happy 4th! a story of disaster.

a little lapse there. sorry about that. i hope you've all managed somehow. i had the stomach flu for a while. but i'm better now. i actually started taking it easy for a few days and got totally sick. so from now it's full bore party time. for my health!

day three of the flu bears repeating. i probably shouldn't post this here, but what the hell? it's not like more than five people read this thing anyways.

i was at about 80%, just starting to feel recovered, when i went to bartend at a wedding. let me tell you about this complete and utter disaster. the poor bride, i really felt sorry for her. i arrive and the caterer (and my boss) is nowhere to be found. hmmm... so guests are arriving in 30 minutes and nothing is on ice? excellent. wait, we don't have enough ice? oh, and we don't have any bottle openers. awesome. so i went and found a grocery store four blocks away and dragged a sleeve of ice back to the wedding. but where is the caterer?

turns out HE IS IN JAIL! oops. the bride is his ex, and he's catering the wedding as a favor. but he's in prison. wow.

so we get the bar all set up and then it turns out i haven't been hired to bartend, i've been hired to serve food. ugh. i make my way through the crowd with candied bacon and scallops and other fine dishes but everyone is complaining. where are the rest of the servers? why aren't you serving more food? bitch bitch bitch. this is SO not what i signed up for. the bride is bitching me out. her friends are bitching me out. i'm not running things people! leave me alone. i've got a splitting headache and am feeling weak from eating nothing but chicken soup for the last three days.

i overhear someone come up to the bar we'd scrambled to set up and say, wait, you guys, there's supposed to be another bar on the other side of the room. that was the last straw. i eat the last piece of tuna tartare on my plate, grab my bag and walk out the door. god, it felt good to bail out on that chaos.

so i think the lesson is, don't let your friends cater your wedding.

oh, here's the best part. turns out the guest list was all high-ranking staff at the new york times. check out this article!!