Consider this a medley (although hodgepodge or mishmash may be a more apt description) of my greatest ideas and some of the best quotes (of mine as well as of others) from my misadventures over the past few weeks. I would love to make this more coherent, but to be honest, it would take too long, and I’d prefer to leave out the ugly parts anyway. Plus, I’m not certain I remember all of it.

Several weeks ago (before the camping trip,) Lato (aka L-Tron, aka Lord of the Thunderflies) and I decided to go out to Backstreets in Clemson. We had both started new jobs since the last time we hung out, and were talking about office politics, benefits, and random other boring things when it hit me: not only were we the two oldest guys in a college bar, but we were talking about dental insurance. Yeah…the chicks were falling all over themselves to get our attention. Nothing is more attractive to sorority girls drinking on fake ID’s than two guys who don’t even get carded at the door anymore talking about a 401k…unless it’s a frat boy in a visor, with a popped collar on his pink shirt, and flip flops in January…or something shiny. The next day I had to help my dad move some furniture, and I kept wondering why all of the furniture smelled like stale beer, and then it hit me…it wasn’t the furniture, it was me.

The following week my buddy Tex came in to visit. Since I don’t learn lessons very easily, we decided to go out in Clemson. Actually, we started out eating wings; he decided he wanted a cigar, so we went to Nick’s in Clemson. (Kev, if you’re reading this, that place has gone downhill since you quit tending bar. They were playing techno, for the love of God…and I’m no techno aficionado, but even I knew that this was worse than the average techno. I suspect it was French, or at least came from a country that uses the metric system.) It turned out the cigar sucked also, so we move on to TD’s. We still knew one of the bartenders there so we hung out for a while, catching up. I think it was somewhere around this point when I realized that one of the biggest mistakes I had ever made in life was graduating from Clemson (followed closely by choosing to see what was behind Door Number Two instead of just taking the money). I should have changed my major 16 times, and then moved on to grad school. For this reason, the phrase “To the Delorean!” was coined. It was then used repeatedly in the morning so that I could go back in time and not drink that much and not eat a smorgasbord of country ham, bacon, eggs, hot sauce, and more beer when we got back to my house. Although I am impressed that we actually cooked.

Last but not least, this past weekend. I went out with my little sister and Big Hook to the Knock Knock in Columbia. My sister’s friend Ben was tending bar, and Hook and I were sucking down Yuengling, and our pace only increased when Lato and Buffy showed up. Ben remarked that if we didn’t slow down, we were going to drink him out of Yuengling. Although he didn’t mean it as such, I took it as a direct challenge. Buffy doesn’t normally drink beer, so she made it her mission to drink the bar out of Malibu rum. The gauntlet had been thrown down, and it was on like the proverbial Donkey Kong. I think we both won, although it didn’t feel like a victory in the morning. Although I did make a delicious discovery - pepperoni omelets. Since I hadn’t learned my lesson, I went over to my friend Guy’s house for his birthday party. For whatever reason, the party wound down kind of early, so Abe, Chris and I decided to go out. The last, and best quote of the weekend came from Chris. When we all woke up the next day and Guy asked what we did after he went to bed, Chris replied “Three bars and a Waffle House.” Where it’s at.