Personal Day

After a long week of meetings all I wanted to do was have a nice quiet Saturday. The first step was to prepare a lovely breakfast. I’ve quite taken to the ritualistic manner of preparing these breakfast burritos and the experience eating them is also very satisifying. I was set on not doing any work this day, needing to have a brief unplug for my mental health and such. After laying about for a few hours after waking I did the breakfast and cleaned up my mess, as is also custom. I descended for a few hours while some laundry spun. I played some NHL and got caught up on some podcast backlog. A nice, quiet morning. Still being filled, I didn’t bother with a lunch but instead climbed to my office and worked on catching up on a backlog of Musings and also worked through a week of MSC challenges. The very work heavy week had not given me much opportunity to keep on these two things. I have another such week coming then I’m left to my own schedule, we’ll see if I do better job then.

Catching up on my personal enterprises did take up the majority of the afternoon. I supplemented my time following that with some more episodes of the Office (US). I am breezing through it end to end as I’ve mentioned previously and hope in the next few weeks to get it done and start looking for the next big binge. When it became time to eat again I decided to take down the wings that had been thawing in the fridge all week. I’ve settled into a bit of a routine where I have ten wings thawing for a couple of days (2-3) then eat them and start the next batch to thawing. The air fryer allows me to make fantastic wings in relatively short order. I went with the same sauce configuration as weeks past. The darker coloured ones are Sweet Baby Ray’s Sweet and Spicy BBQ sauce. The lighter coloured wings are treated with Hotel Oscar Tango hot sauce. All the wings get some salt and pepper before cooking. These were quite good, better than the last batch for sure if you’re keeping track of my progress at home.

On a normal Saturday that would be the end of caloric intake. I’d settle back into the couch and rip off a few more hours of my binge then crawl into my bed and that would be the end of it. But not this night. For a few months there was a plan brewing to throw a secret, virtual Diaper Party for GRP. They are expecting to be parents on the same day of Booj’s birth. The Meat Man arranged some of the finer points and the ambush. He also got all the diapers assembled and paid for remotely. In total I think the pile was some 1732 diapers strong. Those were hidden in GRP’s house without his knowledge, with the assistance of the Mayor. They feigned a trip to the LCBO but went and did the deed as well. GRP was at his in-laws for dinner, that was how they got him out of the house. There was to be a bonfire as well. Meat Man lured GRP back to GRP’s home via an excuse to light the fire and get it blazing before everyone else came over. What he didn’t know was that he was going to be greeted by a mountain of diapers and a gaggle of buddies and family on a virtual experience. Because time was short and we weren’t going to have a whole weekend to get him lit up, we had to dust off an older, classic drinking game, Short Bus. It’s a variation of Ride the Bus that is much more expedient and gets the participants to drink more in a shorter period of time. It is dangerous and caution should be exercised when participating. I will lay out the general concept with brief detail here. There is a dealer (The Tugboat) who has the cards, just regular playing cards, the whole deck, and asks the questions. There are five rounds of play and if the participant answers the question correctly they give a corresponding number of drinks to the round out to another player of their choosing. If they get it wrong, they have to take that many drinks. For example, in round one, a mistake results in one drink either being taken or given but in round four, there are four drinks on the line. If you are giving drinks you can split them amongst a number of people when multiple are being given. For instance, player one gets the question right in round three and can give two drinks to player four and one to player two. No half drinks. As for the questions, round one is simply red or black. The player guesses the colour then the dealer lays the card. The drinks are settled and the dealer moves to the next player and so on, ending with themself. The second round is higher or lower. If the same card is laid then the player had to finish their entire drink. In the third round, the player is asked by the dealer if the next card will be inside or outside the cards they have already been dealt in the first two rounds. Same rules apply, if they are dealt a card that is the same as either of the other two then they have to finish their entire drink. The fourth round is the hardest, the player has to guess the suit of the next card and there are four drinks on the line. The fifth and final round has no question, the dealer simply lays a fifth card for each player to give them five total. The player with the best poker hand wins and gives out five drinks. The player with the worst poker hand has to finish their entire drink and should be immune from receiving any of the five drinks from the winner but some people play that aspect differently. It is advisable to have at least two drinks on hand at the start of any round. After the round the person to the dealer’s left should take on mantle of dealer and the game goes on.

On this night, we played five rounds. The dealer never changed and we forgot that they were supposed to be dealt in also so I missed the first couple of rounds. Luckily I was still sipping on the side after each round. In the end, I took down a casual twelve, first time since March that I did anything even close to that. A final surprise was that Booj was actually in town to visit family and secretly showed up at GRP’s once they started the fire. They spread themselves out and things got silly after that. The call itself started up about half seven and was over shortly after ten. The next couple hours were spent drinking water and watching a few more episodes of the Office. I crawled into my bed just ahead of high noon, good and drunk.