Coronas and ghosts.

I had what was most likely the most bizarre 24-hour period in my life. Move over, Jack Bauer; there's a nuclear bomb in Virginia and it blew up. All over my face.

I had to get up extra early to look nice for David's graduation. I was wearing some nice new khakis and a nice shirt and a nice tie and I just KNEW it was all overkill. Turns out, I was right. I didn't get many good pictures from the ceremony since I was so far back, but I did snap this one. This is what you wear to a high school graduation if you live in Montross, Virginia:


It was a very nice day for a graduation. It wasn't too hot, although I did manage to get some sunburn on my face because I was exposed to sunlight for longer than three minutes. My graduation, which was SIX YEARS AGO JESUS CHRIST I'M OLD, was very rainy and gross, so there aren't ANY good pictures from that afternoon. Not even this one:


Speaking of me being "old," I ran to pick up some shrimp for my mom after the ceremony, and the woman working the register asked me if I had graduated that morning. Sigh.

I spent the next couple of hours getting drunk tipsy with these people:


After a lot of Coronas and sausage balls and watching my dad shooting groundhogs in the backyard, I realized that I had to sober up so I could drive to Richmond to visit my friend Kristel. I did it in record time, too, and was pretty proud of myself, although my head was killing me the entire time I was driving. Which was an hour, by the way, which is important for you to understand my frustration when I got to Kristel's house and she didn't answer her cell phone. For forty minutes. Meanwhile, I walked around Monument Avenue and drunk people on third-floor balconies made fun of me. Finally I sat in my parked car and called people for advice. Should I just leave now? Should I stay and fuck around Richmond for a couple of hours and then go home and tell my parents how much fun Kristel and I had? Should I break into her apartment and wait for her drunk ass to get home and then punch her in the face? While coming up with a plan of action, Kristel FINALLY called me back. Then this happened:

I went up to her apartment and met Some Dude who she had just had a blind date with. Now, I think I'd be more angry had I known that she was just drunk with Some Dude while I was sweating my ass off and having strangers make fun of me from the confines of their porch if Kristel wasn't HOME with a BLIND DATE. There was so much awkwardness going on there and she felt so bad because the guy was such a Some Dude it was painful to listen to him speak (he really liked Wal-Mart) that I couldn't help but laugh at the situation. And then I made her buy me Thai food. Everyone (well, me) wins!

To make a long story short, Kristel and I came to the mutual conclusion that, yes, we should get drunk for the second time that day, so we hung out on her porch for a while with her neighbors (who I LOVED, by the way. They'd never seen Stella Artois before and asked us if they were "mini wine bottles." ACGHH I MISS THE SOUTH) before we left to meet some of her friends at a bar. The bar was fun, I suppose, especially since I was just drinking Bud Light (which were $2.75 a bottle, by the way. ACGHH I MISS THE SOUTH) and got to make fun of Kristel's blind date some more. Then some OTHER DUDE came over and was all up in her grill and it was really entertaining and I thought that there would be absolutely no way karma would bite me in the ass for laughing directly at her face.

At one point, though, Kristel went to the bathroom, and upon her return slammed her hands down onto the table and said, "GUESS WHO I RAN INTO?" Oh, no. Oh oh no no. Who else but our principal's son, with whom we went to Governor's School and was a general douchebag. He came over and, before he could put a word in with Kristel, which was his obvious plan, Kristel shouted, "DO YOU REMEMBER TYLER?" Then he started talking to me as if we were friends and he didn't spend a year calling me Howdy Doody and then going to Boys State with me and ignoring me for a week. I remembered why I don't still live in Virginia.

We left the bar and, since I was drunky all over again, we shared lots of secrets, which sounded like a great idea at the time, but several hours later I realize that I should keep all of mine boxed up where only my troubled subconscious has access to them. And THEN we got back to her house to find that I had lost my phone. Well, I left it on the porch when we left and one of her neighbors took it inside. The problem, however, was that I had to leave at seven the next morning to make it back to Montross so I could go to church with my parents. Ouch. So we knocked on a few doors but were not successful, seeing as it was after two in the morning. So I wrapped up in a down comforter on her couch and called it a night.

I woke up this morning in a sweat because A. It's June in Virginia and it's hot and B. It's June, Virginia, hotness, down comforter, LEATHER COUCH. I went to throw off the comforter, only to find that I was only wearing underwear. Now, most of you who have read this blog know that I have issues and, while not a Never-Nude, I do have a No-Nudity Clause in my contract with life, meaning that I don't hang around without a shirt very often. To find myself in my friend's living room at six in the morning in grey briefs was rather shocking, and I quickly scrambled to get my pants and tshirt. Only to find that they were not there. At all. Now, because I had just gotten roughly four hours of sleep and I was hungover as hell, the only rational explanation I could come up with was that someone broke into Kristel's apartment, found me on the couch, and stole my clothes. This made perfect sense considering her door was unlocked.

When Kristel came out of her room at 6:45, I was sitting there in my underwear and a button-up shirt (which I had taken off before going to bed and left on the coffee table, and which the thieves surprisingly did not steal) and I said, "I have a problem." I told her the "situation" and she just stood there, baffled. I pointed out that the door was OPEN and OBVIOUSLY someone broke in, and she even walked into the hallway and looked down the stairs for anyone - what she was expecting to find, I'm not exactly sure. I started to freak out: first my phone, then my CLOTHES, and my wallet! Which was in my pants!

Then Kristel walked into her kitchen and shouted, "Found them!" My pants, tshirt, and socks were sitting on her kitchen counter. So obviously, these people broke in and decided to just fuck with me. It's the only explanation. Unless you believe in ghosts.

I'm ready to be back in Chicago where everything is normal.