Old and Responsible

Friday night drinks has conspired to make me feel old, and to form a plan to be responsible.

Ok, more responsible. Rather than completely responsible. In small doses.

Friday night drinks around here have several different forms. Usually the regular drinkers from the office head down to one of the local venues around 5.15 and have anything between 2 and 6 rounds and then separately head home on to dinner or other plans. Sometimes other plans start early enough that you don�t head from drinks at all. Sometimes you have to work late and don�t make it. Sometimes you�re so stuffed you just have to go straight home. And sometimes, like last Friday night, 2-6 rounds turns into 10 rounds plus shots and the potential for a sizable hangover.

Not that this is generally a problem. Except that Friday night I broke one semi-fixed rule, and one cardinal rule, and I�m still grumpy about it even though the hangover was not as large or lengthy as it deserved to be.

Semi-fixed rule: don�t mix drinks, and really don�t mix drinks on an empty stomach. Friday night: beer, beer, beer, beer, cock-sucking cowboy, beer, beer, tequila, beer, tequila, beer, beer. No dinner or food of any kind. Or something close to that (I�m estimating the beers).

Cardinal rule: no tequila. This arises from the great tequila debacle of 1993. Otherwise known as the time Uli came as close as she�s ever likely to come to being a rock superstar. That is, she drank so much tequila (plastic econo bottles are evil) that she vomited in her sleep and could quite easily have killed herself. Friday night: two shots of tequila. The first one was voluntary, the second one was not � bastard bartender. Uli �Two tequila shots please�, Bartender �Three shots coming up.� And so on and so forth. And yes, I didn�t have to drink it, but see the above list as to the state I was in.

The fact that I could drink two shots without throwing up at the mere smell does indicate that my stomach has hardened a bit in the ten years (gak!) since the tequila debacle though. The only other time I tried it was about five years ago and I couldn�t even get the stuff down. Though I suspect that this was better quality booze and that had a lot to do with it.

It was while standing around drinking all of this a pretty good pace that I began to feel old. And not because I felt unwell, or couldn�t keep up, because none of these things was a problem, but just because I discovered that the two people I was happily drinking with were, respectively, seven and eight years younger than me. And they don�t seem that young. They�re not that young.

I�ve just crossed a threshold. It used to be that in any vaguely work-related scenario I was always on the young side of the median. Quite often well on the young side. But not now. The threshold has been crossed. I�m on the old side of the median. Experienced. Dammit. I don�t seem that old. I�m not that old. Even though the tequila debacle was ten years ago.

The other thing that was confirmed about Friday night was that when I drink I get a big mouth. Yammer, yammer, yammer, often about things I shouldn�t. In a non-work-related social context this is fine. I usually only yammer about my own stuff in that case and sometimes it�s a good thing for me to spill my drunken feelings as I never do that when I�m sober. In a work-related context, not so good. Even when I�m only talking about myself, still not good. Even though my Friday night drinking buddies are from the wider office and don�t work with me on the same files or clients or anything like that. Yammer, yammer, yammer. Shut the fuck up, Uli.

This week I have not one, but literally 7 work-related drinking opportunities thanks to a conference I�m attending. And Christmas party season is almost upon us. So, as a result of Friday night, I�m making a new �Responsible, professional Uli� rule: only one alcoholic drink per work-related event, unless it�s a full multi-course dinner in which case two are allowed. Friday night drinks: two drink maximum.

That way I�ll have a nice social evening, I won�t be hung-over, I won�t spend fucking $50 on cabs going out to woop-woop to some party I never wanted to go to in the first place, and I won�t have a sneaking suspicion that I said the wrong thing to the wrong person. And yes, maybe I�ll feel old during the course of ordering my lemonade instead of beer, but I�ll feel much younger the next day when I can actually keep water down.

And with friends, all bets remain off.