Summer Fun

This has turned into a crazy busy week, but in the best possible way.
Monday I drove back from El Paso. Tuesday I chilled and then went to Chelsea's house in the evening.
Wednesday Chelsea and I went to Schlitterbahn Waterpark, and it was so much fun! I love waterparks and I'd never been to Schlitterbahn, even though it's only twenty minutes from the apartment I've called home for the past ten months. I'd heard a lot of horror stories about Schlitterbahn, mostly about how people paid $40 for tickets and then had to wait in line so long that they only did one or two rides the entire day. Still, I wanted to go at least once in my life. My sister and I really lucked out, mostly because we were smart about it and purposely went on a day when a) it was early in the season and mid-week, b) anyone younger than college age is still in school, c) it was overcast and only 80 degrees early in the day which might have turned off potential visitors, and d) it was a half-price day so only half the park was open but hey, you only have to pay half price! Plus the half that was open was what seemed to be the more exciting half with the Master Blaster and all the other "roller coaster"-type water rides you always see on the Travel Channel water park specials. Besides, the park is so enormous I don't know how you'd ever get around to more than half of it in one day anyway even if both halves were open.
Anyway, we had a great time. There were a lot of people there despite all our careful planning (mainly buses full of high school kids on end-of-the-year field trips, which made for a lot of entertaining people to make fun of...ah, high school) but we never had to wait longer than about 45 minutes for a ride and for a few we didn't wait at all. That's amazing considering that the peak wait time for some of the rides during the summer really is 3 to 4 hours. We managed to hit all the open rides (we even did some of them TWICE. Oooooh!) and we still had plenty of time at the end of the day to leisurely drift around the "river" on a fake alligator. I really wish I had my own fake alligator. I'd be at the river all the time if I had an alligator to float around on. Anyway, it was a really fun day with my sister and I left feeling like it was well worth the money, which is a better Schlitterbahn experience than I've ever heard of anyone else having. It was something I've wanted to do for a while, and we actually did it, so I was happy.

Then Jenny came to town to visit for a couple of nights. True to form, we managed to consume near-ridiculous amounts of free alcohol and amass several good stories over the two nights she was here. We were somewhat tame (for us) on Thursday night and started out at Bennigan's and then moved to the square and went to Rocky's, which started out slow but then got much better once the bartender randomly decided to give us a free round of shots, and then another round, and then another round...I managed to get just drunk enough to have a good time but not so drunk that I made a fool of myself or woke up with a hangover, so it was a good night.
Then yesterday Chels, Jenny and I spent the day swimming and laying out at the dam and then we went up to Austin and had dinner at Matt's El Rancho (Dear Matt's, you are delicious!) and then we spent the night bar hopping on 6th Street. As testimony to our combined hotness [or perhaps because we unintentionally appear easy?...Whatever, I'm gonna keep telling myself it's just because we're hot] let me tell you that we were at the bars from 10:30 until 2 a.m. drinking continuously the entire time and we spent a combined total of $15 on drinks. Jenny got us a round of $3 Jager bombs and I bought a round of $1 Long Island iced teas (Yes! Really! How crazy is that?! They were normal sized drinks even!) and other than that every drink we had was free. 6th Street is full of club promoters trying to round up girls into their bars, so if you're a relatively small group of single girls it's pretty easy to take advantage and drink for free all night long.
What happened last night is pretty much what happens every time I go to 6th Street: We wander the street trying to decide where to go and inevitably a promoter comes up and says, "I'll buy you a free round at wherever" so we go and get the free round and then either stay just long enough for it not to look too shady before heading out onto the street again where the odds are very good that we'll get offered another free round by a different bar promoter, or guys in the bar start buying us rounds of drinks and we stay. Free drinking all night either way. I'm not saying this is exactly the most ethical way to spend an evening, but I also figure there aren't that many advantages to being a young single female so I might as well appreciate the advantages I DO have while I've got 'em. Plus in my defense I have never, ever blantantly flirted with a guy for the sole purpose of getting a drink out of him. People just tend to send drinks my way when I'm out with my girlfriends. I'd love to chalk this up to my being a sexy girl, but I think the more likely explanation is there are just a lot of desperate guys out there.
At any rate, we did a lot of drinking last night. We started out with a couple of free rounds from promoters and then ended up meeting these guys who asked us to bar hop with them the rest of the night. They were funny, friendly, easy to talk to, and not drunken assholes, so we hung out with them the rest of the night. We spent most of the night dancing at The Dizzy Rooster. Personally, I don't understand the appeal of the Dizzy Rooster. Everyone wants to go there because it was featured on Real World, but there are much, much better bars on the street. But the guys we were hanging out with were mostly all tourists from Missouri so of course they wanted to see it. It was hot as hell and way too crowded, but the dancing was a lot of fun. The upshot of all this is that I ended up kissing an accountant from Kansas City for a while and then we girls go thrown out of the Hilton Hotel because we were apparently being too loud in the hotel room.
Getting thrown out of the hotel room was kind of ridiculous. Yes, we were being loud. There were about ten of us in one hotel room, of course it was loud. It was also after 3 in the morning so yeah, we were out of line. I admit that. However, I think the security guards that threw us out were out of line, too. They didn't give us any sort of first warning or anything like that, they just came into the room, told us we weren't allowed to stay unless we were registered guests, and forced us to leave. No "Do you ladies have somewhere else to go?" No "Can we call you a cab?" Just "Get out of here." They wouldn't even let us sit in the lobby for a minute. And Jenny was definitely visibly pretty out of it. Chelsea and I were both sobered up by that point from all the dancing and the fact that we'd been chillin' in the hotel room without drinking for a couple of hours, but still. The security guys didn't know that. They basically threw three drunk girls out of the hotel onto the streets at 4 a.m. I'm sorry, regardless of our behavior, there is something very wrong with that.
I didn't mind being thrown out. I was actually kind of happy about it. It was the first time in my life I've ever officially been thrown out of anywhere! Plus Jeff was nice and attractive enough, but all I really wanted to do was dance with him and kiss for a little while and we were rapdily approaching the point where I was going to have to have an awkward conversation with him about how no, I didn't want to go to the empty room next door to fool around, I'd already done everything I wanted to do tonight so, um, I'm just gonna go back to my own house now, okay? The arrival of security prevented me from having to turn down the offer I knew was coming, so that actually was the perfect ending to my night. I just think the guards could have been a little more polite about it. It's not like we were being unruly or destructive, we were just talking too loudly in the middle of the night.
For the record, the guy last night was one of the few strangers I've ever made out with in my life. I've never been much of a lip slut. In fact, the last time I remember making out with anyone who wasn't already a pretty good friend of mine was in Las Vegas in spring 2004, and I'm pretty sure that particular guy was the first stranger I've ever kissed, ever. So I don't do that a lot. I guess it's mainly just because I don't really see the point. It's fun for a minute but I just don't have much desire to do anything if I don't feel like it's ultimately going to go somewhere. You know me, I do pretty much everything in my life with a particular ultimate goal in mind, and that includes relationships. And yeah, there have been times in my life when that goal was more along the lines of "potential fuck buddy" than along the lines of "potential meaningful relationship" but I can't say I've ever gone into anything with the goal being "potential one night stand". And no matter how much he claimed to like me, Jeff wouldn't have been anything but a one night stand. So yeah, I can't say that I was exactly sad that we got thrown out of the hotel before things could go any further.

Anyway, that's a Cliffs Notes version of everything that actually happened last night, but it was a fun night overall. I thought the rest of my weekend would be just me and Shakespeare since I have lots of reading to do before my summer class starts on Tuesday, but then Katy called me last night and told me she and Scott are in this neck of the woods visiting Scott's family for the weekend and they decided on a whim to tube the Guadalupe tomorrow and they invited Chelsea and I to go with them. So now I get to spend tomorrow tubing with Katy!

I should get some sleep first, though. For real.