![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
Cool Things
A and I went shopping at Target for our lunch today. I needed some fall clothes.
Guess what, people? I found two skirts that fit - size 8! Woo! Of course the jeans and the pants didn't fit, but I have sort of calculated that I'll be at ideal weight in November and so I've got two months to go - roughly 15 pounds or so.
I am proud of me!
Yesterday J, A, V and I went to lunch with S. (She doesn't work in our department, but she is funny as hell.)
We got into some strange discussion (us? No way!) about drinking. S was suggesting that if American kids were brought up allowed to drink wine in limited amounts, etc., drinking would be no damn big thing. That's how they do it in Europe and it seems to work just fine.
J was disparaging. "Kids are still gonna get to college and get shitfaced drunk," he insisted. "It's a rite of passage."
"Yes," I agreed, "but they won't be likely to drink 21 shots on their 21st birthdays and drop dead of alcohol poisoning."
"Maybe," he allowed, "but they are still gonna do 10 shots at a frat party and end up with their skirt up to their chin in the back of somebody's pick up."
"Well," I said, "that sounds like a hell of a lot more fun!"
He had to agree.
Guess what, people? I found two skirts that fit - size 8! Woo! Of course the jeans and the pants didn't fit, but I have sort of calculated that I'll be at ideal weight in November and so I've got two months to go - roughly 15 pounds or so.
I am proud of me!
Yesterday J, A, V and I went to lunch with S. (She doesn't work in our department, but she is funny as hell.)
We got into some strange discussion (us? No way!) about drinking. S was suggesting that if American kids were brought up allowed to drink wine in limited amounts, etc., drinking would be no damn big thing. That's how they do it in Europe and it seems to work just fine.
J was disparaging. "Kids are still gonna get to college and get shitfaced drunk," he insisted. "It's a rite of passage."
"Yes," I agreed, "but they won't be likely to drink 21 shots on their 21st birthdays and drop dead of alcohol poisoning."
"Maybe," he allowed, "but they are still gonna do 10 shots at a frat party and end up with their skirt up to their chin in the back of somebody's pick up."
"Well," I said, "that sounds like a hell of a lot more fun!"
He had to agree.
I never really did much binge drinking when I was legal, or even college-age. I've gotten drunk, sure, but I've only ever had a few hangovers, and I've only ever thrown up from drinking twice. Ironically, that didn't happen until I was about 33 or so.
Alcohol didn't have a lot of mystique for me. Neither did the bar scene. I attribute a lot of that to spending endless Saturdays with my dad while my mom was working. My grandfather was a serious alcoholic, and my dad always liked to hang out with him on Saturdays. My grandfather liked to frequent bars full of aging redneck/white trash alcoholic types where the only stuff on the jukebox was country music. That was in the '70s, so I endured a lot of unimaginable horror on that front.
Have you ever seen Denis Leary's No Cure for Cancer standup routine? The part where he talks about alkies who drink nothing but gin, nothing but vodka, nothing but whiskey, etc., each developing a different sort of permanent facial characteristic is absolutely true. After being exposed to that sort of thing early on, I never had a particularly enchanted view of alcohol.
After that the point of drinking was to get buzzed, not drunk, and then it became something that started off the weekend and then it became, eh, whatever. It's not like I don't have my champagne nearly every Friday or Saturday night, but sometimes I look up on Friday night and find out it's 10:30 and I haven't even had my first glass so I say fuck it.
But I can see where alcohol would have no mystique for you. Definitely. Yuck.