So we're up in the stands, watching the cars go very fast, and my mom calls me.
"Do you want to go up on the starting line with us for the run?"
Hell yeah, I do. And I thought it would be neat for Michael, since it's not something he'd get the chance to do otherwise. So we meet up with my family, my mom forges some restricted area passes for us, we get in the truck, and go up to the staging lanes ... and wait .. and wait ... and the sun goes down ... and it gets colder ... and we wait. Finally, they start running the funny cars ... Michael and I get out of the truck and stand at the starting line as the cars start up.
There's watching a race and being right there as a part of it ... completely different things. The crew stars the car up, and I was, of course, standing right behind the headers and get a nice blast to face of hot carbon monoxide.
I really can't describe what it's like to watch these cars go ... noise and power and smoke and speed ...
So I stand on the starting line with the crew, trying not to look conspicuous, trying to stay out of the way .. watch my dad go down the racetrack, quarter mile in 5.73 seconds, 248 miles an hour. God, I want to drive one of those things.
After the run, we decided to head out, back to Michaels house to relax a bit and get ready for Heather's party. And drink some tea and try to wake up ... neither of us do too well waking up early in the morning.
Heather's party ... I don't even know where to start. Not too many people there when we showed up. But it really wasn't how many people were there, it was who was there ... My ex, Scotty, was there with his girlfriend Melinda. The last time I saw him was in Vegas, and then only briefly, and Melinda was being all weird to me then. She was being cool this time, and Scotty and I talked a lot. Michael had heard so much about him from me, and finally got to meet him, and agreed with me that he's a very nice complete loser. He's actually doing better, I was happy to see .. he has a truck, and a place to live, and he's working.
Ex #2 showed up a while later, with another friend of mine that I had sorta dated years back ... At this point, I started thinking eep ... I'm just way too familiar with too many people here ... or maybe it's that too many people here are too familiar with me ...
Cryss had a bottle of whiskey with him, which proved to be my downfall ... i like whiskey. a couple swigs of that, after the couple beers i had, and i was toast ... I was good, though, and stopped drinking when I realized that i was drunk.
Cristoff kissed me ... I'm not quite sure why ... we were playing around, i smacked him, i though he was going to smack me back but he grabbed my face and kissed me. Shocked the hell out of me ... I wasn't quite sure how to react, so i backhanded him, and then hit him again, and then one more time for good measure. All this time, Cryss is trying to egg Michael into fighting with Cristoff over that. Michael pointed out that I was obviously taking care of myself and assistance was not necessary.
Michael is great ... first, he didn't get all hyper-macho pissed off that someone tried to kiss me. Second, he lets me take care of myself and doesn't try to "rescue" me. So very cool.
It was getting very crowded/claustrophobic in Heather's little bitty apartment, so we took off as they were stringing up the pinata ... Michael drove me back to his house to sober up, since I was in no condition to drive. We watched Casablanca, burned off some energy in creative ways, and I drove home.
Quite a day, really.
