Happy Birthday Retold

So I'm guessing people want to hear a little about my 21st Birthday. I suppose for America it would have been a pretty great occasion, but here it was a little longer than usual, but still nothing extraordinary.

The Vesper:
The night before my birthday a ton of my friends went to a sangria bar in Sol where they have really cheap pitchers. The problem is we just got pitchers of sangria, so we ended up drinking way too much sweet wine and the sugar and wine combination is a little deadly, making you nauseous after about a pitcher and a half or so. We basically just stayed there the whole night and walked home at two or so because the metro stops at 1:30. Not much to report except that Dan and I created this great toast that basically is just us clinking our glasses five times and with each clink saying "FIVE, TEN, FIFTEEN, TWENTY, TWENTY!" So first the remaining 20 year olds (all three or so of us) did this toast. After the clock struck midnight, we excluded all 20 year olds so that the 21 year olds could partake in the new toast "FIVE, TEN, FIFTEEN, TWENTY, AND ONE!"

The Big Day:
Because I showed up an hour and forty five minutes late on Tuesday to my job I had to be on time on Thursday, according to my boss. This was difficult. The sugar and sulfates had done their job and I was sufficiently sick, without puking. It actually wasn't that bad, but I did have a headache all morning, a sensation of weakness, and mild waves of nausea. This was all heightened by the fact that the elevator in my office building didn't work. So in order to get into my office I had to climb up to the seventh floor through stairs. THEN, my job was to make copies on the 4th floor all day, so I spent half the day climbing and descending stairs. Imagine my hell.

The Big Night:
First, the big group of friends met and went to the Cave Bar (I don't know it's name in Spanish, no it's not El Bar de la Cueva) where the specialty is alcohol mixed with milk and cinnamon. I'm poor, though, so I opted for the ginormous cups of beer. I think I shared the Grande, knowing that I'd never be able to finish the Enorme or Gigante. After this we went to a karaoke place which the Guia del Ocio said was the best karaoke bar for amateur fools. WRONG. They really treated us like shit the whole night. It wasn't so bad, but at first they just gave me a candle to blow out, what the hell is that about. Not even a piece of cake. Later they brought around cake and shots, but whatever. Unfortunately, the playlist was horrible. The artist selection was fine, but the songs they had were just awful. How can you have Neil Diamond but no Sweet Caroline? They had a few Neil songs that I'd never heard of, so I picked the only one I knew...America. I nailed it, I must say. But as Hueylikes to say, doing a really great rendition of America is like hitting a home run with a corked aluminum bat. The thing about karaoke though is that you don't want to do songs that you only kinda know. You really have to know them inside out, and they must be within your range because if you're going to make a slob out of yourself, you might as well have a prayer of hitting the notes...something that didn't quite happen on my second song which was a result of me not having heard the song in years and the fact that the verses don't really have that much instrumentation so you can't find the note even if you remember how the song goes. Whatever. I won't tell you the song because I don't want you to even have any idea of what it might have sounded like. Afterwards, we went to a disco where our friend works, but she wasn't there so we would've had to pay cover, something which I believe is undemocratic, especially when it's 4:30 am and people are already on their way out. So instead we went next door for chocolate con churros. Good as always, and I made my way home at 6:30, not bad for Madrid standards, watched an episode of Seinfeld, and passed out.