New Years

The Build Up
I left Wednesday morning for Maryland and the New Years party. I got off to a later start than I wanted too because I left Sarah's gift at home and had to run back and get it after having coffee with Dad. I went via Richmond to pick up Kate. It was just her and I in the car. David didn't want to come with us thankfully. More on that later. We went up 301 instead of 95 to Annapolis. I'm not sure if it was faster because there was a lot of traffic. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to figure it out when visiting Troy while living at Ox's. We got there around 7 or 8 and went to dinner. The rest of Wednesday and Thursday were spent cleaning and getting ready for the party. Kate was spending time with Scott while he was fixing her computer. Which was really really socked. I think age had something to do with it in addition to the problems that Scott found on it. So she was mostly busy. Sarah was cleaning hard and was also sick. She caught a cold from being around a lot of sick people who smoked at Troy's in Alabama. She sounded pretty bad but was working hard. I just wanted to hug her and hold her, but I know she doesn't like to be touched a lot when she's sick. So I just did the best I could to help her out with stuff. I really hate that feeling of watching a friend suffer and not be able to do anything about it. Especially a friend as dear as Sarah. She made me some drinks on Wednesday night, she likes being creative with the booze. I had a couple of shots and a mixed drink that she made. I didn't get the least bit tipsy or buzzed, and it seemed to help her lighten up a little so it was good. Kate and I slept in the backroom on the bunk bed. We were really really tired so we didn't get tooooo frisky. Baron Vlad got there on Thursday and he brought Blenhiem Ginger Ale for Troy. I immediatly stole it!! I love that stuff.

The Party
On Friday people started to arrive. Everyone was there. We spent the morning getting things ready. Troy has lots of crap that he had to take care of. In the end everything was great. Audrey, the live in roommate of Troy, Sarah, and Scott flew in that afternoon. It was nice to finally meet her, I'd heard a lot about her from Troy and Sarah. She turned out to be really sweet, and a lot wild when she got drunk. Before the party really got started a bunch of us went out shopping for shiny things to wear. Apparently shiny is 'out' this year. There was literally nothing shiny for guys. We went to two stores and the mall(one of the stores was a craft store where we found shiny things and contemplated gluing them to ourselves). David found a pair of shiny boxers to wear. Baron Vlad found some too but the wore them differently. I couldn't find anything so I decided to wear the chinese style shirt that Troy bought for me in Shanghai. It was shiny enough and all the girls loved it so I was happy. When everyone was around Kate finally gave me my birthday present. It was a gift certificate to Best Buy.....for $300!!! She got lots of people to contribute money and they all signed a fuzzy teddy bear with a sharpy instead of a card. I am supposed to either get an iPod or a PDA. I'm still torn at this point. On one hand I want a Zire 72, on the other hand I want an iPod. And on the third hand I want to save up and get the Tungsten 5, which is just a sick top of the line toy. I'll make up my mind soon. The party started around 9 I think, and at first it was pretty lame. The music wasn't that cool and when I would go out on the dance floor it wasn't very fun. I wasn't dancing specifically with anyone, I like to dance with everyone. This is of course excluding dancing with Kate whom I did get a nice slow dance with and we danced to a couple of our favorite songs by the Rednex. But when I wasn't dancing with her I would get cut off on the dance floor. What I mean by that is that either a large person, or a desparate person(or both), or David would cut in front of me. David was especially gross because he was only wearing his gold boxers and this really ugly tight-fitting green shirt. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to hog the girls, I wasn't mad because they were dancing with other guys or anything silly like that. It was the getting cut off that I was annoyed with. It was just kind of rude, especially because I didn't really want to dance with Ox, or with David's junk all hanging out. So I schmoozed upstairs for a while talked to a lot of people, helped Sarah play host for a while. As I started doing that I started getting more busy because neither Troy or Scott were around to play host. So I got kinda wrapped up for a while. Then I went downstairs to pick out a play list and things were better. A lot of people were disturbed by David, especially as he got more drunk and more frisky. People complained and both Troy and Sarah pulled him aside and told him to put pants on. He refused saying he would be too hot or some bullshit like that. Anyway Lauren a sweetheart(even if she is from UVA) was there again. I have seen her exactly three times, at the last three new years parties. We chat a good bit during the year and I helped her with her website. But she goes to Pennsic and the New Years party with this group and that's about it. Anyway she was dancing with David for a while and he started to do some silly things like put glow sticks down her bra with his teeth. And he was hanging pretty much all over her while dancing(probably typical Rocky Horror party stuff but I can't say for sure). She was smiling for most of it but seemed a tad uncomfortable. She didn't say anything to him so I figured everything was ok. I asked her about it when she was getting a drink and she gave me a look that said she was really not happy. So I told her to come dance with me and maybe he would back off. David saw us and immediately came over and started trying to cut me out. Even going up behind her and grinding on her while we were basically close enough to be hugging. I was really disgusted(boxers remember). So I asked her if she wanted to go upstairs and get some fresh air. We went up and got some food and some water to drink(she was having some Mike's Cranberry stuff). He followed us up a couple of seconds later and while she and I were talking he proceeded to start bad mouthing me to other people in the living room. I could hear a little bit of what was being said and it wasn't nice. It was ok though because everyone in the living room was a friend of Scott's or Troy's from work and didn't know who I was. Bryan Hey was up there though but by the time David started talking to Bryan he couldn't talk straight. So Bryan didn't know what he was talking about. After that we went back downstairs and I told Big Kate what was going on so she started to dance with Lauren too. And I figured everything would be all right from that point. So I went to try and find Little Kate. She was in the back with some guy who was drunk off his ass and she was taking care of him. That was fine, she seemed to be ok and likes taking care of people so I went to find other things to do. At midnight we all toasted and gave new years kisses. There were no record breaking kisses from Sylvy and Brianna like last year though. After that we started dancing again, but by this point there weren't many good songs left. I could think of some good ones but Troy didn't have them. He has tons of weirdo goth metal but no fun dance songs. And you can't dance to Ramstein forever. It was about this point that I noticed Lauren in the corner being drooled on by David(literally). I gave her a look to see if she was ok and she gave me a look back that said no she wasn't. So I found a song that everyone would like and told Big Kate to go drag Lauren over to dance. We got out there on the floor and Lauren and I started to dance with Julie and Big Kate around us(Ludwig was there too I think). At this point he started trying to cut in again and rubbing basically all over her. He then started licking the small of her back(which was exposed). At that point there was a swell in the music so I put my arm around her shoulders and spun her around. He followed and literally tried to pull my hands off of her. At that point I told him to stop. And he responded by saying "come on Jeremy, what the fuck?". I said "we're dancing, chill out" and he said something like " W W W whatthefuck .com, don't you already have a girl?" So I pushed Lauren away towards Big Kate and Julie and faced David and told him to back off. He got right up in my face....kinda, he was really drunk and his head was bobbing and moving sideways. It was hard to understand exactly what he was saying but basically I told him that she wanted him to back off. He said that she didn’t say anything like that to him and that I just wanted her for myself or something to that effect. Somewhere in there he started pushing on me and we started to tussle. He grabbed my wrists and I pushed him backwards by his arms. Then he ducked down and tried to shove his shoulder into my stomach in kind of a football tackle. I pushed him back up instead of punching him or elbowing him in the head like I was severly tempted to do. And Big Kate grabbed him too and we kind of held him there. Then Lauren stepped in and told him to back off in a very clear way. He kinda sagged at this point and muttered something to me about being sorry. Ragnarr then grabbed him and they went out for some fresh air. I was really pissed at him and well I still am I guess. Poor Lauren she can’t seem to come to a party with us and not get molested. The rest of the party was tame thankfully. Sarah finally finished with some stuff and came down to dance. But her playlist had already been played at that point. Everyone else was kind of crashing and winding down. Kate was still in the back room which sucked because of how much of the party she missed. I went out and danced with Sarah during her songs so that she’d have someone to dance with. I managed to pull some other people up too but everyone was exhausted. After that things started winding down a good bit and people started to get ready for bed. There weren’t as many people sleeping at the house this year thankfully so everyone had enough space. I saw that big Kate and Lauren were cuddled up so I didn’t have to worry about anybody bothering them. When we finally did get to bed there were three other people in our room. I didn’t think it would bother me since I was so tired, but one of them snored really loud. It was the drunk ass guy that Kate had taken care of. I tried to fall asleep but found that I couldn’t. It was weird, normally noise doesn’t bother me when I’m that tired but this did. Around 5:30 or 6 I couldn’t take it any more and went down and kicked him until he was awake. I told him to roll over because he was snoring. I think he was pissed but I didn’t care. Overall it was a great party. Ludwig thought so too, he was macking like there was no tomorrow. I’m glad he is getting to be part of the group, that means I’ll have a better chance of seeing him after I move.

The Aftermath
The next day we got up a little after noon and took our time waking up. Antonio, Thomas, and Sylvie were hankering to do some fencing. And they wouldn’t go out there until I went, it was kinda cool that they were waiting on me. We managed to dig up some gear for Ludwig who is coming along nicely and will be really good some day. I fought Sylvie for a while but she was out of practice and doesn’t like epee so I dominated her. We all had some nice picups, Baron Vlad and Rags came out and played too. I love my new gloves they are so sweet it’s not even funny. After that we did some melee stuff in the road. There wasn’t a lot of room and the sun was a big factor but we had some good times. I actually managed to double kill with Connor one time which was nice. And I got a compliment from Sir Vlad for being aggressive. After five or six rounds it degenerated in to Troy and Bri teaching melee tactics. Then we went to Ground Round for dinner. Kate had said that she wanted to go there so I put the bug in Troy’s ear and everyone else liked the idea too. Sir Vlad bought Kate and I dinner which was sooo nice of him. He was actually a lot of fun this party. He can be annoying sometimes but he was much cooler than before. The rest of the time at Troys was spent playing video and or card games and chilling out. I think this was my favorite part of the weekend. Everyone was really relaxed. Kate and I left a lot later than we planned on Sunday, but that was ok she got home in plenty of time to sleep. She had to go to work at her ridiculous out the next day. The drive home from Richmond was really long. I don’t know why, maybe I need some new music. I should find some books on CD, that would be cool.

On Monday I worked until 4:30 then headed back to Richmond to watch the game. Well it turned out to be a painful trip. I had just done waaaaaay to much driving that weekend. The game was a good one, some silly mistakes on our part put the game out of our reach despite an 80 yard TD pass near the end of the game. I got to see Kate again which was nce. And Vlad brought me another bottle of Blenhiem so I was happy. I stayed up pretty late after the game talking to Thomas and Kate’s friend Heather(I think that was her name). This morning I left Ox’s at about 9, an hour after I planned on it. About half an hour down the road I realized that I had forgotten my phone. So I had to go all the way back and get it. Which put me at work around 2. Which didn’t matter much because there wasn’t anything to do anyway. Whew that was a long post. I’m sure I forgot something, a lot of things probably but that’s all I have time for now. Take care.