Current mood:	exhausted
Entry tags:	dancing, meetup

An expensive (but totally worth it) weekend
Ok, Friday I actually started to post about my dining out meetup that happened Thursday and my plans for the weekend. But I kept becoming rather rambly (yes, I know that isn't a word) and some of the things I had to say weren't necessarily true any more. And the further along the weekend got, the more I had to talk about and the more tangents were getting thrown into the post. So, I think I will just start fresh, instead of trying to clean up and finish that mess. (warning, this still ends up being one long ass post)

In brief, my weekend pretty much started Thursday. I had plans to meet a friend from high school, Amber, for lunch, but a family emergency forced her to cancel. Thursday night, I did have the dining out meetup group meeting at Automatic Slims which went quite well, though the turn out may have been reduced because of the rain and the downtown traffic. Afterwards, I ended up going to BBQ fest with two of the women and had a lot of fun dancing and getting a few free drinks at a couple of the tents where they knew people.
Friday, I ended up having to stay after work until after 7 to move an application server, which pushed back the plans I had made with Dana and Tonja to meet for more of BBQ fest. But we eventually got together and partied hard well into the night. They had some damn strong moonshine at the Viking tent.
Saturday morning I woke up bright and early at 7am for some strange reason. I lazed around the house for a couple of hours and then headed over to Jerm and Krissi's to help with painting the exterior. Spent the day until around 6 there, helping them caulk and prime the house to be painted. Had to leave to get ready for the movie fan meetup though. Went to see Forgetting Sarah Marshall for the meetup (good movie). Then went to El Mezcal with the group. Then headed downtown for the night life meetup at EP.
Sunday morning, I again woke up at 7am because I figured Jerm and Krissi would want to get an early start, which was correct. I booted up my computer only minutes after Jerm emailed me to say they were going to go ahead and start and that I could just come over whenever I was ready. So, spent all day helping to paint the house. Then we all went out to eat sushi (my first time trying it). I went home and played scrabulous on Facebook while chatting with Amber who seemed to have a bit of a rough weekend. Eventually though, I just had to get some sleep and was almost instantly asleep on put my head on the pillow.

Considering how verbose I normally am with my posts, that really is a "brief" description of my weekend. Lol

Now to elaborate...
First off, I called it an expensive weekend because I ended up doing several things that I hadn't really budgeted myself for. BBQ Fest was free to get in thanks to Tonja's wristbands, but parking was anything but free. I hadn't been planning to eat out as much either. Saturday lunch, Saturday dinner, and Sunday dinner were all things that I hadn't really planned for. Also, I'm not experienced with the Memphis night life, so I didn't take into account there being a cover fee to get into EP.
But no worries, those were all things that I wanted to do and its not like I couldn't afford to do them. I just won't be picking up Wii Fit when it comes out this week. No big loss there since I wasn't actually excited about it at all. I was just going to buy it for having its sake. Which is no reason at all to spend that much money on it.

More on the different parts to the weekend:
The missed lunch with Amber was a little disappointing, but it is understandable. Family definitely comes before seeing an old friend. It's actually kind of funny, though. In the past three months since she found me on Facebook, we have probably talked to each other more online than we ever did in the entire three years we were in high school together. That doesn't mean we weren't close during high school. I was just too damn shy to talk to anybody back then. In fact, she was probably the person I talk to most because she was one of the only people I "hung out" with outside of school. I say that in quotes because she was really my younger sister's friend and the only time I ever did any hanging out was with them and their friends (mostly as a chaperone since their parents would let them stay out later if I was with them, but that was still the closest I came to doing stuff with "friends" from the time I moved here, pretty fucking sad I know, but whatever). Anyway, we'll just have to try to see each other some other time.

Traffic was a bitch going downtown to Automatic Slims for the meetup thanks to the BBQ fest and construction going on outside of the restaurant made it a little difficult to find. But I had given myself enough time and ended up walking in right at 7 when the meetup was supposed to start. Dana (the organizer), Sherita (who was at the first meetup I went to), Tanja (the german girl with the free wristbands for BBQ fest), Lance (who had been at a previous meeting but hardly talks at all), and Larry (a new guy who's had an interesting life, he's an engineer that has also been teaching ball room dancing for the past 30 years, he also worked on the Ed Sullivan show for a while) were already there. Later, a few more trickled in. Tonya (who has been at previous meetups but that night was annoying all the "computer geeks" with talk of get somebody to build some weird database/email system into her myspace page), Aaron and his friend Dwight also showed up (no wine this time but it was good to see them both again), and some woman that I am sorry to say I don't remember her name (I hate to say something as bad as that she didn't fit in with the group, but it just seemed like she was out of sync with the rest of us; hopefully that's just because it was the first time she had been to any meetup).
The food was quite unusual, but also quite good. I'm not sure that its something I would enjoy eating often, but it was definitely good to experience for the first time. Tanja was even able to talk me into trying the calamari despite my long standing distrust of anything sea food and my reticence at the very thought of calamari. I have to admit that I even enjoyed it, though the larger pieces had a little bit too much of the chewy texture in evidence.
What I really find interesting is how much I seem to have changed. The other day Krissi had mentioned something about me having become such a "social butterfly". At the time, I told her I was trying to be that way, but I wasn't sure that it was actually me, meaning I wasn't sure if it was me trying to force something that doesn't actually fit who I am. But its hard to argue with the evidence. I really have just become quite comfortable with being social. I can talk to complete strangers about anything. Hell, I was even helping to direct conversations that night and went out of my way to rescue Aaron from a conversation he was having with Tonya that was obvious annoying him to no end. If that isn't a sign of a social person, I don't know what is.

As people started heading home, Tanja again offered the wristbands for people wanting to check out BBQ fest, but it ended up just being myself and Dana to take her up on the offer. I was a little bit leery of it just being me and the two woman, though not actually nervous. I just wasn't sure how the dynamic of it would be. I don't know, or I should say I didn't know, what the two of them are looking for out of these meetups. Personally, I am not actually looking to find somebody to be with at these. I'm not going to reject it if it were to happen, but mostly I am just looking to get out of my box (as Maddie keeps mentioning) and try to have a life for once. Even when hanging out with my friends, sometimes maybe I was just leeching off their lives to avoid living on my own. I don't know. But what I do know is that I just can't be that way any more.
So, a question that might come to mind after me saying that is: "am I interested in either of these women for more than just the occasional meetup?" At the time, I would have said no. They are both very attractive women, but that is beside the point. Dana just has a lot of things I don't think I could deal with. She's "close" to finalizing her divorce that has been ongoing for two years despite not having any kids to complicate the process (just seems like a long time to me), she told me she recently broke up with her boyfriend, etc. And that night at BBQ fest, her talking about how she is looking for a serious long term relationship out of the meetups (along with talking at the dinner about how she needed a man that would cook, clean, and just take care of her completely) just seems like too much for me. Tanja, well, Tanja kind of intimidates me a little or she did at the time. We talked a lot more over the weekend as we met Friday for more of BBQ fest and Saturday for a couple of other meetup groups. But that night, she when Dana brought up the subject of what we were all looking for out of the meetups, the way she looked at me after saying what she was looking for...it just really caught me off guard. Driving her around Saturday night (I gave her a lift from the movie theater to save on gas and parking fees downtown), I learned a bit of her past and was feeling closer to her. So, I am less intimidated by it, but still don't think I want to be anything more than her friend.

Anyway, we did have some fun at BBQ Fest. We danced a bit at one of the tent parties (me being a bit stand offish still despite Dana trying to be fairly “friendly” with the dancing) and hung out with a group of Tanja’s co-workers at another tent (though they were out of jello shots and only had bud light to drink, so we didn’t stay long). We ended up heading on back before midnight with Dana and I walking Tanja to her office so she could pick up her laptop that she’d left there. It seemed like Dana wanted to say more when the three of us split up to go to where each of us parked, but we had made plans to meet Friday night for more of BBQ fest and I guess she thought it wasn’t important enough to say (ok, I am acting a little dense there, several times on the walk back she mentioned wanting to go dancing that night, pointedly looking at me, but it was late and we did already have plans for Friday).
I ended up getting home a little after midnight and falling asleep by 1 or so. I felt like being lazy Friday. So I didn’t bother waking up with my alarm clock. I knew I was going to have to stay after work that day and just felt like getting some sleep. Nobody really cares when I come and go at work anyway. Work went by fairly slowly since I was looking forward so much to that evening. When it came time for everybody else to leave though I had to stay and move that damn application. It was a pain in the ass too. I didn’t get out of there until almost 7 which is when I had originally planned to meet Dana and Tanja downtown. But I had called Dana, who apparently stayed out a couple hours longer Thursday night to go to some bars and was trying to take a nap before heading downtown. She actually ended up getting there after I did. Tanja of course was already downtown though and was enjoying some moonshine when we found her.
I have to say that was some damn strong shit he was pouring. When I got there, she had maybe half a shot of the stuff in her cup (he wasn’t letting anybody have that much of it at a time because it was so strong) and I just gulped it down without hesitation despite them repeatedly telling me to just sip it. Yeah, it was strong as hell but it tasted great. It was strawberry flavored moonshine and that half a shot felt like two or three shots straight of tequila.
We hung out there for a while meeting some more of her co-workers (included two that were absolutely fascinated with programming elevators for some reason) and drinking more of the old guy’s moonshine. Somewhere in there Larry showed up and he hung out with us for a few hours. We ended up at the tent where we did so much dancing the previous night. This time Dana was even more friendly and the moonshine and other drinks had loosened me up a bit more. Tanja actually complimented us on how well we were dancing together, though she also seemed…I don’t know, jealous just doesn’t seem to fit her at all, but she did kind of joke around about how close I was suddenly being with Dana and "accused" me of hiding behind Dana. What’s weird is that I actually talked a lot more to Tanja and felt closer to her than Dana who was rubbing up against me.
At some point, Larry finally decided to head on home. He’s a bit older and wasn’t as into getting drunk and dancing to the extremely loud music. But shortly after that, we spotted Tanja’s chiropractor who ended up leaving his friend to come hang out with us for the rest of the night.
He seemed like a nice enough guy, but he gave off a weird vibe. And I know that his excuse of why his fiancée wasn’t with him (menstrual cramps) didn’t sit well with Tonja, especially since he kept chatting up Dana and dismissing the subject of his fiancée the few times Tonja tried bringing it up. That is one thing I definitely know about Tanja after this weekend, she has no tolerance for guys that are so cavalier about chatting up other women. And who can blame her. Still she seemed to be trying to push Dana on him and Dana didn’t seem to mind at all.
Around midnight the tent ran out of booze, and then they finally had to cut the music off. So we started heading home. But first we absolutely had to get Tanja some of the flashing bunny ears. Tanja and I had noticed them the night before and kept joking about how she absolutely had to have a pair of them. She also picked up a little flashing starburst necklace thing and Dana got a pair of flashing glasses. It was just too funny. Then we walked arm in arm out of there all the way back to Tanja’s office again. We ended up parting ways a bit after 1am and I got home around 2.
Then I was back up bright and early Saturday morning. It seems the more fun I have, the less sleep I need (at least that’s how it was in Vegas too). I had a bit of a hangover from that killer moonshine, but a bit of food and a hot shower seemed to take care of it quite easily. Around 10am I headed over to Jerm and Krissi’s to see what I could to do help with the painting project. At that time, they were just doing the pressure washing so it was mostly standing around watching them do the work, but then we all headed to Huey’s for lunch before stopping by Lowes for supplies. There was some debate about what colors to use and we eventually decided to take some swatches back with us before actually buying the paint. They did go ahead and pick up some caulking for any gaps in the wood and for some stuff for fixing the shingles. When we got back, they picked out the colors they were wanting to use and then Krissi and Maddie went to pick up the paint while Jerm worked on the roof, and I worked on the caulking. After they got back we went ahead and starting putting Kilz on any exposed wood to help seal it and I believe they were just starting to paint when I had to leave. Oh yeah, I have to mention the pain in the ass it was to take care of the exceptionally steep eave over there front door. The next day we came up with a better way to handle it thanks to John’s smart thinking, but we seriously tried a lot to get that to work out.
One thing I have to mention is my fear of heights, or rather my seeming lack of it now. As I believe I mention in writing about my hike, I believe I have gotten over my fear of heights. However, I’m not quite sure if that is true or not. I didn’t have any problems at all climbing to the highest points on the ladders, but when I got up on the one ladder to try to do some of the eaves and it started moving out from under me, I could tell I was holding myself back from pushing it too far. Maybe that is just a valid point intelligent concern, rather than fear though, because we were being rather foolish with our L shape to the ladder and trying to sit on it in such a way that we were kind of pushing it away from the roof and relying much on the person steadying the ladder to keep it against the roof. Jerm was a lot better up there than I was, but that could be because I had more faith in me being to hold the ladder in place with his smaller weight than him being able to hold it in place with my bigger weight at the top. Either way, nobody ended up getting hurt and the job did get done. So it’s all good.
Anyway, I actually ended up staying a little bit longer than I originally planned to, just because I wanted to help them out as much as I could. But I still made it to the theater on time. Dana, Caroline, and Stephanie (all people that had been at previous dining out meetups) were already there and Tanja was on her way, though running late.
We apparently need to work on our organization though, because there were supposedly three other people that went to the meetup but couldn’t find us. I find this hard to believe since Dana had specified exactly where she was going to be (the lounge/bar to the left side of the main lobby of Paradiso, where you can buy wine) and we were the only ones there. Dana and I even waited until 7:15 while Tanja was finding the place and parking. But whatever, we’ll have to figure some better way of showing people that we are with the group. Dana mention maybe making a sign, though she didn’t want to look like a dork by holding it up (I offered to do it instead if she liked).
Still, the five of us had a good time. Afterwards we decided to go to Chili’s to get something to eat as a group, but before we left the parking lot I seemed to have upset Dana. Friday night I had offered to drive both her and Tanja from the movie theater to downtown to save on gas and parking fees (Dana had paid freaking $20 Friday night for parking). At the time, Tanja said she may just take me up on the offer, but Dana didn’t seem interested. However, when Tanja did take me up on the offer and Dana noticed, she seemed a bit upset.
Then when we got to Chili’s and discovered how long a wait it would be, she decided she had to forget about eating with us and head downtown early, even though there was plenty of time and we had already decided to go to El Mezcal just down the street rather than wait at Chili’s. I didn’t mean for it to look like it must have, but even after both Tanja and I offered to have anybody else ride in my car too, she was set on leaving us. Oh well, what’s done is done.
Caroline, Stephanie, Tanja, and I all went to El Mezcal. Caroline unfortunately wasn’t planning to make it to EP because she had just gotten back from a week long business trip and was rather tired. So we did hang out there a bit longer than we should have. Particularly because the food wasn’t all that great.
It’s funny how Tanja has a different food for every restaurant that she uses to judge it. For Automatic Slims, and any other place that serves it, her test food is calamari. If they can do that well, she knows they can cook almost anything (for the record, she says Automatic Slims is some of the best she’s ever had). For Mexican, it’s the chimichanga. El Mezcal certainly fell short on that test though. Also, she didn’t care for how small their shots of tequila were.
We had a good time there too, but eventually the three of us that were going downtown had to leave. We said good night to Caroline and wished her to get to feeling better (she’d been sick since Monday – so for her entire trip). And headed downtown.
Traffic was pretty bad and it ended up being too much for Stephanie who decided to forget about the meetup. Can’t really blame her there, though its too bad she didn’t make it. Especially since she’s going to be away for 6 weeks starting at the end of this month.
Tanja and I got to EP around 10:45. She was a bit taken aback by them having a cover charge to get in. I just took it as whatever, but I have to agree that it really should have been something mentioned about the meetup for people that are a little more concerned about the cost of these things. I mean, Dana has been good about pointing out the price ranges for the places we are going to for the Dining Out group. So it kind of makes sense to post something like “there is a $10 cover charge to get in” particularly when many of the parking garages in the area were charging $15-25 already!
Several people were already there from the group of course, Lance, Sherita, Tonya, and a couple of other people that I didn’t really catch the names of (it was just too damn loud in there to really hear each other very well). Its kind of nice to be a guy out numbered by the ladies as I didn’t have to pay for a single drink that night, hehe. The G3 Martinis were quite tasty (and strong). Over all, it was a bit chaotic. We had a table right at the front of the place next to the band that was playing the music very loudly. This did mean that it was a small matter for us to get out on the dance floor, but still.
I did have to be the gentleman thing for a bit though and watch purses and drinks as some of the ladies went to the dance floor. You know I am super naïve when it took me a minute to understand why they were asking me to watch their drinks though. Honestly, I can’t blame them for having concerns with a couple of the guys that were hanging around. Anyway, Dana did come and rescue me from that after a while. Though I ended up dancing more with Tanja than her this time around. Again, I got a few compliments on my dancing, though I did find out that I was lacking any clue how to dance back to back with a woman. Tanja and I just seemed out of sync when she wanted me to try it. The rest of the time we were good together though.
It was funny watching this one white guy in his late 30s that came to the meetup try to dance. Mostly because I imagine that is exactly how I looked when I was trying to dance with Maddie when we were in Vegas, lol. Then there was the Indian guy who said he couldn’t dance at all, but I was able to encourage him to get out there and just move. He and Dana ended up dancing some, though he moved even less than the white guy. Tonja and I sat back down after we kept noticing that all Dana was really doing was chatting with people while standing on the dance floor. After all, she’s the one that dragged both of us out to dance, but she wasn’t dancing at all.
Oh and I almost forgot to mention the added bit of drama where the guy Dana had seemed to be dating when he met us at the Dish after Bhan Thai showed up. I have no clue how that made her feel, but the guy was trying to hook up with one of the other women from the meetup group. That just seemed really cruel to me. Though when Tonya realized that she was hitting on a guy Dana had gone out with, she did sort of backed off even though Dana quietly said it was ok without making it sound all that convincing. No clue, but it did seem like a bit of drama that didn't need to happen.
Tanja and I ended up leaving EP earlier than the others I believe because we just couldn’t talk to people with the music that loud. But we didn’t go home right away. Instead, Tanja really wanted to go on a carriage ride around downtown. She works downtown and is always seeing the carriages taking people around. And she owns her own horse, so she loves seeing the horses. Anyway, she has been wanting to do it ever since she moved to Memphis but she wasn’t going to do it by herself. Good naturedly, I told her I wouldn’t mind at all riding along with her on one. The one we chose was the same one that almost ran me over Thursday night, but it’s the one she really wanted to ride in. It’s one with the wire frame almost like a Cinderella pumpkin carriage, with blue string lights all over it. The woman who drives it also has a dog that came into the back and sat with us during the ride. It was a lot of fun, though it was rather cold even with the blanket the woman gave us to cuddle up in. And yes, i did take advantage of that to cuddle up with my arm around Tanja, hehe.
After that, we did head back to the Paradiso where she’d left her truck. Traffic was absolutely fucking terrible on the way back. At one point we were stuck at a single light for almost half an hour. It was insane. But it did give us time to talk some more.
She ended up telling me the story of how she came to be living in Memphis. I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’d be right for me to share that since it was a very personal story. Suffice it to say, she arrived in Memphis under very different circumstances than how she thought they was going to be.
For my part, I talked to her about how I really haven’t had many relationships in my entire life (ok, I couldn’t go so far as to say I’ve only dated one girl for any length of time, but I did admit that my longest relationship was all of three months). Come to think of it, I was revealing a lot that night as I had been talking to Dana a bit about myself before the movie too.
And you know what? I really don’t have any problem with them or anybody else knowing anything and everything about myself. Something of my old self did hold me back a little bit with regards to my past relationships, but I would like to think I was still doing pretty well all things considered.
Tanja and I parted with a hug at her truck and I headed home (stopping to get gas as I had seriously been worrying I might run out before getting back to the Paradiso, can you imagine how lame that would look if it had happened while I was driving Tanja?). Got home around 3am and didn’t take too long to fall asleep.

Then I was up bright and early at 7am come Sunday morning. No hangover this time. I was still in a great mood from the night before (particularly the hug). I grabbed some food and booted up my computer, just in time to see Jerm logging off Aim and only minutes after he had emailed me to tell me to come over whenever I felt like it. He could have just called me like I told him would be fine, but it does show a lot of consideration that he emailed me instead. I’m just glad I decided to check my email that early rather than what I had done Saturday, which was laze around for a few hours before going online. So, I head over to their house as soon as I finished my breakfast and got there before he had even gotten back from getting their own food from McDonalds.
We worked quite deligently all day, all the way through lunch and finished up sometime around 3pm I think. Its funny just how much fun it can be to work alongside your friends. Just like when we redid John and Maddie’s flowerbeds in the front yard, it was a ton of work, but I had more fun doing it than many of the nights that we have just spent hanging out watching random stuff on tv. That seems so strange for a slacker like me to admit, but it is absolutely the truth.
As they were finishing up painting the garage door, I headed back to my house to get a shower and some clean clothes. I also ended up doing some stuff on meetup.com as I discovered that several people had tried to make the movie fan meetup, but couldn’t find us. I did my best to help Dana smooth things over and encourage them to try to make the next meetup. We really were trying to make sure everybody that was coming could find us. We just need to be better about advertising who we are when we get there. I haven’t seen any response from the people that were upset though. I do hope they will give it another try.
After that I headed back to Jerm and Krissi’s where Krissi and I watched a new episode of Reaper that was very funny while Jerm played a game. Then she showed me the season finale of The Office that I had missed while I was at Automatic Slims. That was an absolutely fantastic episode with a ton of surprises and plenty of twists to the various plot lines. I just love that show.

Then we all went to meet John and Maddie for sushi. This was my first time ever trying it. In the past, I was dead set against ever giving it a try, but this time it was surprisingly easy for them to convince me to go. In fact, all they had to do was ask. It wasn’t even the trying of sushi that made me hesitate for a moment. It was the fact that I had been spending so much money that weekend and hadn’t budgeted for another meal. I’m sure they would have understood if that was the case, but as I said earlier, it was ok, I could afford it. Besides, any time I can be with these friends is worthwhile in my book.
I ended up getting the a combo plate that had a ton of different sushi on it and sharing some of the sushi plates the others bought. Of it all, the only thing I didn’t particularly care for was the conch. There is just something about food that my teeth can’t cut into that seriously bothers me. Also, I had a problem with putting the whole thing in my mouth. The portions are just so much larger than what I would normally consider bite sized and yet you are supposed to put the whole thing in at once. It really just made me feel like I was stuffing my face like a big putting those whole things in at once. I know I can be a bit too stuck on propriety at times, but it just went so against my views on eating etiquette.
So, what did I think of the sushi? Well, I there was nothing that I hated. The texture was a bit off my palate at times, but the tastes were all ok. Still, I don’t know that I will ever go out of my way for it. Other than the Jaguar California rolls, none of it came across as strong enough a flavor for me. Yeah, dipping it in soy sauce with some wasabi would add flavor to everything. But that just seemed like cheating to me. I wanted to try the sushi in its basic form. And in doing so, I was having to focus on subtleties of taste that I don’t normally pay as fine attention to.
Still, it was a good experience overall (I definitely liked the warm green dragon sake) and I’m glad they got me to go with them. :)
After that, I was finally starting to feel tired as everybody else seemed to be too. We all went back to our own homes (with me stopping by the grocery store on the way).

Upon getting home, I checked my mail and then saw that Amber was online. So, I ended up chatting with her for quite a while. We were also playing scrabulous where she crushed me thanks to my complete inability to think of words. She seemed like she’d had a bad weekend and had been wanting somebody to talk to, but I wasn’t around. So, I ended up staying up later than I really should have. But it seemed to cheer her up, so that makes me happy. I’ll just catch up on sleep sometime during the week, preferably before my big meeting Wednesday.

Happy Things: I had something in mind for here, but as usual, I seem to have completely forgotten what it was. I know, how about “Stepping out of the box.” Maybe leaping would be a more apt description of what I have been doing, but the concept is still the same. I have been adventuring outside my self-imposed limits and discovering there is an entire world out there through which can I can journey without fear. Yes, bad things can happen when you don’t have the “safety” of some barrier between you and the rest of the world, but that same barrier also prevents so many good things from happening that it just isn’t worth it. I am truly happy to be able to say that I am finally letting go of my box.