My day started at 9:00am. Last night and this morning was a bear emotionally, so I really wasn’t in the mood for things like waking up. After kicking it with my current favorite energy drink, Full Throttle Unleaded, I began work on a client deliverable writeup for my consulting class. Nine hours later I started sending the file to my project team. Due to an email problem, I finally got it sent to them an hour later. Since I had forgotten to eat during my monster work session, I was glad that I had rallied my friends in advance to go see singer-songwriter extraordinaire Brien Barbour with me.

I showed up at Vines Bistro at about 7:45ish. I reserved a table the night before. That was a good decision, even though the place wasn’t nearly as busy as it was for last month’s show at the Vines. After a day of feeling stressed and like a loser, it was good to be greeted with a “This way to your table, Mr. Crawford.” Classy. I ordered a Yuengling, one of the two draft beers this fine Italian restaurant serves. Since I hadn’t eaten, I got a lot of buzz for the buck. I mulled over the menu and listened to Brien’s warm-up while waiting for my former co-workers Ricky and Sue to show up.

After they arrived, we chatted momentarily and ordered. Ricky and Sue both went with the special of the evening, lasagna for about $10 or $11. Not wanting to be like everyone else, I ordered the penne a la vodka (like I did last time I was at Vines). It was about $14 or $15 and one of the tastiest pieces of pasta I have ever had. Oh, yeah, I ordered my second beer too.

I knew that Ricky and Sue would totally dig Brien’s set. Ricky is a big fan of Celtic music and quite often shows up at social gatherings dressed in a kilt. He’s also got learning to play guitar on his lifetime to-do list. I figured he would appreciate the acoustical styling. Sue is an eclectic spirit who I figured would be taken back in time by covers from the Eagles, Billy Joel, the Mamas and the Papas, and Simon and Garfunkel. That, and being a chick, she would fall in love with Brien’s wit and golden voice. I loved the show, but was still feeling like shit from my nineteenth day of this vicious cold. The good part was that my hearing had returned. The bad part was my cough had drastically worsened.

All-in-all it was a great night. I said during dinner that if I died tonight, I would die happy. I would recommend Vines in a heartbeat if you’re a fan of Italian dining in North Carolina’s Triangle region. The food was great and the entertainment provided monthly by Brien Barbour is an asset. Good food, wonderful friends, and fine music — what else could you want?

And as usual, all of the evening’s exploits were recorded in photographic form on my Flickr profile.

Last night I went to the Dive Bar in Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s a hard-rocking heavy metal type of bar just off the corner of Glenwood Avenue and Hillsborough Street in the downtown area. I had a hard time finding it because it’s a small (yet pretty popular) venue. For those of you familiar with downtown Raleigh, it’s by Snoopy’s hot dog shop and the Char-Grill burger stand.

Once there, I noticed there were no windows. Not really a problem with me, but I had a thought that I would open the door and see something that I’ve never seen going on in a public bar. But it turned out to be kind of like bars that I’d been to during undergrad, except the people here looked more decidedly bad-ass. I walked in triumphantly, gave a “Hey, what’s happening?” to the guys at the door, and looked for my party. I was meeting Stephanie, James, and Niall for a night of rock. Luckily for me they were at the very opposite end of the bar wondering why I was thirty minutes late. The band must have started about forty or fifty minutes late, so I was kewl.

The first band was a group from Delaware called Thunderbrew. I liked them, although I wasn’t quite drunk enough or used to the sound of actual live music at a bar to appreciate them the way they should have been. The second band was called Automag. They were from somewhere in North Carolina and were kind of into the hillbilly, Southern Rock-metal style. Definitely worth a listen.

The worst part of the evening was that I left home without bringing extra batteries for my camera. This was kind of good because all of my pictures that I was able to take had this really wild look to them.

Actually, now that I think about it, the worst part of the evening happened when I was leaving the bar. I was completely sober, mind you, but I fell completely on my ass. Or maybe it was my face. I didn’t really know since it was kind of late, and I was disoriented from all of the lights. I almost took two or three guys out in the fall. I was kind of embarrassed, but since no bar fight erupted I guess they were cool with it.

For a complete pictorial of last night’s hellraising, be sure to check out the rest of my photos on my Flickr profile.

I spent most of today recovering from last night’s night out on the town. My friend and former co-worker from my college days, Neil, was in town for a week of training at Red Hat corporate headquarters.We started the evening off by visiting Neomonde, a Middle-Eastern eatery on Beryl street in Raleigh, North Carolina.

We then headed downtown for drinks. Originally, I thought that we might head to Tir-Na-Nog on Blount Street, but as we were driving back into the downtown area we passed a bar that I’ve wanted to go to for quite awhile — the Flying Saucer. I started out with a local brew called White Wolf Golden and we began chatting. Eventually, Neil called one of his colleagues who was also in town for training, Steve. Steve joined us shortly. It was kind of odd, they seemed to have worked together for awhile, but never actually met since both worked remotely. Neil worked from Colorado, while Steve worked from Massachusetts. This was a good opportunity to ask a lot of questions about life and culture in the Mountain West and the Northeast. I’ve never been to these parts of the country I’ve never visited, but felt these areas had a lot more in common with my personal and political views than the more authoritarian areas of North Carolina or the religiously conservative areas of the Midwest where I used to live.

I had a number of beers throughout the evening, but I knew that I was in trouble as soon as Neil opened up with a few rounds of shots. I wasn’t really down with the technical aspects of shots since I get confused with things pretty easily — you know, dropping a shot glass into a bigger glass and chugging. Shots soon led to darts. This seemed really dangerous, but I was too far gone to care.

There were a lot of high points during the evening. One of the crazy moments, though, was when Neil got the idea to call our old boss in Indiana. It was about 1pm and the fine folks at the Flying Saucer wanted us to leave. But we decided to do some drunk dialing anyway. Oddly enough, our boss picked up and talked for awhile. Neil and I decided that we’ll call him every time we get together at one of these bar outings.

I didn’t pass up the opportunity to take a few snapshots of the waitresses. Anyone who would so graciously put up with my drunken antics would definitely classify as a saint.