Friday night was a big day of holiday parties. Unfortunately, the two biggest of the season were scheduled for the same night, so I had to go to half of each. MB dismissed at 4 so everyone could prepare for the evening, which didn’t help me much since Lauren still had to work till 5. But we were among the first to arrive at the Oak Ridge Inn in Chaska for cocktail hour and dinner. Lauren and I chit-chatted with many co-workers. Lauren found common ground with our British manager who had grown up in Canada, while I wolfed down all I could stomach from the buffet line. I gotta say, it was damn good food!
We hated to disappoint, but we had to depart after dinner for the 12 Bars of Christmas bar crawl in downtown Minneapolis. It was on the calendar first, after all. There, we met Walsh and Sarah at the seventh bar. Since 491 people were on the tour (probably twice that many when you consider the people at the bars not on the tour) it was tough to fit 1,000 people into a tiny bar. So we stayed a couple bars ahead of the pace.
Soon, we ran into Patrick, Andrew, Steve, and Vincent, and we stationed ourselves at the 508 Bar, where we stayed for the rest of the night. Sarah and Lauren were both sick, so they and Walsh went home early, but I decided to stay out. I don’t hang out with that group as often as I used to. It was a good decision, as hilarity ensued. Patrick, wearing his awesome Christmas sweater that everyone loved, hit up the dance floor. Andrew kept sneaking up behind Patrick and pushing him into people. Patrick fired back by pushing Andrew into the crowd where he fell into a sea of people. We all came back to our house at 1:30 and the gang crashed here instead of driving home wildly intoxicated.
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