I hate drinking

So last night was supposed to be a grad student get together at Miyake's in Palo Alto. Like dinner and a couple drinks. Of course everyone ends up bailing except for the two people whom I would normally go drinking with anyways, oh, and Denny, my friend who has attended more of these functions than most of the students. But whatever. We got the sake bombs rolling before the food came and it started a pretty interesting evening. Most of the folks there were older than the usual Stanford college crowd. Older as in they were more their parents age. Luckily this couple walked in and they looked to be a new couple. You could just see the discomfort and awkwardness in their interactions. So M decides to help their date along by getting them to join in a sake bomb. Unfortunately it just wasn't enough to loosen them up. We observed that the guy was so nervous he couldn't think of stuff to say and just kept scratching his head. His date, well, she couldn't stop talking and it's not clear the guy was really listening. We tried to get them liquored up some more but they left. So much for our good deed. After about 5 or 6 more sake bombs with the table behind us, we headed to Old Pro for a beer tower. On the way there we spotted someone walking their cat on a leash. Weird. Over at Old Pro, R and I played a hearty game of foosball with Denny. He kicked our asses so bad Denny played with one hand against the two of us and still won. Meanwhile M was chattin' up three guys until she sensed a certain level of discomfort with her brushing up against them and the guy she was working on explained that they had to leave because his boyfriend was about to pick them up. Ooops, time to turn up the gaydar there. A ping pong match and game of air hockey later (I lost due to scoring on myself, duh), it was time to head home. I didn't realize that I had probably had about 9 glasses of beer if we count the sake bombs and beer tower. And that is why I was hurtin' today. Thank God for the hearty stew and rice they serve at the school's salad bar. I wouldn't have made it through my day without it.