 020111 (six days ago) |
 020117 (today) |
amy's last day being tomorrow, most of the employees from both the first and second floors mobilized to toast her farewell at the kendall cafe. i had the very important duty of calling up laurie before i left at 6pm (she didn't want to be the first person there, with nobody else to keep her company), and at exactly 6:02 my phone rang, laurie called me up asking why i haven't called her yet. "i'm leaving right now!" i told her. leaving right now in my language apparently meant hanging out downstairs for another 10 minutes before finally slowly walking to kendall cafe. when we all finally arrived, laurie was already there (doh!), but thankfully drinking with ed. more drinks were ordered, jokes were cracked, catching up was made. "i'll just have a coke or something," i said as i unnecessarily showed the waitress my driver's license. later the rest of the flock arrived - they had taken a detour to find an atm machine. laurie confirmed the existence of a mythical plastic warehouse down on canal street in new york chinatown (originally told to me by klea), for which i will try to find on saturday (industrial plastics i think was the name of the place). soon afterwards rob made a guest appearance at the outing as well. he tooked out a packet of baby photos from his jacket and began passing them around to all the ladies, who immediately gathered around to coo at the snapshots. a bar band was setting up, but before they could get started, i left at 7pm for another engagement, giving up my seat for rob.
 people |
 can't get more attractive than this |
 cooing over rob's baby photos |
 rob |
i took the t to park street, where i headed to the 21st amendment, located right next to the under-construction massachusetts state house. while walking up the street, i heard a voice calling my name and i turned around to see tunde. together we entered the establishment and found julie, jared, dave, and elias sitting at a small table (they had just arrived as well). the 21st amendment is a lawyers/politicians bar, the clientele being mostly men and women in smartly cut business suits. we totally didn't fit the description of the usual patrons, with the design department all decked out in mostly black and me in my red pants. tunde and i grabbed two seats and squished in together with the rest of the gang. they had just gotten dinner at some restaurant in chinatown, a brown doggy bag sitting at the end of the table. the place had a jukebox which julie was able to select two songs from. i ordered a coke for myself. unfortunately, tunde had to leave at 8pm, and when a bigger table opened up and we made the jump to the new location, tunde surreptitiously slipped away.
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tara and two of her friends showed up. there was no more tables available, but fortunately the two british women sitting next to us were leaving, so we eventually had the whole wall to ourselves. tara told me that she and a bunch of other young ladies were laid off before the holiday break. that blows! she seemed to be in good spirits however, and told us the story of how she almost became a licensed private investigator. when the waitress made her round to our table, i ordered another coke (my third of the evening) and a cheese burger with fries.
the last group to arrive was roy and tim. when tara and her friends left, roy scooched up to our end of the table. don't recall to much of what we talked about. tim and i talked a little bit about football and a lot about basketball. there was a discussion about some of the shadier parts of philadelphia, city of brotherly love. dave brought up the topic of man-dog bestiality which everyone added some sort of input to, and both tim and elias bombarded me with questions about the subtle details of maintaining a weblog. it was weird, i've never up to this point really talked about what it takes to do this site. i guess in the 8 months that i've had this weblog, i've become sort of an expert at it. i could've talked for hours about it, it was almost cathartic to finally get everything off of my chest and to share my experience with others who might find it useful.
 dave & tunde (julie in bkgnd mesmerized by jukebox lights) |
 julie & jared |
 tim affleck |
we left the 21st amendment a little bit after 10pm (julie's two songs finally playing on the jukebox, the song selections turning more and more to disco tunes as the night wore on), but not before i used the bathroom one last time and had a drunk guy telling me about all the hot girls outside while he was urinating. i smiled, washed my hands, and replied, "it's not even the weekend yet!" and quickly exited the bathroom. maybe he thought i was a player because of my red pants. while waiting for elias to come out, everyone stood outside to admire the construction work happening on the state house.
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we walked to park street, where roy and tim took the green line while the rest of us caught the red. the train eventually arrived and we got on. during the ride, a woman sitting next to us made some comments on how much she admired julie's animal mittens. i was yammering away at something which i completely don't remember now. i think most of tonight i acted intoxicated even though i only had three cokes and one doctor pepper (during lunch). maybe it was a sugar high. i couldn't stop talking! the bus ride home was where i reverted back into my silent mode, smelling the stench of cigarette smoke infused into my coat, sitting quietly the 10 minutes of public transportation travel before my stop arrived and i got off, politely thanking the bus driver. thus concluded my evening.
 red pants |
 hooch shoes |
 mala noche |
 animal mittens |