The Night Before The Elections

I abruptly ended my previous post because of dinner. Now that I'm done with eating dinner, I'm just busy doing some blogging while my husband is watching Countdown With Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. Right now I'm going to focus on recording my own memories of this history-making election. I'm going to begin with the night before the elections.

I am a member of a political discussion forum called Upsize This (which originally started as a forum on film director Michael Moore's site until he shut it down and some of the more active posters decided to start an independent forum not connected with any famous person) that has people mostly from North America, Europe, and Australia.

It was through that forum that I got word from three members living in Australia that they decided to take an extended trip to the United States and they wanted to meet other people from that forum. It turned out that they were headed for the Washington, DC area (where I live) just in time for the upcoming presidential elections.

After much posting back and forth, we finally agreed on a place where we would meet for an evening of drinking and socialization. So my husband and I headed to The Quarter House in Silver Spring where we waited for our Internet friends. First another Upsize This friend who also lives in the Washington, DC area arrived while we waited for the Australians to arrive. When they finally arrived, we started to consume greasy food and booze while we talked about ourselves and the next day's elections.

I tried absinthe for the first time. (I found it tasty but very powerful. I didn't dare drink any more than one absinthe drink.) I then switched to drinking Hoegaarden (Belgian beer). We socialized until well into the evening and by midnight we were all pretty tired. Our new Australian friends suggested that we end the evening by drinking a shot of straight tequila. I drank the shot but then I began to feel totally queasy in my stomach.

As my husband and I left The Quarter House, I was waiting for him to fetch the car when I really felt sick. I threw up on this stone fence that surrounds one of the local businesses near The Quarter House and I even upchucked part of this hot dog that I ate for dinner.

When we got home, I threw up some more and I finally got rid of the rest of the hot dog that I ate. I then crashed on the bed. The good thing about throwing up was that I only suffered a minor headache that I was able to shake off quickly. I would've hated going to the polls with a major hangover.

As for my Australian friends, they decided to spend Election Night in downtown DC because they wanted to be among any spontaneous street parties that would break out in the event of an Obama victory. We DC locals suggested that they check out Ben's Chili Bowl on U Street because it is such a DC institution. I haven't seen any posts from them on the forum yet. I think they are still recovering from two straight nights of late-night partying.