Last night seemed a lot longer than it actually was, I suppose. I only arrived at Rich O's an hour early - at 7:00 instead of 8:00.

I went early because HatGirl was going to make an appearance and I wanted to grab some seats in the living room before any strangers could do it. Ideally I wanted to grab the throne, but some old man was already sitting in it. Another stranger was sitting on the loveseat, and WomanRepellant was sitting on the sofa.

I staked out my claim for a sofa seat, ordered a Cone Smoker (1640) and then went out to the special section and talked with Roger and some of the PBDs for a bit. They'd had this brewerania thingy, which I'd missed because of the wedding. By the time I got there a homebrewing contest was going on as the first part of a PBD meeting. Everybody kept asking me to try the beers in the contest but I stood firm. I'd promised myself that I'd be having two 7.5% Cone Smokers, and I wasn't going to let some sneaky homebrew with a zillion percent ABV derail that train.

Roger and I discussed t-shirts for DaveFest. I guess we're going to go ahead and order a couple of dozen. I told him that if he had any left over I'd buy them off of him. I'm hopeful that at least a few of my readers will want one, and perhaps The Smithsonian would like one as well.

Roger also introduced me to the artist who'll be doing the t-shirt design. I'm looking forward to seeing how they come out.

So WomanRepellant and I spent some talking with the old man and the guy who turned out to be his son for a while. The old man looked really familiar to me, and I had a suspicion about who he might be, but it wasn't until WomanRepellant called him by his first name that I knew for sure.

The guy had been my vice-principal when I was in high school.

Small fucking world.

He claimed to remember me, but as I was a pretty good kid I seriously doubt that he remembered me. Plus, he probably met like a gazillion kids in his life, so I bet everyone on Earth under the age of fifty looks familiar to him.

When VicePrincipal and his son left I moved over to the throne. My second beer was a Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier Dunkel (80). Had to drink something lighter before that second Cone Smoker.

At one point I went to piss and when I came back, both HatGirl and DooRagGirl were sitting in the loveseat.

HatGirl! Yay!

So the next couple of hours were quite nice. HatGirl and I and DooRagGirl and WomanRepellant bullshitted about nothing much in particular. HatGirl and I traded some text messages back and forth. I had my second Cone Smoker (1660).

Oh yeah, when HatGirl had first come in I'd asked the bartender to bring her a small sample of Cone Smoker. She didn't like it, but she at least tried.

I'd planned to try to squeeze in another Weihenstephaner, but by the time I'd finished the Cone Smoker I could tell that I needed to cut myself off. So that's what I did, except for the Guinness (1207) that HatGirl didn't finish.

Once HatGirl left MusicalHippyDude and GlassesGirl and some other chick (ha ha) moved from the bar and joined us.

It was a fun night. No idiots pissed me off, and no strangers got in my way. I got to see HatGirl and DooRagGirl on the same night.

It was fun.

This morning I had an incredible hangover, but it was worth it.