, everyone decides to go to another Tampa Bay bar (Tiaga or something), but I’m tired and quite frankly not in the mood to deal with bar crowds, so I crash at the apartment while everyone else drives to wherever. I’m about to go to sleep, so this will most likely end Day 3…

* see previous blog entry for my policy regarding taking things too literally.

… and Day 2 begins with sleeping till 11, which is awesome as I’d usually be at work at this time most likely having to do some stupid bullshit like helping the useless secretary find a file on the server (yes, she asks for help with something this simple AND she’s dumb enough to forget what files are where.)

Everyone else goes food shopping at Publix while I shower up and watch TV (Jeopardy! and Press Your Luck on the Game Show Network). We get back and have a very nice breakfast: toasted bagels, english muffins, scrambled eggs (sans milk) and mini-cinnabons. Simply put, it was fantastic. After that, we went to Walgreens for a beer run and went back to the apartment complex to hang out at the pool.

At the pool, Adam (the guy who we’re staying with this weekend) feels out the water and John (Danielle’s boyfriend) knocks him into the pool in hilarious fashion. What’s not so hilarious is that Adam had his wallet and cell phone in his pockets. If this was a story, this part of the story would be called a “plot twist”, as this fucks up everything that will happen after it. Anyways, we hang out and drink some beers at the pool and BS about Kevin Federrer’s attempt at being a celebrity (Bo Bo Zao!). I try going into the water, but the pool isn’t heated and I’m going in 1 step every 3 minutes. After 15 minutes or so, I say “Fuck it” and just dunk my head under… then got out anyway.

After the pool, we came back, changed and the others went food shopping again (this time for dinner). I stayed behind as I had no preference for dinner. So I played on Adam’s X-box (Simpsons: Road Rage (aka Crazy Taxi for The Simpsons) and Fable) until 6:30. They came back after what felt like a while and they started preparing dinner (by they, I actually mean Danielle because Real Men don’t cook*)

And the pre-gaming starts. And I hate pre-gaming. All it does is make me hate drinking later (why should I drink at the bar when I already drank at home?) A couple of Adam’s friends come over and we play darts before heading off in a cab at 10:45pm. We go to some place I don’t remember the name of but have pictures off (will be posted later) and we’re off to Banana Joe’s.

I was told this place was going to be different, and for the first few hours, it wasn’t. It was just another typical bar/club. All the girls wear their skimpy clothes (which I’m not really complaining about, just pointing out) and all the guys wear collared shirts (way to be original you stupid fuckers. Just because the color’s different doesn’t make you any more “stylish” or “unique” than the other idiots who go to the bar to get the same thing you do, and it’s not alcohol.) At about 1:00 or so, I exit the club to get some air because at that point, the Bud Light is beginning to taste like piss, and that’s when I know that I’m not having a good time; when I can’t drink the beer, I can’t not think about how fucking useless going to bars is.

I walk around outside for 15 minutes or so just to cool off, then I head back inside. This doesn’t last too long as I leave again, this time for 45 minutes. Everyone else has their friends inside but I don’t; I don’t have anything in common with anyone else inside except for the people I came with.

At 2:15 we finally leave and get a cab home. At this point, I finally remember that I really fucking hate drunk people in confined spaces (because you can’t get away from them.) Adam is trying to call this girl he met at the club previously, but he can’t because his phone is still messed up from before and it looks like John is dead tired (or about to throw up) so we make a hasty exit from the cab (after paying, of course) and I crash on the couch. Danielle’s hungry, so she makes pastina (COOKING AT 3:00 in the morning? WHY?). I’m indifferent and go to sleep.

The next day is baseball day (Yankees vs. Reds). Too bad Adam has to print out the tickets and doesn’t have a printer. And too bad we woke up late again and now have to rush to get ready while he finds a printer (or a computer with one.)

Moral of the day’s story: I hate bars.

* If you take this literally, I don’t want you ever coming back to this website.

This is Joe, coming to you from just outside Tampa, Florida.

I took off from work yesterday to get all packed up. My psuedo-cousin picked me up at my house at about 5:30pm. We had to pick up my other psuedo-cousin’s boyfriend before we could start driving to JFK Airport (a 90 minute drive usually). He was WAY late, and we didn’t get going until around 6:30. Our flight was scheduled for 9:00, so we thought we had to rush to get there. Fortunetly, we found out the flight was delayed due to the recent winter storm, so it gives us enough time to have dinner. My older pseudo-cousin (hereafter will be called simply the cousin), her boyfriend and I each had Turkey Melt sandwiches in the terminal, and after that, we arrived at the gate where the flight was delayed again. We departed JFK at 10:30pm.

This was my first post-9/11 flight, so as you can imagine, I was a little anxious before we got on board. After we took off, I felt better. We took Song, which I’ve never heard of before, but it turns out it’s just Delta with a different name. Now, this was the best flight I’ve ever been on. All the seats had touch-screen TVs with 30 channels (watching Adult Swim while flying is fantastic. It’s just like I’m at home, but instead of being at home, I’m on a plane.) AND! Here’s the kicker… 1600 mp3s for my listening pleasure. So when I got bored of watching TV (The Boondocks was a repeat), I enjoyed some music instead (some 80’s, some 90’s rock). By the time my playlist ended, we were in Tampa (at 2:00am).

One of my cousin’s friends has an apartment just outside of Tampa, so 15 minutes later, we crash at the apartment, which is damn fine. And for 750/month, this is something I wouldn’t mind having! (Yes, I know there would be no way in hell I could afford this quality apartment in NY, but I’m just dreaming here.) We chill out, shoot some darts, have some pastina (which I’ve never had before) and finally go to sleep at 4:00am. We all woke up around 11:00am or so. And so begins Day 2…