Sunday...Before Labor Day ~ 3 September 2007

I got to work at around 3 p.m. and decided to work until 6 p.m. (when the store closes) at the latest. I had a bunch of shipments to get through with no one to help me, but I was fine with that since I worked better alone than when I have to answer questions about processing from my other associates in receiving. However, since I needed to put out the new titles that come out on Tuesday from Random House, HarperCollins, etc. I planned to stay a little later than 6 p.m.

So I talked with Kythera and asked her to lock me into the backroom (literally) so that I could process and that I'd set the alarm before I left. She was fine with that...and so I ended up staying until 11:15 p.m., processing for 8 hours without really taking a break. Such is life...but I was plenty hungry, so I text my friend Osip if he wanted to go drink a few beers and have a burger with me at The Tap. He called and agreed that we'd meet at 11:30 p.m. at the bar.

I drove to Walgreen's to get some cash from the Chase ATM, $40. I drank a half and half before I text Osip asking him, "Where you be?" (As if I were cool and could use hip-hop type of lingo). He said he'd get on his bike and be there in 5 minutes. We drank until 2 a.m. when the bar closed...I haven't closed a bar in years (though I did start awful late). And so we left talked some outside and went our own ways.

I had an hour drive ahead of me, but I had only had three beers and pretty much stopped drinking around 1 a.m. and started drinking water (to rehydrate, not really much help in sobering up, as if you could dilute the alcohol in the bloodstream). I listen to Carmina Burana all the way home to the suburbs, Naperville, and got home safe without getting pulled over by the cops, especially since it was the beginning of the month and they are out in force then.

I try never to drive when I'm not sober, as the consequences can be tragic...killing someone with your car or getting thrown in jail and ending up getting raped, is not my idea of a good way to end a night of drinking. And so, I make sure that I'm sober enough that my driving is as good as I am when I'm sober, even though my reaction speed might be slower...and so, I end up driving slower and more safely than when I'm sober and have better control of the wheel (funny, huh?).

During my time processing I was listening to the usual fare: Wire (On Returning) and The Jam (SNAP!, Sound Affects, Setting Sons, and All Mod Cons). I got pretty emotional listening to songs like Thick as Thieves and Private Hell, so I e-mailed my buddy in L.A., Dogstar, and let him know how sad I was and putting myself through the same old masochistic travails listening to old Weller tunes. Dogstar is married, like myself, and he and his wife have a recent addition to the family, a girl named Hana.

I got to see him and his wife Gina at a small reunion of friends at the Irvine Spectrum where we drank Margaritas at Javier's, ate dinner and talked for most of the night. Esteban drove down from Hollywood that night to be with us too. All three of us used to hang out with each other since we were in grade school. Now we were all in our late 30's and only Esteban was still a musician, playing jazz guitar in L.A. Dogstar took his fine arts degree and went to work for some magazines, and is now at Vegetarian Times. But now they live in L.A. and I in the suburbs of Chicago, that's why listening to The Jam is so painful, it hits home as to the reality of our older selves no longer having any real relation to our younger selves. And though I've not gotten a reply yet, I'm sure I'll hear from old Dogstar sometime in the near future.