Taylor Made

Get cozy, this is a long one...

Collin mentioned that maybe if I do get caught up with the events, I will feel more inclined to write more often.  So here’s the Sparknotes version of what I had done up until last weekend.

June 11 – My birthday.  Free beer at Duffy’s.  I tried to get everyone in our group to go to Lion’s Head Pub with me.  I was unsuccessful and left alone but just headed back to my sister’s apartment.  I realized that I didn’t grab enough keys and couldn’t get in.  So I hailed a cab and headed south to a party that Barnes was at.  It was a penthouse party, really cool actually.  Someone gave me a drink of just straight Effen, gross.  I promptly headed back north because I realized I ditched my whole group.  Unfortunately, a bunch of them got worried I ditched them for good so they took the 10:40 train back.  Jake was in Wrigleyville with a couple other friends.  We hung out for awhile, then Jake and I walked back to my sister’s and I had to climb the side of the building and break in through a window that led to the stairway, thank goodness it was unlocked.  Overall, pretty dysfunctional night, spent about $60 in cab fares and lost all my friends.  I’ve learned and it won’t happen again.  Plus, Sweeney missed his train so he couldn’t get there either.  Moral of the story: Stay with the group.

Late June – I met one of Jake’s friends, Sarah H.  Really cute girl, 25% Korean, doesn’t look it though.  I met her at a fire she was having at her place.  Jake and I went over there.  Sarah and I kind of hit it off, there was interest at least.  The next night, I had a bonfire at my new house.  I didn’t get Sarah’s number the night before so I was relying on Jake to get her over to my house.  Around 10:30 or so I had kind of given up on her making it over.  I got to “chocolate” status, figuring why not.  Around 11, Sarah and her friend showed up.  Dangit.  Sarah and I went on a walk to a local playground which was also the elementary school she went to.  I told her about 3 times that I wanted to kiss her.  Foolish.  I was a complete pig, but we did have a good talk once we got back to my house.  Apparently I did well enough to get her number, not a complete waste.

A few days later we went on a date.  I hadn’t been on one of those since probably Mexico.  I hadn’t been on one with a girl that seriously like since probably Alexa, dang.  Anyways, I was nervous the whole day.  I couldn’t eat lunch and I was freaking out that I was going to seem like a real dork.  I picked her Sarah up at 7 and we went and got sushi at this place called Ra.  It’s a trendy kind of hip restaurant and the conversation was actually really good, I think.  Afterwards, we went back to her place to watch a movie.  Little Fockers is a terrible movie.  Her basement is really cool though, she has that Lay-Z-Boy theater style seating with the huge flatscreen, Nice!  Afterwards, we said out good-byes, not 1502 style, but that was ok with me because she seemed like she could be more than just a hook up.  The weird thing was that while driving back I was kind of bummed, not because of how the date went or that I didn’t get a good-bye kiss, it was more that we didn’t seem to have too much in common.  I woke up the next morning and decided it actually was a good date, I was just bummed because I got used to the Whitney’s and Sandra’s who gave more instantaneous results.  I sent the polite, “Hey, I had a good time yesterday.  We should definitely hang out again sometime”. text the next day.  Her response came about 24 hours later.  Bad sign.  A few days later I just texted her to see how she was doing. No response.  That’s really where it’s at and probably where it will stay.  Moral of the story: Sarah is a Taylor girl, which I am learning is the shady cousin of the Wheaton girl.  Stev, I know you don’t like to hear of these misadventures, but they happened to me and I know you’ll have some good insight.

Even Later June – Sweeney came out to Wheaton for a weekend!  We went to the beach on Saturday.  I tried to get a bunch of my friends to come out but they were all busy.  It ended up being just Sweeney, Squires and me.  We actually had a great time.  We went to North Ave beach, had some drinks then played some Frisbee.  Squires brought a friend, really funny girl, great personality.  We spent a good 3 hours in the city then headed home.

Still in our bathing suits, we went to Tasting DeVine, Wheaton’s local wine shop and did a tasting.  Squires left after that and Sweeney and I made our way to Muldoon’s.  This random kid, Ari, befriended us.  He bought us car bombs so we felt kind of obligated to hang out with him.  As the night wore on, some more friends showed up and entertaining Ari became quite a chore.  He came with us to Rosie’s where he started getting pretty rowdy with some of us.  We managed to keep him quiet until last call at which point he walked back to my house with Sweeney and I.  Sweeney ditched me and I had to walk Ari all the way back to the train station, about a mile out.  I told Ari he has to stop insulting people who he becomes friends with because he’s going to get beat up.  After I dropped him off, I ran back to my house.  Sweeney’s and my car were still in the street so I parked Sweeney’s in the driveway.  There was no room for my car at that point so I drove is back to my home home, about a mile away.  Then I ran (again) back to my new home.  I was pretty exhausted after all that.

Overall, great weekend with Sweeney.  Moral of the story: I still like mixing my different groups of friends together.

July 4 Weekend – Sweeney persuaded me to go to AA with him to help him move a desk chair back to Oswego.  Would it have been of equal or lesser cost to just buy a new chair?  Most likely.  That just shows how little of an excuse I need to go back there haha.  Cassie was at her cottage and Uzi wasn’t around either.  Luckily, Mike O came out so the 3 of us plus Saint.  We went light on Friday night, chilled with some longest islands and got prepped for a good Saturday of festivities.

Saturday started with breakfast at the Broken Egg on Main.  Good food.  Around noon, we cracked open the bucket o’ Margarita.  That got us going.  Around the bottom of the bucket, Saint got home and we headed to Café Habana for the happy hour of Mojitos.  I felt pretty well composed, but Saint still commented that he didn’t realize that we were already as drunk as we were.  I think it was one of those where the first thing to lose its sobriety is your gauge of how drunk you are.  I remember I kept stepping back and thinking, “Oh, I’m not too bad”.  After making fools of ourselves at Habana (Mike O was literally barking at the waitresses) we headed to The Arena for some food.  After that I think we made our way to Charlie’s.  I think we had a few pitchers or something then went to Rick’s to get our stamps for later.  No one was there but we stuck around, Sweeney has a great supplementary video for that part of the weekend.  We went back to Charlie’s where Adriana found us.  She’s 21 now, yay!  We couldn’t have been there for too long.  On our way out Sweeney got flagged down by a car full of 4 black people, 1 guy (Corey) and 3 girls (girl A, B, and C).  They asked Sweeney, “How do we get to Necto?”  Sweeney said something along the lines of, “Oh you go this way that way and um…Ah, I’ll just come with and show you”.  At this point Sweeney and I hopped in the car and they drove us to Necto.  We kind of ditched the rest of the group, just a terrible habit that I’ve gotten into.  To be honest, Necto was not half bad.  They have that stage thing which is a good 3 feet above the rest of the place, so you get that feeling when you look out over Rick’s only you’re even higher up.  I ended up saying hello to girl A, B, or C.  That went on until last call, when I realized that Sweeney had left.  I jetted out of there and called Sweeney.  He was in the Diag for goodness knows what reason.  I ran over there in my new and uncomfortable Sperry’s.  We found each other and walked back to NYPD, just for old time’s sake.  We went to Benny’s the next morning then packed up and headed home.  Sweeney and I stopped and picked up firework in IN for the Fourth of July festivities.  We both dropped a cool $80 at Krazy Kaplan’s(!!!).

That night, July 3, was a great because I didn’t have to work on Monday.  I went to Todd’s older bro’s house where he had tons of drinks and food.  We watched the Wheaton fireworks and then lit off some of the ones I bought.  It was a pretty low key night and we headed back to my house afterwards.  We watched the first half of The Big Lebowski until everyone passed out.

On the fourth we went fishing all day at a local lake.  I caught 2 fish!  Really tiny fish though.  That night we went and watched the Glen Ellyn fireworks.  Way better than the Wheaton ones.  Jake has this one friend who I’m really starting to despise, on a Cadence level.  This girl, Heather, she’s just very selfish and says some really stupid things mostly because she doesn’t seem to have a filter on her mouth.  She has this boyfriend that she always talks about marrying; meanwhile, she’s in the backseat feeling my buddies inner thigh.  I nicknamed her buzzkill, but I don’t think that does it justice.  There’s a bunch of other things she’s done that I just don’t feel like mentioning.  The fireworks were impressive though.  Moral of the story:  You can do a lot with a 3 day weekend.

They were really small...

Now, finally, I can talk about this past weekend.

I left work around 5:50 because I was way too excited for the weekend.  Jake and I had been invited to Detroit for a Party Bus with some friends that Saturday.  I figured that it only made sense to head out on Friday and spend the night in AA.  I swung Jake’s and picked him up.  Heather (buzzkill) was supposed to come with us because she know our friends who were having the party bus but she bailed earlier that day.  Pretty selfish of her because the party bus came out to $34/person so when she decided not to come, everyone had to pay a few more bucks, basically.  AND, it turns out she didn’t even have any other plans, she just decided last minute that she didn’t want to go.  Aggravating, but back to the story.  I picked Jake up and we headed to Ann Arbor.  We got in just before midnight.  Saint, Ethan, Jake and I headed to Charlie’s to get some longest islands.  I was going for a carbon copy of the weekend before.  You know, low key night, rest up for the party bus.  

Somehow, Rick’s got into the equation and we ended up there until last call.  By the way, Ethan only ALMOST got his ID taken, maybe I am starting to shed this curse of the under-21ers getting their IDs taken.  Jake and I picked up some food on the way back to hotel Arch and ate what could very well be my last meal in that house.  Jake and I got into this great conversation of our goals for the party bus so we decided to take a walk to further discuss the plan.  We walked all the way down to 1502, where I took the picture and sent it to some of you, then walked back to Arch.  We got to bed probably around 3:30 that night.

We woke up around 11 on Saturday morning.  We didn’t have to be in Farmington Hills, where the party bus was starting, until 7 that night.  Cassie came by around 11:30 and we went to Benny’s.  

When we got back, Jake and I got ready to play some sand volleyball and meet Uncle Craig, Cassie’s newest, and first, boyfriend.  He’s a pretty cool guy, really good at volleyball.  Him and Cassie definitely don’t seem to be the lovey dovey type when in public, although I guess he did send her flowers at work.  I guess grew up near Chicago too, nice!  Hopefully that’ll get Cass to come visit more often.  Anyways, Cass and Uncle Craig didn’t even play on the say doubles team, in fact, you wouldn’t guess they were dating from the vball interactions, honestly.  And Cassie, that’s not a bad thing, it shows that you’re not one of those couples that gives up their entire social life for one another.  I approve and I think he’s definitely a great guy, even though you don’t like to hear that you have a boyfriend still.  Plus, you smile every time anyone says it, soooo.  After vball we showered up then Cassie came and picked us up to go to Dominick’s.  I got a half pint of their sangria, delicious.  We talked with Uncle Craig and Co. where I learned most of the aforementioned things about him.  After a bit, Jake and I excused ourselves and headed back to hotel Arch.  We finished watching Hall Pass, a pretty funny movie, said our good-byes and headed to Farmington Hills.

When we got to Mel(issa) and Sarah’s apartment, we were greeted by a pretty buzzed version of them.  If they weren’t buzzed, they were certainly very happy that we got there safely.  I presented them with my gift of Pear Grey Goose, idea compliments of Uzi, which was well received, even though we didn’t need to open it quite then.  We walked around to the porch of their apartment, as they live on the first floor so it opens up to the lawn.  Our buddy, Chey, was there already and he brought two growlers of some delicious beer.  We began our pregame and eventually the rest of the group of about 20 arrived.  Out on the porch you could see the complex’s outdoor pool.  I turned to Sarah (not the same Sarah that I went on the date with) and said to her, “You know, there is about a 90% chance I am going to be swimming in there when we get back from the party bus”.  Long story short, Dobs and Luginbill were there and the three of us held down the kitchen area.  After we finished the growlers I grabbed the Goose from the fridge.  We couldn’t find a shot glass but I found this weird round metal cap thing that was exactly the right size for a shot.  Because it was round on the bottom, it became “The shot glass that can’t be put down” for the night.  After a bit of doing shots of Goose and Freezee Pops (I think I’m onto something there) someone alerted us that the party bus had arrived.

Let me start by saying that party buses are awesome.  This isn’t your BTB party bus or anything, it has stretch limo seating then, because of its height (and just because), it has a pole towards the back.  Our bus driver, Chuck, was really cool.  Dobs and I asked him the craziest thing he has seen on his bus and he claimed that he was carting a bachelorette party around and they requested he pull over so they could pick up three random guys and perform oral favors on them.  Risky…Anyways, I hopped on with the Goose in one hand the shot glass that can’t be put down in the other.  A few things about party buses:  They are like portals that lead to random places.  They make you feel more inebriated than you actually are because of the movement. Also, they are very conducive to dancing of all flavors.  I gave, did not receive, a couple lap dances and the pole was usually too packed to get to.  The first stop, surprisingly, was a McDonald’s parking lot.  I guess some of the girls had to use the bathrooms.  People in our group felt that because they could drink on the bus, they could just wander into the McD’s with beers and stuff.  They all got yelled at, haha.  I was in a responsible mood at the time and tried to keep count of those getting off and on the bus.  Getting stuck at a McD’s parking lot at 9, drunk, would be terrible.  Chey and I befriended these two kids on bikes.  They weren’t even asking for money, but Chey gave them a $10 and told them to buy themselves some hamburgers and fries.  They immediately turned their bikes around and headed to the gas station across the street, Chey you idiot.  We got everyone back on the bus and headed off again.

The next stop was Royal Oaks, MI.  Pretty big bar scene there and when Chuck dropped us off at around 10 he told us he would be returning at 1:30 to pick us up.  Ok, I guess.  My time in Royal Oaks was relatively uneventful, I spent a lot of it at this cool bar called Woody’s.  Dobs, Lugi and I were together most of the night.  The first floor of Woody’s is kind of like a BDubs, then you have to pay $5 to get to the 2^nd and 3^rd floors.  We weren’t about to pay, so fortunately as we were sitting trying to think of a way in a girl came up to us, licked the backs of our hands and pressed her hand against it.  When she removed it, her stamp had come off onto ours, nice!  Sometimes things just work out.  My stamp looked terrible but the bouncer didn’t seem to care at all and he restamped us all and let us up.  Had we decided to pay, it would have been worth it.  There were tons of bachelorette parties on the 2^nd floor, or maybe just one huge one or something.  2^nd floor was where we danced and everything.  Then the 3^rd floor was actually this huge rooftop that opened up to the skyline, very cool.  Like I said though, relatively uneventful.  I spent the night floating between these two floors, dancing, cooling off and repeating.  We left around 1 to meet up with some of Dobs friends at another bar then headed to the corner where the party bus was picking us up.  We eventually got everyone together and headed out.

Chuck told us we couldn’t dance on the way back because he had blown an air suspension or something, we could only dance at the stop lights, bummer.  Then we only hit about 2 stop lights on the way back.  I still had some Goose left and was handing out some of those too.

When we got back to Sarah and Mel’s apartment, a lot of the group went back to another friend’s to sleep.  Not being able to dance on the bus kind of killed the party mentality.  The only ones who stuck around Sarah and Mel’s were Jake, Chey, this guy Jamon, Sarah, Mel, and me.  Eventually Sarah and I found ourselves back out on the porch where we had a nice talk.  I turned to her and said, “You know I said I was going to want to jump into the pool”.  I was pleasantly surprised when she agreed that she wanted to so we walked over and jumped the fence.  Starting to get a sense of where the night was headed, I stripped down to my draws and jumped in just next to where Sarah was dipping her feet.  Shortly thereafter, she jumped in too. I guess the real kicker here is that Sarah is a Taylor girl.  To my delight, the 1502 routine proceeded, proceeded lightly, but still. Then that Jamon kid came up to the pool fence, playing coy asking things like who we were and what we were doing.  Oh Jamon, apparently he thought he had Sarah “in the bag”.  We shooed him away only to have him and Jake return to the fence 10 minutes later.  I began yelling muskrat to Jake, the code word for get the mess out of here.  So they wandered off.  Some more hellos.  We eventually got pretty cold so we got out, walked back to the apartment, and put on some dry clothes.  I wasn’t quite ready for bed so Sarah and I walked around the area for a good hour or so.  When we got back I passed out pretty quickly, turns out it was about 5 AM.  I guess Sarah, Chey and Jake stayed up to watch the sunrise while Mel and I were just passed out.

I woke up around 10, grabbed some eggs and coffee that Chey made.  Jake woke up around 11 then we freshened up and headed back to Wheaton.  I had a disposable camera with me that night so hopefully those pictures can get up sometime soon, shed some light on the night’s occurrences.   Overall, awesome weekend.  Got some good Cassie time and learned about party buses.

Here’s to mini summer vacations,

Chin

P.S. Stev it was the lower left girl :/ Upper right was a bartender in Wrigleyville...