I am an idiot.

I am an idiot.

No, really.  That's all there is to it.  I'm an idiot who pretty much deserved what I got this weekend.  Well, most of it.  The brutal morning after recovery I'll own up to.  Having my phone stolen, well not so much that.  I recount this tale so that it--as so many other things in my life--may serve as a warning to others.

When the alarm went of at seven on Sunday morning I was three city blocks away from 100%.  Wrecked.  Still a little drunk, maybe. Well...probably not maybe.  Somehow I managed to down a small count of ibuprofen tablets before showering away the lingering feeling of filth with near scalding hot water.  Most striking in my memory from the night before was sitting on the floor of a toilet stall in The Stud praying that I'd vomit out whatever the hell it was in my stomach.  No such luck; I was firmly in the grasp of alcohol suffering.

Nobody starts out with the goal of taking up residence on the floor of a dive bar bathroom wishing they'd hurl the contents of their internals into a porcelain filing cabinet.  That's the sort of sad desperation that comes only with the realization that you've gone too far and that it's way too late to do anything about it. At that point all you can do is hold while the world swims and swoons around your clouded, stupid head.

How I got there is partially a tale of kindness.

Saturday had been fairly sedate; breakfast up in the mountains at Alice's, a trip to the Pick-N-Pull in Newark for E30 parts, some plumbing work to fix the broken supply line to one of my toilets at home.  All-in-all a pretty well accomplished day.  In the afternoon I caught a late lunch with a friend at The Brit before heading up to Frolic at The Stud in San Francisco in the evening.

Before heading up to The City I'd enjoyed a glass of Yamazaki (12-Year) while watching Wreck-It Ralph followed by a rum and Coke.  I wasn't the dedicated driver for the night, didn't really bother me to get a little light headed in the pre-game warmup.  At The Stud I ordered myself a vodka tonic which I nursed over the course of an hour followed by another rum and Coke which, again, I nursed over the course of an hour while doing the social thing.  By this point I'd a good head going but wasn't in the land of stupid drunk, more that happy medium place that I like to be in when I drink in social settings like Frolic. (When I'm not the dedicated driver.)

At some point somebody wandered up and handed me a beverage in a tall glass that looked like a Long Island.  I tried to politely turn down the offered beverage, I was in good shape and really didn't want the extra booze.  There was insistence in return so I felt at least a little obligated to drink a bit of the demonic concoction.  From previous experience I know that the way The Stud mixes Long Islands leads to an effect, I imagine, not too dissimilar to being hit by a freight train.

This is pretty much where everything for the evening went to shit.

Alcohol is my social drug of choice. The problem with alcohol is that as you drink more of it you tend not notice it as much in the beverages you're consuming, it reduces inhibitions, and impairs judgment.  All of this was solidly in play when the feeling of obligation to courtesy commanded me to at least give the drink a try.  Then half the glass was gone.  Then the other half.  Seemingly out of  nowhere I was in a not happy place.  It's safe to say I was rightly fucked up good and not one bit happy about it.

People were good about it, they recognized my distress and tried helped me.  There's only so much that can be done when you get to that point.  The booze is in you already and one way or another it's got to get either metabolized or ejected.  The only thing I wanted at that point was to be somewhere cool, not loud and not moving too much.  Vomiting was also on the list things I wanted if only to maybe purge myself of and alcohol not yet absorbed by my stomach lining.  That last part really wasn't to be, at least not until my dedicated driver got me safely home.

Sunday morning I was the very model of human wreckage that comes from accidental social binging, something I'm embarrassed to admit.  I shouldn't have let myself get that drunk.  I consciously knew that drinking that Long Island wasn't a good plan but did so anyway.  I've nobody to blame for my state but myself.  I'm an idiot and I admit it.

As the morning wore on a bit I couldn't find my phone.  Seemed that the phone was off and that wasn't right, I'd charged it up just before Frolic so it should have had a ton of power left.  Then I saw posts from friends friends who also had phones go missing at Frolic.  A bit more searching around the house while doing laundry revealed it to be truly gone so I did the remote nuke and pave dance.  If it ever gets turned on again it'll get erased and bricked.  I also changed all of my passwords which was kind of a pain directly in the ass.

It really bugs me to think that had I not gotten that trashed on Saturday night that I wouldn't have been a good target for the low-life oxygen thief who stole my phone.

I guess, after writing, this I don't really have a point other than to admit my own personal cock up and the consequences there of.  I expect I'll have to pay for the replacement of my phone out of pocket which won't be a happy thing.