Ugh. I’m now working on Day 2 of the Colossal Hangover of 2016. Wow. I can’t believe how hard this hit me. I guess I was really looking forward to a blowout.
I don’t think I explained the situation very well in my previous entry, so. Here’s what happened.
My friend C., who is also my co-worker and I had started a little tradition of doing a celebration together in Shanghai after we’d have our huge meeting/event with our biggest customer. Well, this year we didn’t go to China, and we decided that we’d do our own special holiday celebration when she came to the office this week (she lives and offices in a different state and only comes here occasionally).
We made a plan for her to stay downtown close to my place. In fact, she was staying in the hotel in the building where I’m interested in moving. I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to check on the restaurant and bar that’s connected to the lobby and then go out to a trendy new restaurant/club for dinner.
I was to meet her at the bar of the new hotel restaurant. I got there about 5 minutes before she came downstairs, and the bar was already full…of men. As I walked over and looked for a place to maybe sit down, two or three of them offered me their seat! I declined a couple of times, and then a man insisted I take his seat while he went to a high table where there were a couple of empty barstools and got one and scooched it over next to mine. Another guy told me that when my friend showed up, he’d give her his seat. Nice!
As I talked and joked with the guy who gave me his seat, another guy peeked around and met my eyes, and it was like BLAMMO…INSTANT attraction!
Oh, this is gonna be fun!
C. showed up and there was much fanfare about her arrival and the party was ON.
The guy who peeked around, the eye-catcher, offered to buy us drinks and sent over these bourbon-bacon-y, manly drinks. C. declined because she didn’t like the taste, but I welcomed the warm, masculine drink and thanked him and gave him a very special smile. OH LORT, I’m melting just thinking about him.
I told C. that I was thinking about moving into this building, and she was like, absolutely! Look at the fun we’re having already!
But as we talked with all the folks at the bar, it’s clear that these are hotel inhabitants just passing through town. For example, the guy who gave me his seat was from New York, and I discovered that the eye-catcher was from Houston. His name was Hugh…
HUGH from HOUSTON!
It was soon time for us to catch a ride to the restaurant on the other side of town in order to make our dinner reservations. We told our new guy friends where we were headed, hinted that they were welcome to join us if they wanted someplace to hang out, thanked them for the drinks and caught our Lyft ride to the dinner spot.
Dinner was at this cool new place in town. I’d heard about it…can’t remember where, but it’s a very hip, happening, oft-Instagrammed place located in the scene-y part of town, just outside of the city center. C. was very impressed by both the location and the venue.
We were right on time for our rezzie, but the table wasn’t quite ready, so we bellied up to the bar and started talking with these dudes. I was really feeling that bacon-bourbon concoction from the previous bar, and turned to tell C. about it, and told her that I was already “quite lubricated” which perked up our neighbors’ ears. Young dudes, they wanted to know what we were up to…
And then our table was ready. We said goodbye.
We were seated in a central location in between several groups of holiday parties, and had an awesome dinner, complete with a super fancy bottle of Moet et Chandon Rose that LIT UP like a Christmas light! The waitress explained that the restaurant turns into a club after hours, and they normally serve those light-up bottles of M+C during the club hours (probably charging $400/bottle during those hours). The only reason we got that bottle is because they were out of the Champagne that we’d originally ordered and the bar manager offered us that bottle at the same price as the bottle of Veuve Clicquot (still $100).
I don’t know what was in that original bourbon-bacon drink, but after one glass of the Champagne, I had the hiccups. I was good and VERY buzzed after dinner and the bottle. After dinner, we checked the rest of the place out. There’s a rooftop bar, which was enclosed and heated and already lots of the “Single and Ready to Jingle” crowd up there. We cruised the joint, took selfies and generally acted a little bit drunk, but nothing out of the ordinary and we really didn’t see anything/anyone worth staying for.
I wondered out loud if Hugh and the others might still be at the hotel bar.
We walked around the block to a speakeasy I’d heard about…once we actually found it and went inside it was just meh and full of youngsters/hipsters, and I couldn’t stop thinking about Hugh, so we decided to get a Lyft back to the hotel.
When we got back, all of the guys were still in the bar…standing up and about to walk out TO HEAD OVER TO WHERE WE WERE!! They were actually going to the restaurant where we’d just been to see if we were still there!
Now. I don’t know if that’s really true or not, but it was so much fun to believe, and we all sat back down to have more drinks. And more drinks….and moooorrrrreee drinks.
I asked Hugh from Houston if his name was really Hugh or if he was pulling my leg (Hugh from Houston just seemed too easy), so he pulled out his DL and showed me. Sure enough, his name was Hugh Something Something, the FOURTH. I found his name just utterly charming (even though I can’t remember his middle or last name). I just thought the fact that he was a “fourth” so sexy, and I asked him why he never made a fifth even though he’d been married THREE TIMES?!
And he was all like, no way…blah, blah…never wanted kids…will never marry again…and why on earth have you never been married…
And he looked at me in THAT WAY. You know, the way that makes you melt a in a thousand different places in your body, but mostly in the tummy area and then in the nether regions.
Oh, I was a goner.
All of a sudden, all I could see was Hugh. It was like we were the only two people in the room. C. was very cool about it and continued to talk to the guy from New York, who was a super nice, older gentleman who seemed completely amused by us from the get-go (did I ever mention that C. and I look like sisters - we both have long red hair and are about the same height and we’re always laughing about something or another. People always want to know if we are related).
At some point, I think it was when the bar shut down and the staff kicked us out (!), Hugh’s buddy decided it was time for him to go, and C. and New York Fella wanted to go outside to take pictures over by the big, odd sculpture across the street, which left Hugh and me alone in the hotel lobby!
Everything gets very, very blurry from here on out. Here’s a list of things I remember:
I woke up Thursday morning in utter, writhing pain. The only things I could think about were the fact that my presentation wasn’t even close to being finished and the fact that I even needed to GIVE a presentation to the executive team that afternoon AND the fact that I was SUCH an idiot to turn down Hugh.
I mean, what was I even thinking??! Unless I improved 1000%, there was no way I could even make it to the boot camp class! And how was I going to finish my presentation and give it? I was sick, people. Deathly ill.
But I got my sorry ass up and out of bed and called C. on the way into work and told her what went down after she went up to her room. She was actually all congratulatory regarding my make-out sesh with Hugh and wondered out loud how I could get together with him later. I, on the other hand, was all cocky, saying if he wants to find me, he knows how…which, I’m not really sure what I meant by that, but whatever. I think I was in self-protection mode.
I was so nauseous on the drive in, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I made it all the way to the parking lot at work, then opened my door, leaned way over and LOST it in the parking lot!!
Luckily, I was one of the first people there and nobody saw me (oh, I hope.). Plus, the only thing in my stomach was the black coffee I’d tried to down and stomach acid, so it wasn’t like a big pile of puke in the parking lot. It just looked like someone had dumped their coffee out onto the pavement. Neat trick, huh?
I limped into the office and somehow made it through. You guys, I busted my ASS on the presentation and got a “fantastic work” from the CEO, and an “excellent job” from the EVP who’d be over the NEW position that I want to get, and even several thumbs up from the sales guys, who I don’t even like. It was some of my best work ever! I was actually extremely proud of myself. Even Best Bud told me today, after I’d told her all of the shit that went down the night before, that I did a phenomenal job on my presentation!
All that, AND I took my staff out to lunch for our annual holiday team lunch.
But let me tell you. After work was done and I went home, I immediately went to bed. I think I even died a little. I was in a coma, for sure.
And today, the end of Day 2, I still feel like shit and had to order a pizza for dinner because I still need grease and couldn’t make an effort to make myself something. I took a half day off (was supposed to be on vacation today, but too much to do at work) and did a little Christmas shopping, but felt like absolute ASS all day today. In fact, I’m going to try to take the dog for a quick walk and then I’m going back to bed.
The last time I was THIS hungover was when my old boss kind of molested me on a plane coming back from a big meeting (I told you that story, right?). We got out of our meeting early and our flight was much later and we couldn’t get an earlier one, so we spent HOURS drinking, mixing cocktails and I drank a million different combinations of alcohol. I remember my old boss trying to kiss me after the plane landed and when I looked at my phone the next day, there was a photo of his hand on my thigh while we were on the plane. Ew. Ew. EEEWWW.
This was the same thing. I have finally learned a BIG lesson - do not MIX ALCOHOL. It will give me a 2+ day hangover! Oh, and don’t turn down handsome strangers’ invitations to dinner (though, there’s no way I could have made it to dinner last night. I was in sorry, sorry shape and HAD to sleep).
So. It was fun while it happened, but I am paying for it in spades AND I didn’t get the guy.
Lessons learned.
xox,
GS
P.S. Something else to ponder: why do I always do my best professional work hungover after a crazy night?
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