At some point we all have little embarrassments in our lives we’d like to forget, you know, like that time I was up for some award at school and as I get up my grandfather slyly says “Don’t trip!”–I think you can guess what happened–or slightly bigger embarrassments, like having to wear ugly clothes donated from my grandmother’s church to my entire first year of junior high (a neon orange coat comes to mind). But did you know alcohol can provide an even bigger, endless source of embarrassments? Yes?

I was waaaaay overdue for some girlfriend time, so I met my pal Susan and fellow Flickr-nut Marya for dinner in San Luis. (I hadn’t actually met Marya in person though we knew each other online for years. She has a wonderful blog here, and her Flickr stream is here). Anyway, we had a great meal at the Natural Cafe in SLO:

Marya’s food

Susan’s food

The bits I remember now include Marya asking me what Heather Armstong is really like (I’ve met her twice, briefly), Susan complaining about a website that thinks she looks just like Michael Jackson (before he became a woman), and probably me complaining about either being sleepless or broke (what else is new). After we finished I floated the idea of some dessert, but we decided on drinks instead, and headed to SLO Brew.

Have I mentioned that Susan and Marya know everyone in SLO town? And I mean everyone? We stopped several times to say hello to various people, and decided to go with the final group over to McCarthy’s. For those not familiar with McCarthy’s, let me just repost a few reviews from the interweb:

“I think all my girlfriends in SLO had sex with random guys in the bathroom here. That makes this place awesome and also sad. It’s pretty much the only decent bar if you’re not in a frat/sorority so deal with it.”

“I miss this place so much. I even threw up on myself here and it is still the home of all my favorite college memories”

And finally: “This is a great place to get trashed. Stiff drinks, stiff drinks and more stiff drinks.”

My friends kindly bought us a round of drinks, and not being much of a beer drinker, I ordered a cosmo. I thought nothing of it, really. Unfortunately, it was undoubtedly the strongest mixed drink I’ve ever had in my life, and I didn’t realize how strong it was until it was already consumed. Pretty soon I’m seeing pink elephants. With wings.

So we’re all a little tipsy (me more than a little) but decide to go check out an art show across town. Great! I think, some more culture, adult conversation, and photo opportunities. I stumbled along with them down Marsh. While I’m walking and blathering about fonts with Marya, I’m also thinking: damn…isn’t walking supposed to help? Because it’s totally not helping.

McCarthy-vision

From that point forward, my main goal became to never lose sight of my camera bag for any reason. A good secondary goal might have been to find a place to sit down and stay there.

We arrived at the gallery, which was doing a really great show called the “BIKExperience Art Show,” which as my friends explained, was art that was either made from bikes or about bikes. It was pretty cool. When we walk in I see this nifty thing going on. So, I get out my camera and lean against a wall to give me a steadier hand. Unfortunately, the thing I leaned against was not a wall at all–see that white board there with two paintings on it? Oops. I step forward and the whole thing came crashing down on my head, causing a commotion all around and people asking if I’m okay. To be honest, I was so drunk I barely felt the board slam down on my head, and I was a lot more worried about the art. But it was embarrassing to say the least. The best part? The grad-student-looking guy that walked by and said, “Way to make an entrance.”

I have never heard my sister laugh so hard when I told her about that.

I managed to get some photos of the art anyway: And some people who didn’t mind being seen with Drunk Photographer Girl (hi!): Marya and Susan are on the left. I think the guy pointing at me is telling me to go to SLO Brew next time.

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Links!
Apathy ‘08
Save Windows XP
Newspaper Blackout Poems (via emdot, I think)
Mixwit
Crazy Cat Lady action figure