My wife and her friends get together once a month to play cards. They take turns hosting, and when it’s my wife’s turn I have to make myself scarce for the evening.
Which is fine by me!
What this usually means is dinner, a movie, and maybe one or a few too many drinks.
I started off at Crown Liquors. I sat at the bar and sipped an Old Fashioned while reading Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers. I read her first two novels, both sci-fi and all three in the same Wayfarers universe while not really being sequels to one another. She is a fantastic worldbuilder, and I highly recommend all of them.
Next I moseyed a couple doors down to El Ranchito, a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place that’s just a little too expensive to be good bad food. My two Tecates and a plate of super nachos came out to 30 bucks. But I still tipped well, as right when I walked in the door I heard a drunk guy in a booth say:
“At least there aren’t any white people here.”
I was tempted to do a take on Maria Bamford’s Diane character from Lady Dynamite:
“I’ll take one of those Tee Kate beers and hey do you amigos have wifi I have to check if my Jag is ready so I can drive out to the lake for the big regatta this weekend have you been oh you must it’s a dee light!”
But instead I just said please and thank you a lot and continued reading.
Next, onward to the Logan Theatre to see Free Solo. A double bourbon and ginger ale to take into the theatre made me a little fuzzy and also begin to think maybe I drink too much?
That’s too high!
Anyway, I think I had a different reaction to it than most people. Most people have looked at it as this amazing athletic accomplishment. I couldn’t help thinking: why? Why are you doing this? Dude, you just got this hot girlfriend who is so into you, and you just want to go climb rocks? Dangerous rocks! Is there nothing else in the world you can do besides live in a van and climb rocks? I guess I didn’t get it. But it was suspenseful. I knew the guy survived but I was still on the edge of my seat for the last 20 minutes.
After that, texted to see if the place was cleared of women, and upon receiving no response I had one more drink at the theatre (I should probably look into a program with steps in it), read a little more, and then made my way to my just vacated home.