last (thursday) night

I'm thinking about selling my Thursday and Friday night experiences to Katy Perry for the follow up to her song "Last Friday Night." Why do you ask? Well. Let me 'splain.

You may remember when my sales rep, Bill, called my mom approximately 47 times and then tried to blame it on me. Well, he came to town this past week for business meetings and we met up. At first, it was only going to be for dinner because he had to meet up with his group at a local comedy club. That worked out well for me because I was planning to stop by a local dive bar to hear a friend of a friend strum his guitar. But before I knew it, it was Friday morning and our night had gone a little like this.

1. After dinner at Buku, we began our trek to the comedy club. Charlie Goodnight's is on Morgan St., and Morgan St. happens to run downtown. After 8 blocks of walking and no Charlie Goodnight's in sight, we found a cab who drove us the next mile and dropped us at the front door. Because the show was in progress, we made ourselves comfortable at the bar downstairs.
2. Little did we know that Ricky Bobby was also comfortable at the bar.
3. I will the you that there was no way  the bartender was comfortable at her bar. Lezzzbehonest. Would you be comfortable with Ricky Bobby telling you that your eyebrows were so beautiful, he couldn't stop staring at them?
4. I developed the hiccups at the bar.
5. Ricky Bobby told us he was a hypnotherapist but for some reason, when asked if he would hypnotize me to rid me of my hiccups, he was unable to actually perform.
6. We met up with Bill's coworkers. They told us they were headed to the Irish pub, but I wanted to go hear my friend of a friend.
7. Bill and I told them we'd meet later and next thing we knew, a German girl was in the car too.
8. it's a good thing we showed up to hear the friend of a friend because without us, there would have only been 10 people there.
9. the friend of a friend was actually pretty good though.
10. We left the dive bar and headed back towards the hotel so I could drop Bill and the German off.
11. On the way back to the hotel, Bill discovered my homemade Richard Marx cd.
12. We proceeded to have a sing along of Endless Summer Nights on repeat.
13. I'm not kidding you. We rolled the windows down and sang it three times without pause. 
14. The German girl asked on more than one occasion if this was really happening to her.
15. At the hotel, they convinced me to come inside while they had one more drink.
16. We ended up discussing politics. Clearly Bill and I were on opposite political sides than the German, but she was quite receptive to our conservative view points.
17. She said if she weren't a socialist, then she'd be a Republican.
18. I thought that was nice of her.

Then the next thing I knew, it was Friday evening and Bill had convinced me to meet him out at the local watering hole near my house - Edwards Mill Bar & Grill. he wasn't flying out till Saturday am and wanted to watch football. Since he twisted my arm so much, and it clearly was either cry uncle or meet him out, I told him I'd meet him after the gym. (I don't think he really believed me that I would come right from the gym in my gym clothes. Boy was he surprised). We ordered a giant plate of nachos, which I proceeded to house and then decided to pop over to Rudinos to see if they had any live music. They did not but what they did have suited us just fine: big screen tvs and liquor for him and a chair and a glass of wine for me.

Somewhere over the course of the night, we thought it would be hilarious to txt and/or facebook some of the other reps in his office and tell them we were in love and eloping. We txted one rep and told him we were at the airport about to board a flight for Vegas. In order to further our proof that we were eloping, I agreed to change my name on facebook. How the hell was I supposed to know it would take 48 hours to change it back to my real name??

I woke up the next morning to txts and emails asking why I had eloped and not told anyone. Number one, I didn't really elope! And number b, isn't that the point of eloping? You don't tell anyone? At any rate, everyone was freaking out. Everyone except the people the joke was meant for that is. Bill said his girlfriend was going to love seeing he had gotten married when he came to Raleigh for work. I eventually had to put up a disclaimer on facebook that the news of my elopement was false and that because of facebook rules, I couldn't change my name back for 48 hours (againt - how was I supposed to know!). Unfortunately, some of my parents' friends had seen my updated name and on Sunday had congratulated them during church. When I asked my mom how they responded, she just said "well meredith, we said to them...'how do you explain stupid?'"

and there you have it folks. Sales training 101.