I thought I'd seen it all, 'cause it's been a long long time As previously mentioned, my "little" brother Jamie turned 30 on Friday. Persuade and I were a bit late getting to the compound for the family dinner (I was milking the free drinks at my going-away party), but we got to enjoy the awesome salmon cooked by Mom (it had cheese on it - that equals great in my book). That's Persuade with her puppy Pepper.

It was a nice family meal. We were technically doing my send-off, too, since Mom will be away when I leave next week, but I don't like all the fanfare, so mostly it was a celebration of Jame joining the 30 club. After some dessert of scrumptious carrot cake and the consumption of more beers and wine, we headed down to Kensington to meet up with some of Jamie's friends. They were enjoying the warm evening on the rooftop patio at Molly Malone's. Keri even joined us, so that was fun since he doesn't come out with us very often (too busy taking care of his three kids and training for marathons and shit - sheesh!).

Okay, so this is where this becomes a cautionary tale. I remember Matt talking about "Jager bombs" one other night, but he decided this would be the night to order some. TWO ROUNDS. For those who don't know, this is when you take a shot of jagermeister and drop it into a bigger glass of RED BULL, then chug the whole thing back. Holy shit. It started hitting me when we switched venues - next door at Reggie's. I was feeling strangely flushed and both overly alert and still kinda mellow. When I looked at my face in the mirror, I thought something was off. It was later I realized that my heart was racing so much that I likely wouldn't be able to sleep. I conked out for four hours only and spent most of yesterday feeling exhausted but too caffeinated to sleep.

I'm not sure if this reaction is typical, but I was doing some reading about Red Bull and learned a bit more about its ingredients and what they know about how these react on the body. Potentially dangerous and rather scary. And oh yeah - you're not supposed to mix it with alcohol. Some countries won't sell the stuff, others require kids to show ID when attempting to purchase it. Yikes.

At Reggie's Jamie and I played some pool. The girl "dominating" the table had a very special technique involving plunking her jean-skirt-baring ass up on the edge of the table where people were shooting. Her underwear was on display for the general viewing public numerous times. And she wasn't "hot", but this was a distracting method nonetheless. She was completely ignorant about pool rules and etiquette - when we told her she couldn't kiss off our ball without calling it, she said she had never played that way or heard that rule before. Whatever honey. Since it's been AGES since I've played pool, my game wasn't so great and we ended up losing.

It was a fun night. More pics here.  | ¶ 12:48 p.m.