Tales From The Midwest - Friday Night Party
There was a party at the Best Western. The band was Southeast of Disorder and Eric the Whaleshark opened. TC Mitchell dropped in to play which was cool. They also had a fantastic all you can eat fish fry. It was soooo good. You can't beat the Midwest Friday Night Fish Fry for good eats.
TC getting ready to jam.
We danced and sang for a while but the hotel bar was too much of a magnet for us. They were selling cheap pitchers and we started carrying them back to the party room but then we got lazy and just stayed in the bar.
Dawnie, Conrad and me - yeah, we were having fun!
They had a digital jukebox going and we loaded a ton of money into it and played all of our favorites. The place was packed with our group and the locals and it was a hoot.
You go, girl!
De got a little tooted up and started dirty dancing. The girl can move! The rest of us were content to do 12 ounce curls and yell at each other above the music. It was pretty loud.
Our new, local friend.
Someone had made some poor (in our opinion) musical selections and we were all bummed. Dawnie told me about a secret button on the bottom of the jukebox that skips the current song. That's such a rule breaking thing so you can imagine how toasted I was that I snuck over to the machine, felt for a button underneath and pressed it.
One problem - I didn't skip the song, I turned the whole thing off. The very loud bar suddenly went completely quiet. Everyone looked at the bartender with a WTF? expression and he pointed to me and said, "It's her fault." They then all turned to look at me.
Awkward.
I started calculating how much money I was going to have to spend to put everyone's songs back in while standing there like the proverbial deer in headlights. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to press the button again and the jukebox started right where it left off.
I decided we could suffer through the bad songs after that.
It's so cozy down here!
We were all hanging around a table when all of a sudden (at least it seemed that way to me) Dawnie was on the ground. She was laughing pretty hard and it took her a while to get back up. Did I mention we were pretty tooted up?
Yum, Lemondrops!
It was little wonder that we were sloppy drunk rule-breakers as we did several rounds of shots. There were Lemondrops which are very good, German Chocolate Cake and who knows what else. We drank whatever the bartender made us.
I'm pretty sure we closed the bar down but I truly can't remember for sure.
2008
More shots!
There was a hotel party this year but it was at another hotel so we passed. Dawnie, Pete and I snuck over to see our buddy Jim at a local watering hole. Our one drink turned into three but then we headed back to our same Best Western as last year.
We ate a quick fish fry in the restaurant (not quite as good as last year but still good) then headed to the bar. This year, they had a DJ so we weren't in charge of the musical selections. It was a lot more hip-hop than we would have chosen.
She's consistent, you gotta give her that.
De is not into the same tunage as most of the rest of us are. She loves the hip-hop and broke into dance again. She was quite the hit with the local guys in the bar.
The plan from the beginning had been for the Minnesota boys to come party with us at our hotel bar. Jim came over with his parents and his friend Oscar but we had no sightings of Red Shirt Guy. I had been texting him (and Jim) all day with updates on our travel status and I knew he was finally in town. He called me and said he was trying to get his gang to drive over. I'm pretty sure I said something like, "Well, hurry up." He also told me his girlfriend had inquired who this Kathy girl was that was texting him all day. He told her I was an IT geek and she apparently lost interest in me at that point.
I was standing at the bar trying to order another pitcher and started talking to the local guy next to me. He looked familiar and I said, "You were here last year, weren't you?" He said he was and I then said, "I was the one who turned off the jukebox." He exclaimed, "That was you!" I guess I made an impression. When I went through my pics from last year, I was happy to see I had one of him for the story (see above).
Time passed and we were still wondering where Red Shirt Guy was. I noticed I'd missed a voice mail so I stepped outside to listen. Paraphrasing, it was one of Red Shirt Guy's women telling me that he was inebriated and she was putting him to bed. I went back into the bar and told Dawnie, "I think I just got the smack down." The voice message didn't stop her from whipping out her phone and texting him with a "what up" message. He was still awake but he never did make it over to our place.
For some reason, it always seems like you should order just one more so we got a final pitcher. That we couldn't drink. Dawnie said you can't leave if there's still beer in the pitcher but you can if there's some in the glass. So, we drank enough to get the pitcher clear and then we headed off to bed.
