Today, in a matter of an hour or two, Lauren, Nick, and I are packing up and venturing 49 miles south to Faribault, Minnesota, home of dear friend C. M. Walsh. Since Walsh got his new job south of the metro, we’ve been trying to plan a weekend to go crash at his house and hit up the small-town bars. Sarah is already there, and I’m sure as soon as we arrive, the party will get started.
Faribault, (pronounced fair-i-BOH), is home to a crazy escapade from the summer of 2002, when Luke Katuin, Nick Olson, and I took a day off work to go get tattoos. I had planned on getting the bat from the Meat Loaf Bat Out of Hell album cover, but when I saw the look of remorse on Nick’s face after getting an evil clown tattoo on his leg, I backed down and settled for a Chargers lightning bolt on my right arm.
Yesterday after work, Lauren and I revisited the site of our first date, Chapati Indian Restaurant in Edina. I told the server we were celebrating our anniversary in hopes of getting something free, but I don’t think she understood what I was getting at! We ordered the “dinner for two,” which was so much food that we took half of it home and ate it for lunch today. We also purchased a fake 7′ Christmas tree, which we set up and decorated. We’re pretty festive around these parts!
This week, we get even more festive. Friday evening is the company Christmas party in Chaska. Lauren and I will go for dinner, but we’ve gotta break out early and head to downtown Minneapolis to be on hand for the second half of the 12 Bars of Christmas charitable pub crawl. Last year we had a ton of fun, but we still only made it to half the bars. Once 10:00 rolled around, the 250 people on the tour were so intoxicated that the group has kinda gone their own ways. So if we don’t even start until Bar #6, we should be all set to make it to #12.
And if you haven’t done so yet, be sure to vote for the Ryan Glanzer Big in 2008 Awards! I’m only going to keep the polling open for another week or so. So far, I’ve only recevied a disappointing 15 votes!
Ryan Glanzer Blog 
Great news. There are 491 people scheduled to attend the bar crawl. It should be awesome. Last year, I joined up at the 5th or 6th bar, and I was able to make it all the way to 12. I think I will do that again this year to avoid being too intoxicated to walk from bar 6 to bar 7.