I just ate at Fazoli’s for dinner. They have these new cinnamon breadsticks that are completely coated in icing. They rock. But you know what doesn’t rock?

Hangovers.

Adam’s bachelor party was held Saturday, so we spent a good chunk of the day paintballing. There were nine of us or so, including Adam’s dad and Danielle’s dad. Oddly it wasn’t uncomfortable having them around, even later on when we were at the bar, drinking. I felt sort of like an adult myself. It was kinda cool.

Paintball was sweet as hell. There were probably fifty people playing on a battlefield the size of a football field. Maybe bigger. There were woods you could run around in, plus an abandoned traincar, a rusty-ass Winnebago, and a number of huge wire-spindles proving cover. At one end of the field there was even a fort equipped with a machine gun turret that ran on paintballs.

Aside from Eric and Adam having played once, all of us were new — or n00bs if you prefer — at paintball. We had fun though. The only thing I didn’t like was getting shot in the head. Four times. The last headshot gave me a good-sized lump, which I still have.

After four hours of paintball, we left and everyone separated to clean up. Then we reconvened at Jason’s house at 2000 hours to strategize our next move, specifically where we would rendezvous for our next meal. Adam wasn’t sure where he wanted to eat, so four of us made a liquor run. When we returned Adam still hadn’t made up his mind. Eventually Outback was decided upon. We get there and there’s an hour wait due to the fact that it was some high school’s Homecoming and Sweetest Day. Eric and I hiked over to O’Charley’s, Adam’s second choice, but then the other members of our party called and said we were going to Don Pablo’s instead. This was sweet, as I love Don Pablo’s. I would later regret the decision to eat a whole bunch of food at Pablo’s, which I will get into shortly.

After dinner, we went to the nearest bar I could think of, which turned out to be Wing’s. We played a game of darts which, as I briefly mentioned in my last post, “seemed to last forever.” When we left an eternity later, I was pretty juiced.

At this point my recollections grow a little hazy. What I am sure of is that we got to Jason’s house, I started to drink a copious amounts of vodka, we watched part of Airplane 2, I was loud, I wrote a post, I screamed at Bill (he screamed back, so it was okay), I was loud, and I threw up in Jason’s bathroom. Note the phrasing of that last part.

This is all I can be sure of, having blacked out and whatnot. Most of what I detailed seems more like a dream — a fuzzy, loud, vomit-y dream — than reality. I woke up the next morning, feeling very shitty, on Jason’s couch. Someone had given me a blanket and I had some vomit on my left pants leg, thus confirming the throwing up portion of my evening.

Having never blacked out before, I just want to say that it is very disturbing when four hours of your life are reduced to an indistinct jumble of images and sounds. Also, Jason — sorry for making a mess of your bathroom (I don’t even know how bad it was, but I have my suspicions) and to anyone I might have annoyed in my inebriated stupor: my bad. I have been told, however, that I was funny and “a lot like I was in high school,” which to me is some damning praise considering how I was my last two years of high school.

JAB