This Is Not About Shot-a-palooza

I know that this burger was eaten on the same day as Shot-a-palooza, and I know that you probably would rather hear all the funny stories that happened, but it's just not going to happen. I don't think that these stories need to be immortalized on the web forever on a low-quality cheeseburger blog. Some of the people involved may need to get jobs someday, and these stories could compromise their hire-ability. You can thank me later.

Instead you get to hear some less funny stories about our trip to Ruby Tuesday. Still funny though.

My original plan was to have some pasta for dinner, but when I was offered the chance at a burger, I decided to take it. First off, our waiter talked way too quietly pretty much every time he was at the table. I had to base everything I said to him off of what other people said. Oh, Mom's ordering a water, so he must be asking if we want drinks. Why can't that guy just talk like a normal person?

I am not exactly sure what Mom got, but it included the salad bar. The only problem was that the guy either didn't tell her to head over to it, or he told her but said it super-quietly and she didn't hear it. Either way, she did not think that she should go up there, even though she was obviously allowed to as it was part of the order. Salad bar: 1, Mom: 0.

I went with the Boston Blue Burger because I wanted to make sure I didn't eat the exact same burger as last time and also because Matt ordered the Smokehouse Burger and I didn't want to be a copycat. It has onion rings, blue cheese, Boston barbecue sauce, lettuce, tomato, red onion and, unnecessarily, pickles. I forgot to check for those little dill bastards, so I ended up being slightly upset later. I really have to start reading the menu more carefully when I go places. On a positive note, I actually remembered to take a picture this time. Well, not so much remembered as was reminded, but either way, the picture happened. See?

And you guessed it; that's some Tabasco ketchup there in the middle. It also turns out that Ruby Tuesday has unlimited fries, but I didn't try to take advantage of that because I didn't want to have a full stomach for the evening's festivities.

That burger was pretty good! And it was actually cooked correctly again!! Maybe all these restaurants are reading these stories and realizing that medium-rare does not mean well done. Or maybe I've just been getting lucky lately.

After we ate, we ran over to Ocean State (which is apparently the unofficial thing to do after eating a Ruby Tuesday). As I was wearing a Lacoste shirt I got from Dad, I am almost positive that the most expensive thing in the store became my shirt as soon as I walked in the door. Take that, Ocean State!

You should ask some people about stories from Shot-a-palooza II. It was legen. . . wait for it. . . dary.

-Jon

Friday, We Hardly Knew Ye

Editor's note - I am way more intoxicated than I thought I was, so apologies in advance for when this doesn't make sense, slash is unreadable.

Today was a very full day. I left the house around 7:45, and, except for the 10 minutes I took to change from referee attire to public appearance attire, didn't return until 2:15am the night/morning after. It was almost like the entire day zipped by like a. . . zipper? Wait, that doesn't make any sense. Anyways, if this were a Facebook status update, it would read something like:

Woke up, taught math for a while, participated semi-appropriately in PD, officiated volleyball, then off to dinner at Paradise City and the Gaelic Storm concert followed by a few cocktails at the Lighthouse and blackout central.

Except that if it were me making the post, I would have made it more ridiculous and in-depth by indicating all the minutiae like going to the bathroom, sneezing, driving, etc.

I swear that when I started typing this, I had a point . . .

Oh right. I had a burger tonight!

Since Kathryn and I were going to a concert at the Calvin, it only made sense that we would eat dinner somewhere in Northampton. And after being foiled many times in my attempt to eat that burger with pulled pork, we went to Paradise City in order to fulfill my meat-based desires.

Ok, that sounds awkward.

I arrived first, so I snagged a table and ordered some random beers. I chose the Green Flash Hop Head Red Ale*, and got Kathryn something with watermelon. She liked hers, but it actually sucked, while mine was super hoppy and not too shabby. But more importantly, I got a burger with at least 2 animals on it. Take a look! That thing is gigantic!

Seriously, a burger nearly the size of a pint glass? That is wild. I think I may have discussed this burger in the past, so I won't dwell on the details, but I will touch on the major points. Those fries to the right of my burger? They sucked somethin' fierce. But Kathryn's fries (not visible in the picture, as they are behind my burger) were delicious. I apparently got the end of one batch while she got the firsts of the next. What the hell!? Does Kathryn write a blog solely dedicated to burgers?? No, she does not! Impress me, jerkoffs!!

Luckily for them, the burger was delicious. Even though the went a little too far with the cooking and hit the medium cooking range, it was still pretty juicy and did not resemble a piece of charcoal. And did you see the incredibly terrible picture Kathryn put on Facebook? I am clearly enjoying myself in my burger consumption. And there were two different onion options, including the highly coveted red onion! Can't really go wrong there.

In the long run, I will probably be stealing this burger idea for Burger Bros. Possibly coming soon to the Lighthouse! But even more possibly not coming soon.

Long story short: the burger was delicious, the fries sucked, Gaelic Storm put on a great show and Jager defeated me tonight in a close battle. Enjoy the weekend!

-Jon

* - This should be a link at some point. Please call/text/Facebook me and give me a hard time if it's not a link by Sunday, April 18th, because it means I have forgotten and need a swift kick in the pants to get me back on track.

All Sorts of Stories

Well, it's really only a couple stories, but they are fairly entertaining to me. Of course, I have the attention span and sense of humor of a 13-year old so that may explain a lot of it.

The annual birthday party of Nick took place yesterday, and it contained, among other things, grilled cheeseburgers. Or possibly grilled charcoal. Nick was a little bit intoxicated, so he may have possibly forgotten about the burgers for a while, which meant any burgers that were in the center of the grill looked a lot like Brillo pads. And I still ate two of them. I think I have a problem. . .

After eating those burger-like substances, I ended up getting into a few games of beer pong with James since either Nicole didn't want to play anymore or she was banned from the team for ineptitude. After a tough first game, we called for a rematch and things got real. We won the first game in fairly standard fashion, but it was game 2 that was truly impressive. In that game, we were able to both sink twice in a row (balls back!), and won the game in under 4 minutes. It was probably the greatest game of beer pong ever played (that night). Then we won a couple more games until things kind of wound down. Which leads to story number 2.

Nick has a pretty extensive bar in his (parents') basement. It's like being in an actual bar, just with better lighting. And I'm pretty sure this bar is the reason for the downfall of last night's beer pong, because after our last victory we found out that everyone was downstairs doing various shots. That's acceptable though, because shots are fun. The last one we ended up doing was a shot of absinthe, which I am fairly certain used to be illegal in the US. My guess is that it was banned because it is terrible. It was like bad licorice jelly beans, except the taste stays in your mouth. Plus I didn't even see any weird stuff like in Eurotrip. How silly.

Also, I am going to tell one more story even though it didn't happen last night, just because the main protagonist was at the party and that's good enough for me. Last week, or maybe the week before, or possibly sometime before that (the date is unimportant), we were at the Lighthouse enjoying a beer or 5 and just generally being silly. After a while, I decided it would be fun for Dan to talk to anyone around us, which ended up being a girl named Samantha. Despite all of Dan's charm, it just wasn't meant to be because after a while she finally told him that she had a boyfriend. His response was classic: "That's debatable." Since then, anything that is a fact we don't like has become debatable. Thanks, Dan.

-Jon