new years eve

spent new years eve at Heather's. the whole evening went by pretty quick — which is appropriate since 2003 just absolutely flew by. i got there at around 6:30, bringing along 6 bottles of Newcastle with me. after showing me around her place (we had joked about which one of us has smaller rooms, and i think we're about the same. heh), we headed out to find a place to cash her paycheck, and get some food and booze. we walked since it would be easier to get around that way, and gave me a better chance to check out the area (Hillcrest). i dig it. lots of shops and all kinds of restaurants within walking distance. cool vibe — kinda reminded me of santa monica / venice up in LA, but all within walking distance of each other. we found a place that cashed her paycheck, and looked around for some liquor. we ended up getting a bottle of vodka, 2 six-packs of Sparks, and a 4-pack of Kahlua mudslides. next was fooood! Heather asked me what i was in the mood for since according to her, they had pretty much anything in the area. i called her on it and said i was in the mood for Armenian food. turns out there aren't any Armenian places around there. heh… (i might have to kidnap her one of these days and go to Zankou's up in LA for some killer chicken). my 2nd choice was chinese, so we found this place… i forgot what it was called. something Wok. after that we headed back to her place, and Heather's friend Joey was already there along with his friend Alysa. Heather and I start eating our food and that's when i realized i shouldn't have ordered the Kung Pao chicken. it was tasty but daaaamn hot — made me sweat like a crazy mofo. i think it was around this point when we took our first shot of the night. Grey Goose. gooood stuff. chased it down with some Sparks. we watched some TV, switching between all the music video channels. Drain The Blood played which made our night. i told Heather to tell her wife Brody to stop looking so hot. tried looking for Heather's and Joey's friend Katie on TV, who was in NYC that night. i talked to Alysa for a bit. got a huge compliment when she tried to guess my age and thought i was 22!! ha! i wish! but it's great to hear that i could pull that off (check out my user info if you wanna do the math and figure out what an old guy i really am). a Pearl Jam video played and i got really stoked when i found out she was a Pearl Jam fan. there are people who like their music, but there's not that many PJ fans around. so that pretty much opened the floodgates and i shared my PJ stories. we were talking about our favorite PJ songs and for some reason, i couldn't remember the name “Save You”. i was mentally playing the CD in my head and the best i could do was say “track 2 off Riot Act”. oy, how embarassing. i'm blaming the shots. time flew by some more and we were all counting down to midnight, and then we all went outside and lit up some sparklers that Joey had saved from July 4th and used them to draw some things on the street. Alysa and I raced down the hill with our “torches”. i think i won..? we commented on how eerily quiet it was outside and Joey did another one of his inward-screaming Raptor-sounding screams. we went back inside, drank some more. took another shot celebrating Brody's bday. i think this was the shot that brought me over from buzzed to silly-drunk. Alysa took the bottle cap from my Newcastle and read something from the bottom of it, and i said “oh, is that gonna be your motto for this year?” she said yeah and i wanted one of my own, but i was too lazy (or drunk?) to get another bottle. Joey was a bitch (ha!) and didn't get one for me, so Alysa picked up this Maxim mag on the table and said my motto would be found there. we flipped through the mag and as we were nearing the end of the mag (i used to subscribe and they always try to sell / tell you what's cool towards the end) and i settled on “Cheese is not for wearing.” you heard that right. that's my motto for 2004. Cheese? Don't wear it, Eric. there was this quiz thingy on the last page and she quizzed me on it. i don't remember a thing about it, other than I answered “C” a lot. i think it was around 3am when things were starting to slow down and got tired. Alysa wanted to watch a movie so she popped in American Beauty. i fell asleep and woke up during the middle of the flick. i looked over and saw that Alysa was sleeping so i managed to figure out the array of 20 remote controls on the table, turned everything off and went back to sleep on the couch. woke up at around 8. heard Heather coughing in the bathroom. turns out she was throwing up. she came out and told me that she didn't get any sleep, felt like crap and took some ibuprofen, which gave her an upset stomach, and threw up from that, which made her throw the medicine back up, and took some more pills. i felt sooooo bad for her, and in hindsight, i should have offered to make a run down the street to get some aspirin or something that wouldn't fuck with her stomach. =/ i left shortly after that, and went back up to my place and crashed for a bit and then made the drive up to my parents house to pick up registration tags for my truck. i'm still here in LA. sucks cuz it's raining right now, and all i brought to wear were shorts and a t-shirt. dreading the day i have to go back to work. had such a good time just hanging out with friends and not having to worry about work for an extended amount of time is the best (i've been off for over a week now). i can see it now — i am going to be such a whiny little bitch when i get back to work. >=O