Wine Tasting, Denver and Misdemeanors...

Last Friday was the Annual Grape Expectations event for the Volunteer Center in Kalamazoo. A bunch of local restaurants showcase one or two of their dishes for guests to sample and Tiffany's Wine & Spirits showcases various wine from a specific country. This year was Italian wines. Last year was Spanish wines, and I think that I prefered those over the Italian wines. Although I did learn this year that I really like Chianti, which was pletiful at several tables.

This event was going to be a little on the awkward side since Amanda works for the Volunteer Center and we're trying to figure out if we can be friends. It was also going to be awkward because I talked Amanda into bringing out her new boyfriend for some drinks after the event.

The event itself was totally fine. Amanda and I are pretty comfortable around each other, so there's really nothing awkward about that. I was a little worried about meeting the new boyfriend, but he is a perfectly nice guy. My only dig against him is that he seems to be very boring. Maybe it's the fact that we were meeting for the first time, and it's probably not very easy to meet your girlfriend's ex. I'm willing to give the guy a chance. He likes hockey, so he can't be that bad, right?

On Saturday, I headed up to Muskegon to visit Kim. We've been planning a trip to Denver in June and we wanted to finalize plans and buy our tickets. Our original plan was to take the train. That would have been a 20 hour trip from Kzoo. Have you ever been on a train for 20 hours? I have. We went to Glacier National Park in Montana when I was in high school and it was a 24 hour trip. It gets mighty boring and cramped after a while. Anyway, we decided to check prices on taking a plane, and we found a flight that was just slightly more expensive than the train.

With the trip all planned out, it was time to commence drinking... at 1 pm! So we bar hopped for the rest of the day. We had great plans to cook some steaks at Kim's place, but by the time it was 8 pm, we realized that we were too drunk to be cooking anything. We went to this Mexican restaurant and I had the biggest burrito I've ever seen. It had chicken and steak and all these sauces. It was amazing. It really brought me back after drinking for 8 hours. So then we headed back to Kim's for some more low-key drinking. Upon getting there, we may or may not have noticed that the door to the vacant apartment next door to Kim was open, and we may or may not have gone inside and played some Caps followed by some drunk yoga. I called TJ, our friendly neighborhood Police Officer and asked him what the crime would be if someone hypothetically entered a vacant apartment with an open door. He repsonded that it would be Illegal Entry. So naturally we left the vacant apartment that we may or may not have been in and went back to Kim's for some SingStar action.

At about 1 am, Kim's ex-fiance (Jeremy) calls to see what we're doing. He was aparently playing Rock Band by himself and wondered if we wanted to play. Now I'm not a Jeremy fan. He was a MEGA-douche when he was engaged to Kim. Seriously, we were thinking about boycotting the wedding. Kim assured me that he was much better now and that he knew that there was no chance of him and Kim ever getting back together. I was willing to give him a second (more like 30th) chance. I was pleasantly surprised at how cool he was. We rocked out for the rest of the night until we looked at the clock and saw that it was 6 am. We decided to call it a night just on principal.

All in all, it was a pretty great weekend. Next weekend is shaping up to be great, too. Heading to Reed City on Friday before heading to Mesick on Saturday for Dave's play.

Oh, and I met someone on Chemistry.com. I don't want to jinx it, so more on that another time.