Lazy Sunday

Well, it's been a completely unproductive few days. My brother and his friend got in on Thursday night, and between going out and sleeping in and cleaning up after said going out and sleeping in, there hasn't been much time to actually work. I'm hoping to finish some reading today and maybe write a page or two, but I'd much rather go bum around Paris for the day with my bro. Anyways, talking about academia kind of makes me want to ralph, so I'm just going to skip over that (and considering that I'm pretty much done with school anyways, there's no reason to in the first place). Instead, I think I'll talk about how I finished an entire bottle of wine on the Pont des Arts and split a dart at the Highlander while Stephanie kicked my ass by literally 220 points.

Um, I guess that's the story. We met up with some friends on the bridge on Friday night for a picnic and public drinking, and at first I thought we had way too much food and wine, but I was soon proved wrong, as the group sprawled out and we proceeded to finish every last crumb of fresh baguette and every last drop of our 4 euro bottles of wine. And yes, I did drink an entire bottle of wine by myself. I have no idea how I did it without throwing up, but oh man, was I impressed with myself. It was probably the drunkest I've been since my first foray into alcohol consumption in Scotland in 2004, but without the falling down and spending the next day crouched down by the toilet waiting for that last tequila sunrise to wreak its revenge. I think there's something different about bridge drinking that takes away the possibility of getting sick or having a hangover. It's just such a nice experience, sitting on the bridge with literally hundreds of other people, enjoying some cheese and bread and meats, sipping (or gulping) your two buck chuck (or four buck chuck), enjoying the sunset as you watch the colors on the Ile de la Cité change from vibrant to subdued, trying to snap pictures that will look good on Facebook while trying to deal with aforementioned setting sun, handing out crackers to winos, waving and yelling at tour boats passing underneath, accidentally spilling wine on some of them, savoring the frequent cool breezes as you realize you're sitting at the center of the world in between the Louvre and the Académie française and nothing else matters.

And then you try to stand up.

And then you try to maneuver through the crowds so you can make it off the bridge and into the next bar where drinks are twice as expensive as that entire bottle of wine you just drank, and where people seem to make it their job to keep you from getting where you need to go. But then, of course, there are those once in a lifetime occurrences, like splitting a dart right next to the bullseye while Right Said Fred plays in the background, or thinking you lost your brother to some black back alley only to find him giving himself lung cancer outside in his drunken stupor, that make putting up with crowded bars and overpriced drinks and alcoholic tools all worth it.*

And that's when you realize you have two whole months to finish your mémoire, and who really needs to get it done rightthissecond anyways?



*Don't worry, we made him stop and throw the rest out. Doctors should have better reason than that, right?