The plan:
A friend of Summer's was having a party, but this particular friend and her boyfriend are all into taking drugs and annoying the hell out of me. So I was quick to pass on the obligatory face time at this party, but Red and Summer decided to go for an hour. During this hour, Mal, Bruce, and I would do whatever we wanted until it was time to pick them up, then it was back to the apartment for drinks until question marks. Anyone else who was interested could stop by.

The execution:
I went to pick up Bruce around 7:30, knowing that Summer was picking up Red soon after. Bruce and I went to Mal's to play Rock Band, and I was expecting a call around 9-9:30 to pick up the girls and get my drink on. Granted, Rock Band is fun, but I had planned to stop drinking for a while as some New Year's resolution type junk, so I wanted to get wasted. However, I was in Scotts Valley and had to drive back to Live Oak before starting.

We got a text message around ten, so Mal went to pick up the girls while Bruce and I went home to meet them. We had loaded up on beer and booze previously, so it was time to ring in the new year by being drunk and yelling along with Mal's watch since we don't get channels on the TV or know how to use the internet. I made Mal and I negronis so we could catch up with the girls. He didn't like them so much, but made sure to drink the whole thing because it was doing the trick. By 11:15, we were all on the level. Then we drank and drank until about 2am when everyone passed out or left.

That was a quick brush-over of what happened, but there were a few highlights worth re-telling.

Summer started drunk-dialing people like the Partridges and our friend Charles who was out of town. At one point she called her ex-boyfriend and handed the phone to me. I thought the most obvious solution was to sing into the phone until he hung up. I thought it would be over pretty quick, but he let me sing Silent Night using only the lyric, "Happy New Year" for about a minute and a half. I don't know if he was entertained or if it took him that long to figure out that my sweet baritone voice was not coming from a girl. Summer has not let me talk on her phone since.

A bunch of us were outside smoking when I realized that I had to shit; not terribly urgent, but it had to get taken care of in the next 4-7 minutes. I finished my cigarette and walked inside to find that someone had beaten me to the bathroom. This was not the greatest of discoveries since the threat level was at DEFCON 2, and DEFCON 1 was about to knock on the door. Bruce finally came out, I went in, and I almost choked on the unholy gases that were present. But it was too late. I sat down and added my own bit of destruction to the rubble that already was my bathroom. Once I was finished, I didn't know what to do with the door on my way out. Bruce and I had just tag-teamed the bathroom, so leaving it open would potentially kill almost everyone we knew, but closing it meant the guaranteed death of the next person who walked in. I decided to leave it open, but only cracked. It seemed to work because no one died.

At about 3am, everyone was passed out except me. I couldn't sleep, I was kind of drunk, and I didn't want to lie in bed anymore waiting for something to happen. So I got up, put my clothes on, and left. I didn't really know where I was going to go, but I didn't want to hang out in my apartment with people sleeping everywhere. I started walking toward 7-11, knowing that I could get some stuff for the morning and maybe see some weird characters. At 7-11, there was a guy in his sixties wearing a suit, getting a microwave burrito. It may not seem that weird at first, but that combination never really occurs. Old with a burrito? Probably homeless. Old with a suit? Usually getting coffee and a newspaper, but not at 3am. Suit with a burrito? Doesn't happen. All I thought I'd see at that time was stoned hood rats, which I also saw. Bruce later said that the old man must have been Father Time, getting some victory munchies for the end of 2007.

I got a microwave burrito as well, thinking I wanted something warm. I already had a pile of Gatoraids and RedBulls for everyone back at the apartment, so heating and eating the burrito was no easy task. I walked outside with a bag of drinks in one hand and a burrito in the other. However, it became apparent very quickly that the burrito in question was not easily eaten with one hand. So I stopped on the corner, put the bag down, and proceeded to eat the burrito. At least one car drove by, so someone saw me standing on the side of the road, eating a burrito, with a bag of something on the ground next to me, at 3:30 in the morning. I felt ridiculous.

So that's what I did instead of drinking homemade beer, sledding down an ice-chute, and singing Come On Eileen at the top of my lungs. Or so I thought. I heard later that I had chosen wisely for the more eventful night. Choosing wisely apparently means drinking twice as much and staying out three hours later than they did.