Just like the good old days

Another story in the wonderful adventure that is my life…

So after winning sneak preview tickets to the Simpsons movie at trivia last night I came home, wrote the blog, surfed the net a little and went to bed around midnight. I didn’t even watch my tape of Top Chef, which is good because if I knew that Lia had been eliminated I would have been so pissed I wouldn’t have been able to go to sleep. Wouldn’t you know it, the second I write about a contestant being cute and talented and someone I want to watch she immediately gets eliminated. So much for the universe rearranging itself to meet my desires. The Secret my ass. Anyway, after a long day I finally went to bed at midnight.

And a little after one in the morning I was woken up by a noise. Given that I was at that fun moment in the first hour of sleep where upon waking nothing makes sense my thought process was a little hazy. Here is my best recollection of my internal dialogue between my waking mind and my surprisingly cognitive rational mind.

“What…what…what’s going on? Who am I again?”
“You’re EC.”
“Ok, I can get behind that. Is this place my apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Good. Where the hell is that anyway?”
“Kansas City.”
“Seriously? You’re kidding me, right?”
“Nope, you’re in Kansas City.”
“Damn.”
“I know, tell me about it.”
“Ok, I can’t deal with that now but what the hell is this noise?”
“Well, it’s not the alarm clock next to the bed that makes a buzzing sound. It’s not the alarm clock on the dresser as that one goes “Beep, Beep” like the roadrunner. Whatever it is sounds vaguely like music but it can’t be good music.”
“I know, it just sounds awful. I can’t even make out any words and it seems to be coming from the next room.”
“Yeah and whoever it is…wait a minute, that’s Social Distortion, isn’t it?”
“Sounds like Ball and Chain.”
“God damnit, it’s my phone.”

And with that I stumble out of bed and into my living room just in time to turn off the phone and see who in the world is calling me. I had two missed calls. One from the dreaded “Unknown” and the other from, well, it looked like a phone number. Except that there were more numbers than there should be and I think there was a Q in there somewhere. Anyway, I didn’t have a voice mail so I just shrugged it off and went back to bed.

Which meant that thirty minutes later my phone rang again and again I stumble out of bed, this time I’m just able to get there when it beeps that I have a voice mail. I listen and all I hear is bar noise so whoever is calling me is having an extremely good time. I can only make out about half of what is being said and what I get is “Chris! Where the hell are you? We’re all out at the bar, getting drunk” and then it just slurs off into something incomprehensible. I’m still at a loss as to who this is. I’m running through my mental database of people who would call me from a bar who aren’t in my phonebook. By the time I finish that voice mail I see that I have another one. Listen to that one and I hear, very clearly and directly “Hey Chris it’s Gabriel.” And then it suddenly dawns on me

“Oh yeah, the Mexican Mafia we’re having a reunion in Mexico City this week. That explains everything.”

Yep, it was a bunch of my buddies from b-school who decided to call me from the bar very late at night and encourage me to join them despite the fact that I was technically in another country. I still can’t figure out if the first one was from Nato or Yuyo (which is scary) and the second was Gabriel sounding like, well, I can put this one of two ways. In one sense he sounded as if he wanted to set up an appointment to discuss reallocating the assets in my stock portfolio. But more accurately, it sounded like those nights at the Backer where he would act as my life coach and instill the wisdom of the ages to me. Man, just hearing the message made me miss that so much.

So that’s why I’ve been tired and out of sorts all day. Didn’t sleep because of drunken phone calls. That’s not too unusual, it’s just that for most people it isn’t an international call. And to be honest, it was one of the coolest things to happen to me in a while. Thanks for calling guys.

Ok, I’m off to camp out in front of Barnes and Noble. I swear to God if anyone posts Harry Potter spoilers I am going to unleash havoc. I’ve waited two years to find out if Snape is good or evil. And to see if Ron gets stuck dating Hermione for the rest of his life. Later.