Friday night, attended Dean’s concert at Iota. Got pretty drunk beforehand, sang really loud, and just had a good time in general. Hopefully Dean appreciated the backup vocals in “Irish Bars.” BJ pulled some hilarious moves on a girl that was there with a guy. She hasn’t called the number he left in her back pocket (twice), but it hasn’t been three days yet so there is still hope.

Saturday night we rolled up to Baltimore to celebrate Erin’s graduation from salon school. Her father rented out the top floor of the oldest duckpin bowling facility in the world, Patterson’s, which also happens to be BYOB. Her sister lived pretty close by so after a short walk, we were there. Had a few beers, played a few games, enjoyed the wasted (at least she appeared to be) front desk lady, and checked another item off the to do list. The place was seedy, the machines were crazy old, nobody made parts for them any longer (nor do they produce them any more), the balls had all seen better days, and apparently only one person makes duckpins any longer at a cost of $25/ea. The bowling is much more difficult as you seem to have less control over the ball, you will sometimes hit the headpin and that’ll be the only one to falls since the ball is very small. Interestingly, you get three rolls per turn, but clearing all ten pins on the final ball does not count as a spare. The game is far from perfect, which is likely why it isn’t all that popular. I’m guessing it developed from people not having enough space for a full alley?

Afterwards we rolled to Canton Square, sort of a miniature Adams Morgan. The place we went to was very small, there was no room to move, and we weren’t drunk; we left shortly after our arrival. Grabbed a pizza at a joint next door, and trekked back to Erin’s sister’s place. BJ bought so I carried… Man how I wish I had bought… My hands were frozen off by the time we got back. Funny, the two slices that remained in the box were frozen too. What had been melting, hot cheese just 15 minutes ago, was rock solid.

We planned on sleeping there, but since we drank lightly and not for a few hours, we decided to head home. Got back around 3am, woke up around noon.

Sunday was a day full of playing with cars in the snow, a short grocery trip, and football. My room desperately needs a cleaning and I need to do laundry, but it looks like I’ll be able to get that done tomorrow as my car refuses to budge an inch in our slanted driveway.

Oh yeah, due to a miscommunication we ended up with five dozen eggs so I made a serious attempt at killing some today. Hardboiled six, had one on a lunch sandwich, made some meringues (our oven sucks, recipe called for 250-275 for 90 minutes, I removed them after 70 minutes at 230 and they were burnt on the bottoms, but not fully cooked). I’ll try 200 for 75 next time. Sad, I have to redo pretty much every recipe for our oven because it is either way more hot than it says, or it doesn’t circulate air correctly.

Overall, good weekend. Too much drinking and eating, but I’ll just take a few weeks easy.