Weekend of Mar 11th – Mar 13th
Friday – Friday evening was the celebration for Stef’s birthday.  Her actual birthday had been on the previous Tuesday, after we had all gotten back from Vegas, and I had done a fair job of ignoring everything having to do with said birthday.  However, I was told that one of her friends was planning on going to the bar-hopping section of the party; not generally something I would care about except for the fact that said friend had told Stef “If you don’t jump Ben, I will”… And thus I planned on making an appearance in hopes of meeting this Nicole.Well, life never works out right, does it?  After about 20min of trying to talk to “Nicole”, I found out that she hadn’t shown up, and the girl I was talking to was some other friend of Stef’s who’s nearly engaged to her boyfriend (who was by far the most entertaining guy there, aside from myself).  After that Bombshell I took my leave (with Mike, since he had agreed to wing for me that night), and headed out.  We stopped in at City Bar to case the joint quick, then headed out to Fanieul Hall to find Dave.We finally parked and headed to Clarke’s, the bar that Dave and his dorm were partying in after a night at the Improv Asylum.  First thing I did was head towards the bathroom, but I was intercepted by a rather annoyingly drunk guy, who jumped infront of me and started yelling when I bumped into him.  Now, I’m not an extremely aggressive type of guy, but I am extremely stubborn.  And if someone tells me to fuck off, I tell them to stop being a pussy and just wear a tampon.  That… didn’t go over well, and he bumped himself into me again.  Again, I informed him of where he could shove his head, at which point he pushed into me a third time.  By that point, I’d had enough, and actually put my shoulder and elbow into pushing him away, knocking him back a few feet.  And, it turns out, alerting his friend, a bouncer, that I wasn’t backing down.  The bouncer reached over, and tried to grab me by the shirt while telling me I had to leave.  I didn’t let him touch me, but he also made it very clear that I was going to leave, either under my own power or by flying through the door, propelled by him and his friends.  So I left Clarke’s, chalking it up as a win since that was the first time I had been fully kicked out of a bar for fighting.  Really, the first time I had been kicked out at all, as far as I remember…  But anyways, that brought Mike and I into an awkward situation; our friends were inside, and we were not.  So we headed over to an Oyster Bar that we had seen earlier, since it had a live band doing a pretty good Eagles cover, and chilled out for a bit until Dave got back to us, telling us to meet them at a new bar called the Purple Shamrock.This didn’t fare any better than the previous bar, but for a completely differant reason; the closed the doors right as Mike and I got there, very effectively locking us out of the party yet again.  After a few minutes of searching for a new bar we threw in the towell and headed home, planning on hanging out for a Scotch Night later on in the week.
Saturday – Saturday started nice and slowly, when I woke up at around 13:00.  I vegged out for a bit, making myself some quick lunch and playing a quick game of Starcraft, after which I packed up my gear and headed over to Quincy Quarries to meet with Daniel, Stef, Rebecca, Brian, and Erin.  Erin was back up from Las Vegas for the week, so Daniel and I had promised to take her climbing on Saturday, and the weather didn’t disappoint; it was perfectly sunny and just warm enough that a heavy jacket wasn’t necessary.  When I got there Daniel had set up a 5.10b, which no one besides Stef and Himself could do, so I quickly set up one of my all-time favorite routes at Quincy: Sorority Rock. This climb was named after the heel-hook move that helps people get over the small roof, causing them to apparently hump the rock.  One person makes it funny… Ten people in a row makes it a sorority slut.  Hence the new name to the old climb.  Nearly everyone got a chance to climb the route, which starts with a good bit of manteling and delicate toe-work and then moves into a beautiful roof with a few good juggy buckets to help the afforementioned Heel-Hook.  But, by the time everyone had been on Sorority, the sun was already setting and the wind was starting to bite through my jacket… so we packed up our gear and headed back towards Boston.I drove back solo; my night was taking me to Rosie’s apartment for her “World Famous Trivia Night” party.  I picked up some party supplies, in the form of extra food for dinner, and arrived at Rosie and Wills place almost exactly as dinner was finished.  They had cooked up pasta with red sauce, chicken sausages, seasoned beef, and steamed broccoli to go with the impressive array of beers, wines, and sodas that were arranged on the table.  We all ate and chatted about pretty much everything for an hour or two, generally enjoying the meal and the entertaining company.  No offence to my normal groups of friends, but hanging out with Rosie and Co is really a refreshing change of pace; while me and my friends are recent graduates or still finishing school, most of Rosie’s group have graduated with advanced degrees and are either doctors, or professors / teachers.  Its a fairly subtle change (and means that pretty much everyone is in a long-term relationship), but its nice to have people who are in a higher age group again… Conversation topics don’t change as much as you’d think, but their a lot more introspective and crazy, leaning on lots of good life stories.Trivia Night started around eight, when we were “randomly” assigned to teams.  Randomly meaning some people were actually random, and a few couples cheated their way into being on the same teams… but we finished it all out and finally decided on who would be on what team, and with whom.  Trivia started off good for my team, where I was able to guess that a group of porcupines is called a “Prickle”, and a “Height” is a group of Giraffes, among other things.  The night degenerated as two of the teams started showing their trivia muscles, racking up a depressing DOUBLE what my team was able to score.  But we all had fun, and ended the Trivia with some more relaxing and drinking, while talking about random subjects of the day (some of which included the “fun” of firing people, what its like to teach pregnant pre-teen girls, and some funny stories from Physics classes at Northeastern).After Rosies party I headed to Cambridge to meet Mike, Maureen, Big T, (and a random couch-surfer who was staying at T’s place) at a bar called Foundry.  I started the night by talking to an older woman at the bar for about 10min, getting to know about her and what the nightlife in Davis is like.  After I got my drinks I headed back to the table, and shot the shit with everyone for a bit longer.  At one point Mike and I have a fairly entertaining conversation with the girls at the next table; it all started with an argument about whether or not Brookline was part of Boston or not, and escalated when I told Mike to just ask the girls behind us.  “Why don’t you ask?”  He countered, at which point I pushed away from the table, slid my chair over, and started talking with them.Turns out they were from all over the country, one from Texas (with a cuper-cute accent), two from Maine, and one from Vermont.  We talked through whether or not Brookline was part of Boston, started into the “its so wierd having smart phones” thing, Mike joined in for a bit with the “Bullshit, its TOTALLY it’s own town” follow-through, and we generally had a fun time.  The girls were a bit standoff-ish though, so in the end I excused myself, and went back to hanging out with everyone else.  Once the bar closed up we kicked it at Mikes place for about an hour; the guitar kept swapping hands between Mike, myself, and Maureen and T’s couch-surfer, with me getting completely owned by the two of them jamming out.  At around 4:00 (thanks, daylight savings time!) everyone headed home, and I finally got some much-needed sleep.
Sunday – Sunday was pretty much a failure of a “get stuff done” day, and a resounding success of a “relax and get a few things done”.  I vegged around the house, took a long walk to find a good steak and cheese (and then ate in on the way back), put some pictures together for my photo-book, and cleaned my Bike up.  The bike-cleaning was really the keynote of the day, since I had to take two heavy scrubbers and a power-washing-hose to the bike in order to get all the dirt and grime off of it.  In the end it was amazingly beautiful though; just as clean and shiny as when I first picked it up from EMS.  After finishing, I walked around a bit more, and then headed inside for some extra-vegging.I did do some grocery shopping too, but the majority of my day (after walking and cleaning the bike) was taken up chilling out, making cool cocktails, and playing video games.  every once in a while I need a really low-key day, where I take random naps and just do whatever I feel like at the time… especially after a week of insane California adventure.  Time flew by, as it tends to do, and I ended up crashing fairly early, after spending some time talking to friends on Skype and catching up with people on Facebook.