One Sign of Age

Yesterday, Felicity successfully defended her thesis before her committee for almost two hours. She said it was a nerve-wracking experience, but she passed and so is now a Master. To celebrate, she and Blaine (the boy she's going out with) came over to my house with a bottle of champagne, which we polished off quickly enough. After that, we went to Forge & Vine, a restaurant/bar to meet some other people from the journalism school. We had a few drinks, and because it's a Friday night, the J-School people then headed to Alley Bar.

(A brief background- Alley Bar is a tiny hole in the wall dance club which doesn't really have a name. It's just found in an alley off Ninth Street, and the door is between two dumpsters. Journalism people seem to gravitate to that place every Friday night.)

Alley Bar plays a lot of 80s songs, and all the J-School people sing along to some of them each time I've been there, including Don't Stop Believin' by Journey. Anyway, Felicity, Blaine, and I continued to drink while we danced.

Since all the bars close at 1:30 am in Columbia, we headed to the Hubbell House when we were shooed out of Alley Bar (over here, people actually shout at you if you don't leave their bar at 1:30 on the dot). The Hubbell House is a popular venue for J-School parties (four journalism students live there). It's also a place where a lot of hookups happen, a phenomenon I call the triple H or the Hubbell House Hookup. I didn't drink there anymore, mostly because there was no place to buy alcohol at that time (stores stop selling liquor at 1:30 am as well).

Around 2:30, we left the party, and Felicity and Blaine dropped me off at my apartment. At this point, my head was already reeling from the alcohol that I'd consumed. I drank a lot of water to try and counter its effects (too little, too late), then went to sleep.

I woke up at eight in the morning, drank some more water and some migraine medicine, then went back to bad. By the time I woke up again, it was 3 pm! I couldn't believe that I'd slept so long. That's when I was reminded that even though I hung out with very young people, I myself am not that young. When I was in college, alcohol didn't affect me very much- I was never hungover, and I didn't have to sleep the whole day for my body to recover from a night of boozing. I have to get in better drinking shape though, because there'll be a lot of post-school parties in my last few weeks here. My days as a carefree student are now numbered, and I fully intend to make the best use out of them.