Why yes, I AM a little drunk

no, no, just a little, officsher, enough to type slowly but nothing bad.

I must admit, I got lost on the way to my department reception. Yeah, I feel a little stupid there. And was totally sober. But first I got hassled by the badge-checking guys, and then they told me there was no way I’d get to a top floor without a hotel badge, and then I went to the top and walked down this long, long hall counting the numbers, with a piece of paper in hand with the room number on it, and then reached what should have been the number, but was a big black door that looked like a janitor’s closet. But it had the room number on it. (All the rest of the doors in the hall were white, I should add.) So I knocked. Cautiously. With all the timidity of someone who was sure that they were in the wrong place and didn’t deserve to be there. Nothing happened. Did I knock too softly? Was I in the wrong place? What now?

Conveniently, the phone rang. It was Dissertation Buddy. “I’m just outside the reception ---- where is it?” I asked her.

“Oh.” She seemed disappointed. “I’m at my hotel and wanted dinner.”

“Great!” I leaped at the opportunity. “I’m leaving the hotel to meet you right now. Where do you want to go?” She was happy that I wanted to hang out with her and not the department, and then, when I got out of the elevator (when there are not oodles of job candidates, it goes very fast from the top floor to the bottom, you know, and made me rather sick), another person called me asking where our dept. reception was.

“You don’t want to go there.” I said with certainty. “You have to bring everyone you know to meet me and Dissertation Buddy for dinner because I can’t find that place.” So thus, I gathered people together for a lovely and delicious, if expensive and fancy, Italian dinner.

We gossiped and vented and bitched about various issues. It was good. It was the kind of thing we need to do to get out of our systems. And it was very pleasant. And I wasn’t sure if the elderly men next to us were professors or not (I thought so, because they had bow ties on ---WTF??? I mean, really), but if that was you, we only meant our ranting in the most venting and polite kind of way, and said stuff about only fellow students in our program, and really, don’t take anything we said seriously, because that was a really big carafe of wine we were working on. Seriously.

I have to say here, why do the keys on this keyboard keep moving like they do? Come on, keys, stop it.

Then someone got the bright idea that we should go somewhere to drink more, but somewhere with a view, because Chicago is very pretty. So we called various people --- including someone who we knew had a “guide to Chicago” book, and eventually went on our mildly buzzed way to find somewhere with a view of the city lights and drinking. And I wanted to go somewhere with good dessert, because I was dissatisfied with the dessert options at the restaurant, although we had to wait a long time to get my chocolate mousse cake and I had two more glasses of cab while waiting and I think you could have given me cardboard at this point and I would have loved it. Or cut you. I mean, there’s not really any in between if you’ve had a bottle and a half of wine at this point.

So, yeah, by this time, we’re all very good and drinking wine and the level of bitching conversation has descended to “Capitalism ---- WTF?!?!?!?” “yeah, man, that shit sucks!” and whatever, and we have just ordered more stuff to drink when I check my phone to see I have a text.

Hello, where have you been? No, seriously, where have you been? And we have a very serious conversation about whether I should respond except it can’t be that serious because I have already responded with a text before anyone notices. (You people, with your slow reflexes and all! Mwhahahaha!)

But before I say anything more, I should note that I am a very ethical person, and so regardless of what was texted or what I texted or what the other people at the table think (and they do not have details), not much is going to happen, because I am an ethical person, despite how much that may piss me off at some points. I know enough not to fight my personality at this day and age. But whatever. So I send a note (“you should totally not say anything until tomorrow!”) and we decide I am having a much better time there and in celebration of that, and a big fuck you to the job market, we all switch over to champagne from wine. (luckily, I can’t do math right now, or else I might be more annoyed about the bill than I am right now. But luckily, I can’t add. Seriously, I can when I’m sober. Trust me.)

But after we take tipsy (or sodden ---- don’t tell me that though) pictures in front of the skyline, and go back down the express elevator, I make a call that everyone tells me (though not in time) I shouldn’t, leave a message, and then we all traipse (or stagger) off to our hotel rooms afterwards, and so, here I am. Or are. or whatever. Alone, and just a leetle bit drunk, and annoyed. At what? Me, him, you, --- capitalism, the chocolate cake --- who knows?

I’m just wide awake and the keyboard is moving on me like nobody’s business.

Whatever. Pffffft.