Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Red red whine*

When I returned from the movie in Loring Park last night, the thermostat in my house read 88; the faulty breathalyzer read .05, and the clock read close to midnight. Anyone wanna take a guess at how I feel today?

On top of that, the movie was entirely uninteresting, and my handy camp seat was temporarily stolen by a cognitively challenged woman who had earlier been rooting around freely in her nostrils and absentmindedly playing with her spit. To make that last part even better, in my wine-fueled annoyance, I actually thought it was a logical idea to reason with the woman. She clearly had no inkling that she'd done anything wrong, and yet I apparently felt the need to look at her sternly and ask, "Why did you take that?" Considering the way my friends often like to distort this sort of thing for amusement in later retellings, I imagine that simple question will eventually be distilled down to "Stefanie yells at the mentally handicapped," much the same way an incident in a hotel hot tub years ago is now retold as "Stefanie swears in front of small children" and the way our friend Greg's simple complaint to a restaurant server has long been relayed as "Greg once beat up a Denny's waitress." Ah, good times.

Anyway, all circumstances and after-effects aside, it was still a fine summer evening in the city. There was good conversation with friends, a lovely cheese-heavy picnic spread, and wine (oh my yes, so much wine). Still, foggy-headed and crabby is no way to start the week. I may need to take another hobo nap on my lunch break.

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* A shout-out to my dear friend GG on that stolen title, of course. I'm at a loss for anything more appropriate right now.

13 comments:

lizgwiz said...

Did the cognitively-challenged woman have an answer to your stern question? Or did you just make her cry? (See, the distortion begins already.)

Anonymous said...

As always, I'll have to disagree with you about the movie.

3carnations said...

Did you drink the wine AT the movie? When I visited a friend in Chicago years ago, she brought me to a "Brew and View". Very strange, people sitting at tables drinking beer while watching "Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo"

The King said...

Lordy, I would never get to sleep with the temperature at 88 degrees. I might be able to pass out if the faulty breathalyzer was reading .25

Twanna A. Hines | FUNKYBROWNCHICK.com said...

[points at the comment way above]

I remember the Brew and View!!!!! :)

L Sass said...

Oh how I love outside wine and cheese / cultural activities. Work the next morning sometimes sucks, though. Argh.

Noelle said...

I love naps. More naps, please!

lizgwiz said...

Chiming in again to say, ooh, I once attended the Brew and View in Chicago, as well. We saw some wonderful animated shorts...followed by Cabin Boy. ;)

Stefanie said...

Liz--My friends thank you for getting that started, I'm sure.

Darren--"As always"? Oh come now, surely we have agreed on movies before! I can't honestly say I thought The Tarnished Angels sucked (because I didn't really see enough of it to judge for sure), but it apparently wasn't interesting enough or easy enough to follow to hook me in under the given circumstances (in a park, hundreds of feet from the screen, many conversations going on around, planes flying overhead, etc.). It has to be a really simple or a really engrossing movie to hold the audience's attention in light of all of that, and this one must have been neither.

3Cs--It was an outdoor movie in the park, so yes, we brought our own snacks and drinks. I think technically alcohol is not allowed in city parks, but I've never seen anyone complain about or get busted for it, and so we persist.

King--I keep trying to decide which is more difficult: sleeping through the noise of the window AC unit or through the discomfort of the heat. When I realized how hot it had gotten in my house while I was gone last night, I went for the former.

FunkyB--I don't! :-) But I'm glad some of you are bonding over that.

L Sass--Indeed, it does get to be a late night, what with the movie not being able to start until dusk. I am way tired today.

Noelle--Can you believe I actually went to a kickboxing class over lunch rather than trying for a nap? For some reason I thought that might be equally refreshing or invigorating. I was wrong.

Liz--Cabin Boy?? Oh my. You WOULD need some beer or wine to get through that! ;-)

-R- said...

Ok. I definitely need to move closer to the Cities so that I can partake in some outdoor movies.

Anonymous said...

My friends totally do that too- we're HUUUGE exaggerators. They're still talking about the time in high school when the mentally handicapped kid ran me over in his wheelchair.

Oh, wait. That really happened.

Whiskeymarie said...

Stories follow a similar route with me & my friends.
Except that I'm usually the one "stretching" the story a bit.
Go figure.

Stefanie said...

R--You definitely do! I'm sure they have movies in the park out in the 'burbs somewhere, but they're probably kids movies and they probably don't encourage wine-centered picnics, right? You should be in the city, my friend. :-)

NPW--That sounds like a blog post waiting to happen.

WM--Yeah, I'm guilty of that myself (I may have had something to do with perpetuating the myth that my friend beat up a Denny's waitress), so I guess I can't blame them.