Friday got a little sidetracked as my friend's fiance landed in the emergency room. He wasn't feeling well, so he stayed back at the house while we went to campus. Not feeling well turned into not able to breathe, and he ended up having to call an ambulance. So that was very scary, but fortunately, it doesn't seem that it was anything horrendous, and once that was determined, we put the wheels back on the weekend and headed to the store to buy tailgating supplies.
And then we began drinking, and it just devolved into one of those funniest nights ever sorts of things! I found sidewalk chalk, and we drew a giant handicapped parking spot in the driveway so our friends would know where to park when they got home from the hospital. Chris misheard the directions to the pizza place and thought it was located in "Danger Plaza." Just that kind of night. Once everyone arrived (Two friends had to work on Friday, so they didn't get to the house till after 10p.m.), we headed out to the bar in the hotel where we used to stay in the years before we started renting a house. Gipper's at the Days Inn on Rt. 31. It ain't pretty, but it's full of people like us who are just in town for the game, they play great music (by which I mean, like, Pour Some Sugar on Me), and comedy always ensues. According to my friend, I was the comedy this year. We're at the tailgate the next morning, and she's like, "I haven't seen you like that in a long time!" Which made me nervous at first, but she assured me that she was just talking about happy, storytelling, corralling-half-the-bar-to-play-PhotoHunt-with-me drunk. Which is a good kind of drunk, for sure!
So yeah. Up early the next morning and off to the tailgate. I was pretty proud that all nine of us from the house were out there by around 10:15a.m., with the rest of the crowd (there were about 20 of us total) arriving shortly thereafter. The tailgate was fun, but wow, you could sure feel the affects of the crappy football season on the atmosphere. I think the big Chicago-Indy-Cleveland contingent that normally makes it to multiple games per year had just stopped coming at that point, and it was only those of us who have had this trip on our books since June that made the game. Even the stadium had empty seats, which is something I've never seen in 14 seasons of going to football games there. It was really something. So I'll skip that part, and skip the game too because there ain't much to say about it other than that it was cold and the team was awful. Ugh!
Post-game, we walked back to our cars, and the bulk of us decided to go to the Linebacker Lounge, which is a Notre Dame institution (we ended probably 85% of our nights out senior year at the Backer) and was within walking distance of our car. Well sweet lord!!! We had so much friggin' fun there! A friend sent around her pictures from the evening, and I haven't seen a funnier pack of pictures since Spring Break 1998. Just complete drunken comedy. We made about 150 friends, and they cameo-ed in the majority of the pictures, and we just danced and sang and requested, like, 30 songs from the DJ. (All the hits: Livin' on a Prayer, more Pour Some Sugar on Me, Don't Stop Believing by Journey, Any Man of Mine by Shania Twain, Seven by Prince ... yep, this is *that* kind of bar -- big plastic glasses of Budweiser and complete comedy!) We were there for like 6 hours, and I could barely even talk the next day, my throat was so sore!
So yeah, really a great, great weekend! Good to see Chris again. They say that getting over a breakup takes a week for every month you were together. Chris and I lived together for 7.5 years, so yeah ... We should be able to say goodbye to one another without complete waterworks in what ... a little under two years?? Flew home Sunday afternoon and walked in the door 10 minutes before the Giants game started, so pretty much perfect there! Good times! Already can't wait till next year!
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