Good-byes, Mexican food, basketball, Lone Star, sleep, urban honkies, dial-up, and other blogging obstacles
[WARNING: Longest post ever.]


Back from San Antone, finally. Each night during the break, by the time I'd checked my email, my fantasy basketball team, and my usual round of blogs, I was so sick of dial-up that I didn't feel like posting. Suddenly, I'd been out of the game for two weeks. Tonight, then, I binge on everything you'd expect from Mr. Wright: dozens of pictures, rambling updates, whining about girls, Mexican food snobbery, and maybe even a little politics. So sit back, give the page some time to load, and then make fun of me in the comments.

As most of you know, I entertained my friend Lynnette from South Africa for almost all of December. It was grand. We kicked it with my parents and other friends from our church days. We also hung out a lot with a couple of Lynnette's old high school friends, Susan and Zach.



Interestingly, Susan studies lawn care at Harvard. Seriously, it's a grad program with a small enrollment, but the skill set is in high demand. Among other things, she'll eventually be able to manage any high level golf course or tennis court and, less obviously, know how to help clean up polluted ecosystems, like at Superfund sites.

Susan's family owns a big chunk of property just west of S.A., where her dad is building a two-story house from the ground up by hand. If that wasn't impressive enough, they've already decked out the place with a pool table, a pinball machine, a fooseball table, and a skeeball machine.

The competition at skeeball was intense. My friend Jason, in particular, really got into it.



Shit was talked and tempers flared.



But after a few beers everyone settled down and had a good time.



Lynnette shopped like mad while she was here. I got dragged along when her sister wanted a cowboy hat and some boots.



For Christmas, Lynnette came with us to Katy, where 3/4 of my mom's side of the family met up. My cousin Mickey got the George Bush flight suit doll from his mom, my aunt Susan. She bought it because Bush landed on the aircraft carrier that's in Mickey's fleet, and that was "such a historical moment."



Also, in case you missed out, these 3-D glasses were the hot item this holiday season. Whenever you stare at a light source, liks a street light, little images appeared floating next it. Hard to explain, but they really kicked ass.



Then came New Year's at the Red House, which was almost a giant flop. A bunch of friends from S.A. that I thought were coming up bailed on me, and the girls upstairs decided not to have their party and never informed me. So at one point, we had a keg and more bottles of champagne than partygoers. But Grady got on the horn and rounded some people up, and the upstairs ladies invited a few people over, so in the end we had a nice, small, raucous party, and many, many people got smashed.



Adam showed up and was true to form.





We banged pots and hollered a lot from our roof at midnight.



The girls from upstairs talked me into wearing a pair of leopard skin man-panties, or "manties." If you'll notice, I'm holding a bottle of Andre champagne in my right hand, the Cold Duck variety. It's kind of grape flavored in a delicious sort of way. At $3 a bottle, this stuff's trouble.



This is Autumn from upstairs. Somehow resisting the power of the manties, she still didn't want to cheat on her boyfriend with me. She also carried a snake around with her for much of the evening, although I don't know why.



The next day, my friend Jason Roberts, not to be confused with Jason Willome, had a bonfire out at his parent's place in Castroville. On their land are some old stone quarries, about 25 feet deep, which form the perfect setting for a night filled with fire, booze, and hot dogs. The fire was damn hot, so special arrangements had to be made.



A few days later we went to Jason Willome's parents' lakehouse next to Medina Lake. His family also built the house by hand, working on the place for over a decade, and transforming it from a cabin to a two-story, four-bedroom, beauty of a home.

We saw Lynnette off on the 6th, spending the last few nights she was here just relaxing and hanging out, usually around the house, like old times. On the way to the airport we stopped for lunch at La Madeleine, which was unremarkable except for this photo of Jason Willome.



Saying good-bye to Lynnette wasn't nearly as tearful as I'd expected. While I hated to see her go, her visit had reassured me that no matter how long we're apart, we'll be the kind of friends who are always close and who can always pick up where we left off. Cheesy, I know, but it's still very comforting to know this when you're at the airport with a person you won't see again for years.

After Lynnette left, I spent the next week or so catching up with some S.A. buds I hadn't gotten to see over the break. Some of you may know John Hilburn, the "gayest straight man alive," as Louis calls him.



I spent the majority of that week, though, hanging out with Grady and his friends. We did some drinking.



And we combined it with Taboo.



The girl scolding me is one of Grady's many hot friends. At 20, she's among the older ones. Too bad she's dating some douchebag 26-year-old. I can't even get to 'em when they're young. On the plus side, she's one of the only ones Grady hasn't already made out with. Over the break we also met up with one of Lynnette's younger sister's friends, whom Grady and I hadn't seen in years. Needless to say, now she's hot as shit. Back in the day, she and I used to play a lot of basketball at church youth group, and it turns out she still plays ball. When she told me that she owned a bunch of And 1 streetball mix-tapes, I was pretty smitten with her, despite feeling like a dirty old man. That was one of the hottest things I'd ever heard. She got back with her ex a few days after Lynnette left, I think.

Anyways, we played a lot of basketball that week.



I also hung out with my parents quite a bit, which was nice because they bought all my meals. We also took advantage of January's spring weather to play some bocce ball.



Now, it wouldn't be San Antonio without Mexican food. Many of you have heard me tell of the illustrious King Kong nachos. Behold...



As a point of reference, that's a normal size bowl of queso smushed on top of that heap. It took five or six of us to take that thing out, and we were drunk.



One night we went to one of S.A.'s classier Mexican joints, complete with mariachis and everything.





They had some of the best margaritas and fajitas I'd ever had. It was the perfect start to what should have been a very pleasant evening. But then the stupid fucking urban honkies had to fuck everything up. After dinner, I met up with my friend Luke, and he came with us to some party Grady knew about. It ended a little after 11:00; they do things on a slightly different schedule in S.A. Luke and I had Grady drop us off at a bar with some friends, and we drank there until closing time. Luke's brother Zach was giving us a ride home, but I called Grady and found out that he was at another party near the bar. Zach dropped Luke and me off, and we hung out at this other party for about 45 minutes until it got too crowded and the owners kicked everyone out.

Me, Luke, Grady, and our friends were among the first people out of the party, but we had to mill around in the parking lot for several minutes because one of the girls had left her camera inside. By the time she came out of the apartment, everyone else from the party was in the parking lot, heading to their cars. We were a seat short, and as we walked to the car, I asked Luke if he wanted me to ride in the very back of the Xterra. He said that he didn't mind, and I climbed in the back seat. As I got in, I turned around to ask Luke if he needed me to close the back door for him, but I saw that he was reaching up to grab the strap on the inside of the door (there's no inside latch). I turned back around and heard the door shut behind me. Grady put the car in reverse, but before we could begin backing out, the back door opened and I heard a bunch of people yelling. I wheeled around and saw that Luke wasn't in the back anymore, and I could hear what sounded like a fight coming from behind the car.

All in one motion, I pulled my camera out of my pocket, set it on the seat, and jumped out of the car. I came around the back and found at least three, if not as many as six, guys I didn't know trying to beat Luke up. I grabbed the guy who seemed to be sitting on top of Luke around his shoulders and tried to pull him off, but someone behind me shoved me down. As I tried to stand up, I looked down and found some dude with a shaved head lying on my legs, trying to come at me. I didn't know what the hell was going on, but by this point people had rushed in from all around the parking lot to break up the "fight," and we were separated. My friend Chris helped me up, and I could see Luke stumbling around like he had a concussion. I was so pissed off and confused that I kept yelling stuff like, "What the fuck just happened?" and "Who the fuck did this?" over and over. Chris pushed me toward the car, saying that there was an off-duty sheriff there. I look to my right and see a middle-aged black lady in the middle of all these people, yelling at everyone to get out of there.

I get back into the car, where Grady's cussing, and the girls in the car are crying quietly, and Luke's trying to open the back door again for some reason. Grady's saying something about how he hates some guy named Mencka or some shit and that they do this kind of stuff all the time. We're trying to leave, but the dipshits who started it all are parked between us and the exit, and their big ass diesel pickups can't all back out at once, although they don't realize this since they're drunk. Finally, after they run into each other at least once, everything gets sorted out. While we were waiting, Grady said that the "fight" had started because when Luke reached up to grab the strap on the inside of the door, the guy that attacked him thought Luke gave him the finger. That was it. We hadn't even so much as talked to any of those guys at any point in the night.

Well, we all pull out, and us and the three trucks are waiting at a stoplight when a bunch of cop cars come flying around the corner. The first one u-turns, pulls up behind us, and hits his lights. All of the other cars stop around us, too, while the trucks drive away. Turns out, the sheriff lady had reported that we were kidnapping Luke in the back of the Xterra, which was why so many cops showed up and why they singled us out. They come rushing up to the car and tell Grady to get out and put his hands up, and we all have to put our hands up. After they open the back and Luke explains the misunderstanding to them, they all seem a little peeved at the false alarm, so they start giving us a bunch of shit, making jokes at our expense and being assholes in general.

They tell Grady they smell booze on his breath, and then they dig around in the back a bit and find some Bicardi bottled drinks in a bag someone had left back there. Even though the drinks were unopened and sitting next to Luke, who's over 21, they still threaten Luke and me with charges of distributing to minors, before giving all of the minors in the car MIPs. Then we have to call Zach to come pick us up. Turns out, most of Luke's injuries came from the initial fall, as you can see from this dirty scrape.



If any one of about a dozen things had gone differently that night, this whole problem could have been avoided. Instead, we all got fucked while the dipshit who attacked us drove away right in front of the cops. Luckily, Grady and his friends know the guys who did this, and we're going to prosecute the shit out of them.

So that whole ordeal kept me in San Antonio for a few extra days, as I wrote up my account of it and got Luke the contact information he needed for the witnesses and all that. The only upside to all this, besides a few more free meals, was that I did get this picture while running errands the day before I came back, and I think it's pretty sweet.



Long story short for the whole break: I really love my new camera.