last friday after work i flew down to dc with jen and her roommate mika. mika and jen were meeting up with some of their college friends for the weekend, so i decided to get geoff to fly in and see trilling, who i haven't seen in way, way too long. the drama started solidly on friday, when it seemed for a while that my flight was going to be delayed over 2 hours, and would arrive in dc around 2am instead of 1130pm. we showed up to the airport on time and somehow, magically, airtran got us out of there with at most a 10 minute delay. i got in to bwi right at 11:30, and having napped on the flight i felt pretty good.

geoff had gotten in from kc 45 minutes earlier, and we ended up convening and meeting trills right near the baggage claim. it was quite a relief to see that trilling hasn't changed much since i had seen him.

i'll let that sink in.

so on the drive back in from bwi, we concluded that we were pretty hungry. this led quickly to a decision to go to ihop. ihop gave us one hell of an introduction to dc, i'll tell you what. our waiter was named ray, and he looked like either a woman or chris henry (who does sorta look like a woman). this guy was pretty fucked up, but i guess we should have expected it going in to ihop at midnight on a friday. first off, he took our orders pretty terribly. geoff ordered a burger, and instead of asking how he wanted it cooked (or just assuming medium and moving on, as i would expect in a fucking ihop), he looks geoff square in the eye and asks "how do you like your meat?" geoff glanced over at me and both of us try our damndest to not laugh. geoff goes on to ask for no mayo, which big play ray (as trillis liked to call him) noted, i think. anyways, trills orders the same thing as geoff (except with mayo) and big play ray gets to me. i ask for the chicken fingers basket. he says, "same thing as these two?" i say, "no, chicken fingers." "same thing?" "CHICKEN FINGERS" "oh. is that on the menu?" so while he peruses the menu, geoff is trying really, really hard at this point to not laugh. big play mutters something about bringing fries, and leaves. we giggle insanely.

so a little while passes and we engage in interesting discussion (more on that later), and then our food shows up. geoff immediately notices that there's mayo slathered all over the top bun and the bottom bun. as if he had asked for extra mayo, he thinks. big play comes by, and geoff mentions the fact that there's a ton of mayo on his burger. i swear to god, ray did these things:
1) looked at the burger
2) looked at his notepad
3) said "i am pretty sure i said no mayo"
4) looks at geoff
5) "sorry... i can bring you some napkins?"
6) walks away

didn't even CONSIDER taking the burger back. trills and i burst out laughing. geoff tried to macgyver the tomatoes into being a decent bun once he realized one bun just had too much mayo to be edible. he was not that amused, and even went so far as to say that he'd be "real pissed" about this meal for like a week. which may have held up, you'll have to ask him.

as far as our conversation - i asked geoff and trilling one of the classic questions from the 2+2 off topic forum. 2+2 is a pretty big poker discussion site, but someone has posed an amazing question there, which i will repost here (original thread can be found here)

Good drunken debate from a few nights ago.

The question: How many 5 year-olds could you take on at once?

The specifics:

- You are in an enclosed area, roughly the size of a basketball court. There are no foreign objects.
- You are not allowed to touch a wall.
- When you are knocked unconscious, you lose. When they are all knocked unconscious, they lose. Once a kid is knocked unconscious, that kid is "out."
- I (or someone else intent on seeing to it you fail) get to choose the kids from a pool that is twice the size of your magic number. The pool will be 50/50 in terms of gender and will have no discernable abnormalities in terms of demographics, other than they are all healthy Americans.
- The kids receive one day of training from hand-to-hand combat experts who will train them specifically to team up to take down one adult. You will receive one hour of "counter-tactics" training.
- There is no protective padding for any combatant other than the standard-issue cup.
* The kids are motivated enough to not get scared, regardless of the bloodshed. Even the very last one will give it his/her best to take you down.

now, to be fair, there was contention about the cup - as the question is posted, the combatant is given a cup. i wasn't sure about this. in case you were wondering, geoff said 6, trilling said 15, and i said 20 and said both geoff and trilling could take more than they had said. your thoughts are welcome, though none will be a superior answer to aaron's response (see: saturday night).

so after ihop, we went on to trilling's place. it is pretty decent, though he is moving out of there next week to move in with drew aka rammkamm aka andre rasskamm. anyways, its a nice place - plenty of room for him and his roomie, a couch, a few recliners, a futon... what's not to like? after forcing the concussion episode of the office down trilling's throat (best 22 minutes of television ever), we all crashed pretty hard. it was close to 3am and i had actually been up since close to 5am friday. being this tired was the only way i fell asleep on the couch with half a blanket and no pillow.

half a blanket? well it seems that the couch and futon both had blankets. however, the futon had a pillow too, AND the blanket on the couch was full of holes (on purpose, not because of rats or something). which is nice for when you're just sitting around or watching a movie, but terrrrrrrrible to sleep in. combine that with sleeping right next to the giant air vent and having air blast on you every few hours, and sleep did not go too well. i secured the real blanket and the pillow on saturday night, though geoff even offered the futon (see: saturday night for reasons why this might have happened), but i didn't take him up on it.

anyways, i slept terribly and woke up around 10. i lay on the couch kind of in a daze. i knew trills had a roommate and his roommate had his girlfriend over, but i hadn't met either of them and i wasn't about to wander around trilling's apartment when there was a chance of running in to them. however, after 15 minutes of sitting on the couch i realized i had to at least sit up. i put on my glasses, sat up, and looked over at geoff, who had his glasses on, was lying in his futon, and was looking straight at me.

great minds! or something.

so geoff and i decided that trilling wouldn't get up forever, so we should do something to amuse ourselves. 'something' ended up meaning 'play a game of madden with 15 minute quarters'. we did end up wussing out a little and turning on accelerated clocks, and due to our badness the game at first seemed to take a pretty real nfl pace. then i picked up what was going on, and about 1 quarter after that geoff picked up what was going on. i ended up winning the 1.5 hour game by a final score of 37-34, even though i was up 34-13 at halftime. full length madden games are pretty freakin fun, in case you were curious.

so by the time this was done, i had met mac (trilling's roomie) and we decided to get ready and head over to the pentagon city mall. going to pentagon city was a great experience, if only because it was like a large percentage of days i spent with these guys back in cleveland, going to various malls and best buys and just fucking around. we decided to hit up the food court at first (popeyes), and after suffering through trying to find a table (including trilling completely BLOWING one perfect stakeout), we finally sat and had our food. trilling kept talking up brown socks, so we went over to the sweet factory where geoff outspent everyone by at least 2 dollars, and then went up to macy's.

macy's was kind of a trip, because normal people have to shop at department stores, but people like me who wear jeans and tshirts to work never ever enter department stores. so trilling was trying to ask me if he should get the nylon or cotton dress socks, and i was just confused by having to even consider such a thing. all the while geoff was eyeing the track jackets over in the nike/adidas section, but didn't pull the trigger somehow. trilling said fuck it and got both pairs of socks (oooh), and we decided to head over to best buy and see if we could find anything good.

unlike boston, it was kind of weird to walk outside during the day in d.c. just sayin.

trills saw the linens and things next door to best buy and said something about dog hair on his north face fleece. we decided to do a loop to see if he could come up with a solution for this problem. i only bring it up because 1a) he threw a goddamn pillow at my head, 2b) we saw a vibrating memory foam chair that really piqued the interests of both geoff and trilling... until we couldn't figure out how to get the damn thing to vibrate. also, i wanted to call andrew and mock him (not in joann fabrics), but linens and things is more of a competitor with bed bath than joann's. anyways, throwing pillows in a bed bath and beyond imposter is precisely what trills is good for.

trilling was having some issue with his dvd player and tv combination, so we poked around a little to troubleshoot it, but best buy stopped carrying the dvd player he had, so we were stuck. what to do when stuck? find game console. i picked up an xbox 360 controller for the first time and beat andy in 1 minute quarters of madden 06. the game's graphics weren't that impressive at all, but the playcalling was freaking brilliant. you have like 7 options on how to choose plays, from the standard "by formation" to "by primary player" or "by play type". it lets you find the play that fits your situation much, much better. i like it a lot. hopefully madden 07 will have real next-gen graphics, to boot.

after my madden victory (2-0 on the weekend so far, take note), we went back to the mall to see if circuit city could help alleviate trilling's dvd woes. they of course could not because they fucking suck, even in express form. we were leaning towards leaving at this point, but trilling mentioned that there was a foot action right next door to circuit city express. this led to geoff buying this puma jacket which i endlessly regret not buying. from there we hit up champs, where i would have considered buying an adidas track jacket (not that i don't have enough already), but i finally got in touch with phil and nick and we set up plans to meet up later and all go out together. so nick and phil saved me from dropping money i didn't need to drop, so thanks guys. hehe.

so after the shoe store circuit, we went back to andy's and watched a little basketball. uconn-wvu, but i found it very hard to concentrate on, mostly because i wanted to go to sleep. i'm fairly certain geoff and trills did too, as geoff was basically lying down in a massage chair and trilling kept trying to use my shoulder as a pillow. i guess the game was fairly good, but i didn't ever get the feeling that wvu was about to pull off a big upset of uconn. even when they weren't winning, uconn seemed to have the game very much in control.

this is where things picked up a little bit.

first, geoff decided to dress up like a freakin euro. the euro-fication of geoff is on par with the euro-fication of the nba. that sentence was ironic on many levels.

anyways, we recovered and got out of trilling's place around 6 or so. it was f'n cold and f'n windy outside, so we suffered through the coldest walk ever to get to a metro. we went to one near the department of transportation, but it was closed, which makes perfect sense. we finally got to the l'enfant promenade stop (i think?) and got to scope out the metro for the first time this trip. despite the super-60s-ness of the architecture (which holds true for the entire city of washington, by the way - it's all like a giant dentist's office... with random amazing monuments everywhere), the metro is pretty freakin amazing. probably the best transit system in the US. they tell you how far away trains are from your stop, you get cell phone service (if you are on verizon), and the stations are relatively clean. i am a pretty big fan.

so we took the metro over to columbia heights, which i guess is in the northwest quadrant(?). trills showed geoff and i where he and drew were moving in (he moves in today or tomorrow, and drew moves in early next week). this moment right here, when we walked in to their brand new condo and saw its amazingness, is when geoff got the look on his face that didn't really leave for the rest of the weekend. no, not this look. it was just when it all clicked - living in dc wouldn't be that bad at all. of course, when geoff starts thinkin that way, i start thinkin that way... but we'll leave all that for another time. the new place is freakin sick, and i look forward to going down to dc after they've moved in and settled a little.

we were wusses and took a 10 minute cab ride from trilling's new place to trilling's friend's apartment, rather than walking the distance. eh, whatever. geoff pointed out that this is how things work in chicago, so that eased our guilt slightly.

we got to the place a little after 7, after tipoff of the gw-richmond game. trilling and his two friends, nacki (i'm going with this spelling, but it may be way off) and chris, all went to gw and naturally were big fans. nacki's friend rob was in town, so we all just chilled out and shot the shit, watching gw pound richmond in a game that was only marginally competitive. trilling showed off his softball team's uniforms which i found particularly clever. after the game, i talked to phil and nick, and we planned on meeting over at the mcdonalds about 5 minutes from where we were, in adams morgan. we waited there for a while for phil/nick and pondered eating terrible food from mcdonald's, but eventually they showed up and we decided on mixtec, the anna's-but-classier place down the street. we struggled to get an order out, finally decided on combining all our orders to go, and found out that it would take 15 minutes or so to get done. which was fair, given the amount of food we ordered. phil and nick went over to safeway to find ping-pong balls, and i went with trilling and geoff to the liquor store to secure a 30 pack.

somehow, every shitty liquor store on the face of the earth has johnnie walker blue label. yet they claim it to be ultra-limited and very hard to find, thus making it cost upwards of $180 a bottle. what a fucking HOAX.

trilling bought the beers while i talked to aaron on the phone for the first time in a long while. he was gonna meet up with us that night, which geoff and i were definitely looking forward to.

ok let's keep this moving. phil and i eventually got the food from mixtec and took it back to chris/nacki's house, where the rest were waiting. food was pretty spectacular, i wouldn't mind having a grilled steak quesadilla right now actually. so we ate, phil said some absurdly stupid things about sports, and then the dunk contest came on.

i hope you all have seen andre iguodala's amazing off the back of the backboard dunk. it was amazing. from fjm:

Iguodala's off-the-backboard dunk would have broken people's brains in the 80's. Seriously, if he had done that in 1989, I believe the city of Houston would have been burned down by people running out of the arena thinking they had just seen an alien.

i think that's about right. anyways, this dunk was the tail end of one of the most amazing 5 minutes of andy's life. first, the "hot girl" (who apparently looks exactly like camilla belle) randomly called trills to see if they could meet up later that night, and as soon as he got off the phone with her and sat down, he turned and saw iguodala do his best impression of an alien. it was very exciting, and started the good vibe that nate robinson tried to KILL.

nate robinson fucking sucks.

so we watched a little best of chris farley snl stuff after nate robinson's 20-25 dunk attempts, and then got it together to go to another kid's house who lived down the street. i think the kid's name was pat, but i can't be sure. anyways, we went over there into a room that was already pretty unbalanced on the male:female ratio (not that i particularly cared, but people brought it up a lot) and i got suckered into a game of flip cup in order to help empty a keg of PBR. son of a bitch, i hate pbr, i hate flip cup, and this all sucks.

it only got worse when a confluence of events made everything seem like tufts all over again. actually, maybe this was a good thing, i am not sure. so everyone decided that we were only gonna play a few games of flip cup. however after every round, we decided we were gonna play one more game, or someone would go refill the pitcher (even though we said we were gonna stop when the pitcher was empty). THIS WAS INSANELY FRUSTRATING. i hate pbr and i hate stupid flip cup. also, trilling left to go help aaron and his girlfriend find a parking spot, so now i'm amongst many gw peeps i don't know (and geoff and phil and nick). what's the worst thing that can happen?

well, geoff made the mistake of telling a yankees fan that david wright is the best 3rd basemen in baseball right now. this is arguably true, even though phil will predictably yell about rolen and i will secretly think about cabrera, who should f'n play 3rd. but of course, geoff's new friend goose (the yankees fan) started yelling about a-rod. agitatedly. like, angrily. who the fuck gets angry about someone not considering a-rod a true 3rd basemen? geoff was put off by this, but luckily goose found someone new to argue with - phil started calling rolen a future hall of famer, and only defending his claims with "mike schmidt said he was the best thirdbasemen ever". the fact that this logic was terrrrrrrrible eluded phil then and eludes him now (i expect a comment soon after posting this), but he just kept saying "mike schmidt" over and over until everyone was just laughing at him. also, for rolen to make the hall of fame, he's going to have to have incredibly strong numbers over his PECOTA projections for the next 5 years. 90th percentile with little to no attrition. just saying.

so we yelled about baseball for a little while, and then i said something about arsenal sucking, and then we finally agreed to finish our stupid game of flip cup. then they decided that we were 2-2, best of 7. i dunno who they was, by the way. and then phil and goose (on opposing teams) both declared their team to be the yankees, which was ... very college-y, for sure. then we lost the next two games and finally fucking stopped. god.

somehow, the entire party seemed to be hinging on our game of flip cup. within 15 minutes of it being over, the lights were turned out and everyone in the entire apartment (now close to 30 people) marched out the back to a crazy alley that led down to adams morgan. rumor was that aaron and trilling were over in the mcdonalds... though, that wasn't really a rumor, it was what trilling told us. so we headed back to our favorite mcdonalds and met up with aaron and trills, and also met aaron's girlfriend ashley, and two of her friends who were local to the area (from rockville). one was nicknamed lenny (short for leniqua? something like that. trilling kept repeating it, but i don't think i ever picked up her name on my own), and the other was named kelly, who trilling hogged the whole night. BUT I AM GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF.

so there's a main drag in adams morgan that people refer to as the strip. it's not vegas, but there are a shitload of bars and clubs and jumbo pizza slice places. and people, of course. endless people in my general demographic. so we walked down the strip, about 20 people deep, to a place called dan's cafe. now, i kept thinking it was called dance cafe this whole time, so i was relieved that it was named what it was. apparently their 'thing', so to speak, was to give you a flask of (insert liquor here) and a mixer for $10. this is quite the deal, given DC prices. so we waited for a while to get in, but they wouldn't let us in because of 'fire codes' or something equally made up. aaron was saying that if he went to the front of the line with ladies, there was a better chance of us getting in, but i don't think 3 girls were going to get all 15 of the guys in with them. so we moved next door, to a random whole in the wall called blue fin. this place was basically empty before we walked in, and it had a really weird set up. i guess because its a sushi restaurant that changes into a bar, and not a real bar. anyways, there was a whole empty back room and a really narrow front room. there was an upstairs too, but who the hell knows what lurked up there.

anyways, we filled the place out and everyone you ran in to was friends with trilling. he is "kind of a big deal" down in DC, it seems. it makes sense - it's freakin impossible not to like hte kid. so we started out with trilling buying a huge round for everyone (almost a $100 round, as it turned out), and we digressed from there. the night was fuzzy to say the least, but let me hit on the highlights of our time in blue fin.

first the parameters, if you will. around 130, most of trilling's crew moved on to another place. nick and phil left around this time too, since they had a long trip back in front of them. so we're left with aaron, trills, geoff, myself, and the three girls (ashley, lenny, kelly)... and this dude. oh charles woodson, how you have fallen. it was funny that it was woodson - when we were at the mall, we decided that the best random jersey to purchase 4 years ago was probably a black woodson raiders jersey.

anyways, we hung out until they kicked us all out at 3am. it was a pretty fun time, and now i'll actually get to the few highlights:
1a) apparenty the more drunk i get, the more like trilling i get. which makes perfect sense.
2b) lenny tried to convince me that i was a stoner. i told her that i do not touch the marijuana cigarettes. so yeah, why the fuck do i always look like a stoner?
3c) kelly and lenny kept saying trilling was a shmoopy. it took me 5 minutes to understand that they were actually drunkenly referencing seinfeld. this hurt my brain.
4d) i talked to aaron for a while, which was nice. we formally agreed to talk more, which was also nice. also, his response to the 5-year-olds question? "all of them"
5e) i talked to aaron's girl ashley for a while. she's pretty freakin cool. i know that there's very little funnier than when you're sober and a semi-drunk person is semi-rambling to you, so i hope she was amused.
6f) wow, 6f. this was the capper though. so there's one bathroom downstairs in this place, and i was waiting to go in. i try to go in but its locked (its too loud to hear anyone yelling "i'm in here dammit" so i had to try to go in, unfortunately). anyways, the door opens, and lenny comes out. i slide on by her and in to the bathroom.... to see that (god help me if she ever reads this by the way) the toilet seat is up. i start laughing really, really hard. then i do my thing, and go tell geoff and trilling. jen claims that this is not unreasonable, because she could have been puking. nick claims some girls "squat", but jen counters that no girl would squat with the toilet seat up. of course, i use this chain of events to use the word 'dong' a bunch of times during the rest of the trip.

so we had a really good time in blue fin, and when we got booted out i went over across the street and found jen and her friends. i said hi to all of them briefly, but geoff was waiting out in the cold without a freakin hat and we had to get back to trilling's place.

again, i had to piss incredibly badly at this point. aaron and the 3 ladies had already bounced, so trilling and geoff and i were waiting for a cab. i'm yelling that i have to piss, and andy and geoff are flat out refusing to let me go anywhere to urinate. not even to mcdonalds across the street. they were mean. it was terrible. basically they decided that i wasn't going to piss my pants (which was an incredible decision on their part, considering my bladder is in-fucking-side me), so we waited and finally got in a cab. it took anywhere from 15 to 25 minutes, though at this point i had no grasp of time or space or anything. i just had to piss. i was also very cold, even though i was still buzzed. the wind cut through the blanket of drunkeness, or something. anyways, we finally get in a cab that doesn't drive away from us when we say where we're going.

so geoff and trills are in the back, i climb into the front seat. we go about 3 blocks and the cabbie slows down. there's a tallish blonde girl on the side of the road hailing cabs, and the cabbie asked her where she's headed. she says something like "we are going to virginia". the cabbie says he can drop us off and then take her, and she says "yeah we'll squeeze in" all excited like. cabbie asks "how many of there are you?" when he hears "3", he looks like he's gonna just leave them there. i knew how cold it was, so i just yelled out the window - "get in the caaaaaaaaaab". i told the cabbie that it wouldn't be a problem, and he just kinda shrugged and said fine.

clearly the girls were thrilled to get out of the cold, so they climbed into the cab with us. so there were three of them, and logically the one who hailed the cab got into the back seat on the passenger side. but then things got silly, as another girl went all the way around and pushed trilling into the middle with geoff, and the third girl came up front with me (which i guess made sense). so all of us had a person to talk to on the drive back to trilling's place. apparently trills got nothing out of his girl, but i found out that the one sitting next to me was named felicity. she told me a few times that 'felicity' means happiness (or maybe she told trilling, i don't remember), and then when i asked her what the root language was, she said "english". then she corrected herself and told me the right answer (latin) and said feliz navidad. she was more interested in talking to the driver than me, even though i saved her from the damn cold. bah.

geoff got the best conversation though, with two gems. first he tried to compare his importance with the girl's importance (she worked for some defense contractor... mcdonnell douglas? lockheed martin? i dunno). geoff said that if he quit his job, it would bring down the world banking system. her response? "i could kill you." good stuff. then they played the "do you know what that monument/building is?" game. geoff got the washington monument, didn't know what the world war II memorial was, and when asked what the third building was, he responded something like "the happy fun building". of course, it was the holocaust museum.

we got out at trillings, and the cabbie wouldn't let us pay for the girls to get back to arlington. i got mucho bonus points for "picking up three girls with ease", and could have (and should have?) slept on the futon if i wanted to. i didn't, but i did play up my amazingness. or something.

anyways, we played a little madden rushing attack around 4am, but i did awfully (ending my domination streak in all things madden) and we all passed out.

so now its motherfucking sunday, and this is becoming the longest post in the history of the world. i hope you've stayed with me so far.

i woke up at 10am on sunday somehow. i had a pretty bad headache, a slight hangover (far from the worst i've ever had), and was still tired. i just couldn't sleep though. so i got up, got me some water, and typed away a little on the laptop. geoff woke up soon after, and another 60 minute madden game picked up, because we figured trills wouldn't be up til 2 anyways. boy were we wrong - he was up at 1030, and we had to cut our game short. geoff won 24-21 even though he had the best offense ever and should have demolished me.

so we put on old school and watched (i'd estimate) 93% of it. mostly because i'd never seen it. it was fine, but i was mostly amused by the fact that the same person played both megan huang in old school and margaret yang in rushmore. this led to:
JEREMY PIVEN: blah blah blah chang
GENERIC ASIAN ACTRESS: it's huang!
ME: it's YANG!

it was funny, trust me.

i got nick and phil up and talked to them, and we decided to meet at five guys, which is basically the east coast version of in-n-out. we got down there around 1, right when the african-american church was letting out its early service. trilling decided to mock old black ladies and their headwear ("she has a nice hat") while we waited to grab a parking spot, which took about 15 minutes longer than it had to. i hate people who just fucking sit in their car like they're going to pull out of a prime spot and then talk and talk with everyone in the world instead of putting their foot on the pedal and fucking moving on.

anyways, five guys is pretty freakin good. i'll take in-n-out, but only barely. the fries were boardwalk style, fried in peanut oil and thick. i got two small burgers (as opposed to one double, which is somewhat standard) - one with mushrooms and onions, the other with just bacon and cheese. i was proud of my spur of the moment decision to go this route, though i probably ate way more bread than i needed to. nick and phil took forever so we downed our food before they even showed up, but sitting around wasn't the worst idea, especially cuz i was still in a bit of a daze.

one of the funnier things we saw over the weekend occured at the five guys, actually. there was a family eating near us, and the little son decided he wanted to go to the bathroom. this kid was right around 5 years old, i'd guess. so he goes in, sportin his fleece and assuring his pops that he can handle it. 5 minutes later, he's still in there. 5 more minutes, and now his dad is knocking on the door. a couple more minutes, and now two grown men are getting him out of there.

he finally comes out, totally without his fleece, in just a tshirt, grinning from ear to ear. it was unbelievable. he was like a mini george costanza, losing clothes and whatnot. and man he was so freakin happy.

so nick and phil show up, eat, and we get on our way. i said bye to both of them, and then it was bball time. yeah, that's right. bball with trilling's buddies, down at gw.

so this is a bit convoluted, but i guess one of the kids who was a year behind us at hawken (and moved away for his junior/senior years) ended up going to gw and was friends with andy. he is a solid baseball player actually, and he lives in a house with another stud baseball player, who was actually at spring training when we came by. ANYWAYS, the third roommate is this guy named joe, who used to play first base for notre dame, but now was doing... i dunno, something else that involved and rsa securID, among other things. joe is also the nicest human being on earth, in case you were curious. so we picked him up and started on our way to the gw gym. as soon as we get in the car, trilling turns on his xm radio and "graduate" by third eye blind is on. trilling is a fan of third eye blind (he has this sign now framed on his desk, actually), so i know that he's happy with the song. however, joe offhandedly remarks that "this song sucks ass" and goes on complaining about it, while geoff and i just laugh and laugh in the back seat. at some point it comes out that joe didn't realize trilling really liked third eye blind, which made the whole thing much, much funnier. back to bball - halfway to the gym, trilling got a call and we found out that bball was postponed til 4. we went back to joe's place and hung out for a while and once we got the go ahead, we all went to seperate bathrooms and pooped. we also watched some of anchorman (enough will farrell already, dammit). i kept zoning out, such as when andy and geoff were discussing bathroom reading material, and i was kind of staring at the tv instead of discussing what i read on the john (i don't read anything, i get in, i get out, i get on with life) and joe admitted that yes, anchorman is kinda good and you get right in to it, as if he was apologizing for my dazed stupor. anyways, around 3:45 we headed back to the gw gym.

soi we finally get to the gym, and we have quite the awkward moment trying to get in, when the girl at the front asks us for our gw IDs. when asked if we went to gw, i sorta smile and geoff looks right at trilling. we are the WORST LIARS EVER. we didn't even try. god we're pathetic. anyways, she finally lets us in (for no good reason) and we get a 3on3 game going, as nacki/chris/rob meet up with us four. apparently a good 5 more guys are on their way, but they take forever to show up and we play 3v3 until then with little to no break for anyone.

finally more guys show up, and we start our 5v5 full court game. that was predictably silly, but a good enough game. in the middle of it, however, about 9 OTHER black guys show up, wanting to play. the girl asks us to leave or something, but we decide to just work these guys into our rotation. so we finish our game, and then let them shoot to see who comes on next. by the way, i haven't sat down yet once, as i was on joe's team and joe was a man possessed under the rim. anyways, we win this first game, so now i've played two full 5v5 games as well as all the 3v3 games, and while i'm not working nearly as hard as joe (who has been on the court with me the whole time), i'm also not nearly as in shape as he is, so i'm struggling terribly at this point. actually, i probably started struggling at the end of the first full court game. by the middle of the third one, everyone on our team was dying. we predictably lost and finally got to sit. trills was on our team too, but geoff was on the team taht beat us, so we had to wait for him to get done with his next game before we left. it was really fun to play ball again though, even though i was terrible. i haven't played in way too long and for a little while there i felt like i knew what i was doing. it was a good time, for sure.

of course, it left us freakin beat.

so at some point before the 5v5 madness started, trilling mentioned outback for dinner. after bball, i don't know if any of us thought outback would stay down long enoughu to be satisfying, but it did sound good to all three of us. so after dropping joe off, we went back to trilling's house and got cleaned up. from there we headed to outback, hoping to get a seat and the special pretty damn fast. so we finally get over to outback (which was deep in virginia) and we found... a 60 minute wait and a restaurant full of agitated families. noooo way. let's find another place. like what? i dunno, i want steak. ok, let's see what we can do. there's this place called ted's....

ted's montana grill was our destination, and it turned out to be pretty damn good. it looked a little snazzy, but it's a basic steakhouse with this whole western saloon motif going on. trills and i split some chili cheese fries, which were delicious, and i got a kc strip (also delicious) with onion rings and a sweet potato. strangely, i think i ate more than anyone else when you added it all up, since geoff finished his plate but didn't have any apps, and trilling was too potatoe'd out to finish his sides. ALSO, i should mention that the onion rings were incredible - huge, thick, with cheese on the inside, and nicely salt-and-peppered on the outside. man i could go for those right now too.

so we discussed a number of things, including roshambo strategy. i told trilling about the avalanche (three straight rocks) and how it is one of the ballsiest plays in roshambo. trilling mentioned that there is a roshambo rule for shotgun amongst him and his buddies - if you invoke it, you can play the guy who called shotgun the best 2 out of 3 for the front seat. it makes calling shotgun almost unnecessary, really.

so we finally finish our meal and finally get our waitress to give us the bill. in honor of trills letting us crash at his place, geoff and i put our credit cards in his hat and let the waitress decide which one of us will pay for this meal. of course, she pulls out my card (so 3 times i've played, 2 times i've paid), and geoff is nice enough to say he'll cover the tip. i'm annoyed, but now the juices are flowing, and i feel the need to gamble.

so we get out of the restaurant and get to the car (again, by the way, trilling scored an amazing parking spot - we parked like kings all weekend). i'm distracted by the need for a toothpick, and geoff calls shotgun (the first time calling shotgun all weekend, by the way, as i was just sitting in front by default up to this point). i immediately challenge geoff to rps for the front seat. geoff hesitates, and i tell him that we JUST talked about it in the restaurant, so he can't deny me.

so we get near each other, and i got the blood coarsing through my veins and geoff's clearly nervous about this entire situation. first throw? paper-paper. clearly, after all that talk of avalanches, this would happen. next throw, i read geoff like a book. i go paper, he goes rock, and he's on the defensive. final throw is scissors for me, paper for him, and i clean up in a quick 3 throws. even when he threw the rock, he was scared. i was in his head. it was a beautiful thing.

we watched the end of old school, some of the all star game, and a little of lock, stock, and two smoking barrels after the steaks, but we were all pretty tired. we crashed pretty quickly, with me scoring the pillow and the good blanket yet again (and geoff sleeping in a sweatshirt).

alright, we're nearing the end now, i promise. at some point friday, i realized that i didn't know if trilling had monday off, i was just assuming he did. yeah, he didn't. so geoff and i were on our own to get to the airport, and we both were planning on leaving after 5pm, so we were kind of stuck in a stupid situation. additionally, trilling's roomie mac asked us if we could leave around noon, because apparently when he works from home he can't really have other people around, since his work requires security or something. trilling didn't really explain it well, but we said it was fine and set up a cab to come get us at noon. we looked for earlier flights and figured out what we could do, so potentially we would be stuck at bwi for 2 hours at the most. that wouldn't be awful, right?

so we get in the cab and ride. and ride. and ride. the trip ended up costing us $80 total, but mostly because we didn't want to figure out how to split $75 evenly. of course, only later did we consider that we could have taken a train in. we're idiots.

so we get to the airtran counter and i ask if i can get moved from the 6pm flight to the 340pm flight. a few clicks and i'm all set, with a window seat and everything. this gives us hope for geoff, who knows that southwest's policy is to have people pay the fare difference if they are changing flights. geoff had a big speech early on tuesday, so he wanted to get in before 9pm (his original arrival time). the max he would pay? $150, he said. it ended up being $159 and he went for it. his flight was leaving in a little over a hour, so we decided to split up right there and go to our respective gates, which were on opposite sides of bwi.

i had a good 3 hours to kill, so i got some roy rogers and dropped $7 to use bwi's wireless internet. geoff apparently got stuck on a plane that had a broken seat, and so his flight was delayed 30 minutes in taking off, making it questionable if he'd get his connection in st. louis, making this entire endeavor somewhat questionable. luckily, southwest decided to hold his connection from stl to kc until the dc->stl flight landed. it really saved the entire experience for him.

i got bounced from a window seat to an aisle to help out a mother who wanted to sit with her two daughters. of course, the aisle seat i moved to was right next to a dude who was too big to keep the armrest between the two of us down. this nullified the xm radio advantage that airtran has. i was slightly annoyed, until one of the flight attendants said i could move to row 21 seat a or c, both were open. of course, row 21 was an exit row, so now i have leg room and no one sitting next to me. quite a series of events, i'll tell you what.

and that is freakin that. dc was an awesome experience. i was turned around on a lot of notions i had about the city, and the fact that drew is moving down there just makes the whole region all the more tempting to visit (or live... shhh). props to trills and his boys for making the stay a good one. make sure to check out pictures and leave comments. this post was huge and i'm sure i missed some shit - trills, geoff, its up to you.

thanks for indulging me.

addendum
i didn't mention a few things.
1) at best buy, we stumbled across a band named "test icicles". best band name ever? possibly. worst band ever? definitely
2) chad pointed out that my usage of "I AM GETTING AHEAD OF MYSELF" was suspect at best. i felt i was ahead of myself in terms of the flow of the story at that point, and i also was setting up for the punchline of: trilling was the only person who spoke to kelly at all that night, and he ended up with "the easiest set of digits ever". i dunno where that went from there, but yeah.
3) i use the words 'so' and 'anyways' too much as transitionals. so sue me.

addendum 2
motherfucker.
trills was complaining about how everyone calls him 'trilling' or 'trza', and he told us a story about how he introduced himself to this girl as 'andy', and 45 minutes later someone called him 'trilling' and she said "OH, you're trilling!" as if she knew who trilling was. this led geoff to say "you're kind of a big deal in dc, huh?" and andy trza trilling to respond "yeah, i am kind of a big deal down here"

which was AMAZING

ok that's the last addendum, i promise.