4 days of drinking, 1 frog leg, and 1 sixteen-hour throw up session

Ah... Yogi turns older by a year today.

Celebrations with multiple friends' circles = mucho alcohol and food + being surrounded by good friends. It's nice to know a bunch of people like you and care about you. It's a soft and mushy feeling even for a hardened cynic like me. I just couldn't do five days straight (plus I had to go in for a solid 9-hour day of work today).

Bet you thought the chundering had something to do with the drinking. Wrong. It had all to do with frog legs.

See, last weekend, I agreed to go to a play on a whim, and decided to meet the rest of the group at a bar. I was under the impression that the "friend from work" that my friends were bringing was a dude. In retrospect, I have no idea why I would have had that impression, because my friends certainly didn't tell me their friend from work was a dude.

Because the friend from work was one cute asian chick.

Unfortunately, they were late getting to the bar (may have something to with the fact that it was three women. Just saying, just saying...) by which time I had already run through three beers and was on my fourth. So by this time I was already feeling pretty good about myself, and the world was pink and rosy, and this woman suddenly seemed very very cute. So I'm thinking "Yogi, this is awesome. You should go make an impression" and so I open with this:

"HEEEYYY. Burp. How goooes iiiit... I'm yogi."

- " uh... hey (polite handshake). I'm Gina."

"Oh Gina? You mean like VAGINA? Hahahahaaa..."

This was a mistake on multiple counts:
1. This was the first time I was meeting Gina. You do not attempt to rhyme people's names with body parts when you meet them for the first time.
2. Her name is pronounced Jeena. Vagina of course, does not rhyme with Jeena.
3. This was the immediate death of any chance I had with Gina. Or Vagina. or Geena's Vagina.

Of course, I did not know this, and I interpreted the frozen mask of horror on our mutual friends as a look of pride (at my awesome ability to break the ice) and merriment (at my stellar sense of humor). Still, given Gina's sudden glum silence, I thought I should make another attempt at bonding. So when we sat down to eat and got our food, I looked around and saw that Ms Gina had gotten herself frog legs. The legs were deep fried in some sort of tempura and came arranged in a circle around a little bowl with some asian hot sauce. (It was one of those somewhat fancy restaurants where they think itsy bits of grub artistically arranged fills your belly). Feeling somewhat emasculated by my own choice of green salad with tofu and raspberry vinaigrette, I decided to take Gina up when she offered me some frog leg (while not making eye contact). I thought this was Asian demureness at the time, which I found quite alluring.

But anyway, I ate one. It must have been a big frog because it had a big-ass leg. I think it tasted like chicken, but more amphibious. Anyway, I washed it down with more beer, and didn't think any more of it; we had a play to go see, and we needed to hurry.

The play was uneventful and so was most of the pitstop afterward. We were midway through another round of beer and chips when I got a sudden spasm in my midriff. "Ah, well, yogi, you're getting old", I thought to myself, and I stretched a bit. No problemo. I downed a bunch of water and then we left for the night.

The second spasm hit when I was peeing at home. "Hm. Come now, yogi. Surely, you didn't drink THAT much, did you? You must be a little dehydrated, plus all that sitting through the play..." but still, I didn't think much of it and went to sleep.

Well, it turns out that I have a checkpoint in my gut, around where the stomach gives way to the small intestine. I call it Checkpoint Charlie, like in Berlin. It's sort of like immigration check. Unsavory characters get held up for a bit, and then if you're brown and have a beard, you're in for an extra check, lubed up baton and all. And then if you happen to have crummy papers, you're out. You and your belongings do a U-turn and head back to wherever you came from.

So around 2 am the frog legs got a thumbs-down from Checkpoint Charlie. Which is when they packed their bags and trudged back up. But see, by then they had already dispersed out a lot and were swimming in a sea of beer, and because Checkpoint Charlie sends out bad guys bit by bit, it makes for a long drawn out process. This was when I started feeling really bad, and I was pretty sure what was coming. The thing about the process is
a. Once the U-turn is made, there's no stopping it
b. The exodus is forceful
c. It is also extremely thorough

So I parked myself near the toilet and let it start. And it did start. It was good. It was spectacular, even. I think I should spare you the details, but I was done by the end of it, which was midway through the next morning. Done. I couldn't move, my head was killing me, my body was killing me, my abs were killing me, I had a fever, but surprisingly, the bottom half of my GI tract was absolutely fine. It was like the West Germans that were milling around in Berlin and had just not noticed a bunch of East Germans being given the finger.

So yeah, even though I lost a solid five pounds and my abs look sculpted, it was less than a pleasant way to start the birthday week. Anyway that's the story I thought I should tell you on this beautiful day. Makes the second half of the week feel even better. It also adds one item to the (short) list of things I think I should avoid in the future.

Happy Birthday, me.