Halloween in MD

Sorry Becca, no Halloween pics - you know I no longer own a camera. Speaking of that, I guess it has been a full year since I've had a camera. Kind of surprising for me. With that being said, we did take a couple of pics on Kristie's camera, but she doesn't seem to know how to get them off.

With that being said, my Halloween night (or the Saturday before) was extremely interesting and random. The night began early at the Camden Yard work reception. Although this was not a costume party, there were plenty of outfits to look at thanks to all of the doctors' wives. Although the event was fairly amusing and provided free food and liquor, Ms. Luda and I decided to bail early in hopes of escaping our coworkers and having a night out on our own. More specifically, we had high hopes of avoiding Tijuana.

Let me take this time to give a little back story on Tijuana. Tijuana, aka Susan, is a middle aged, white-trash, alcoholic redneck. Think the perfect candidate for Jerry Springer. Now where does the name come in... several years ago the annual meeting was in San Diego and Susan and a friend stayed a couple days after to explore. I've been told by a first hand witness that good old Susan went down to Tijuana and smuggled drugs across the border. Pills to be more specific. Needless to say, everyone in the company warned Kristie and I against hanging out with her in Baltimore.

But, I digress.

Just as Kristie and I thought we had escaped, Tijuana strolls up behind us and asks where we're all going to kick it for the night. Luda being the people-pleaser that she is, decides to tell her that we're going to the Wharf Rat across from the convention center. Susan then tells us "great, I'll meet up with you guys in a few - i just need to run inside, shave my pits, and then take a hit - do you guys smoke?"

At the Wharf Rat we develop our plan for leaving her, which included asking the bartender where we should go next. After a drink or so, Tijuana storms in, pissed that K wasn't answering her phone. Obviously she didn't see it ;-) Anyway, the next 20 min proceed w/ K and I going to the bathroom to text each other on our next move while T proceeds to tell us scary/ridiculous stories. (side note: she is renting a room in her house to some guy for 3 days a week???) Once I finish my second drink the bartender goes to refill it and I tell him that I think I'm going to have to call it a night (it's 9pm), which causes T to get all huffy and start to cause a scene, which then causes the bartender to say "o, that's right, you're going to another bar." Somehow I manage to cover this up slightly by making up some ridiculous story that K backed up. Several lies later, the two of us were free and about to begin the rest of the night...

On our way back to the hotel from the Wharf Rat, we ran into some other coworkers (normal ones) who informed us that a group was gathering for drinks in one of the hotel bars. After little persuasion, we decided to join them. However, when we got to the bar, we were pretty much the only two there and the thought finally occurred to us that if word got back to Tijuana that we ditched her to meet up w/ the rest of our company, we would never hear the end of it. But, just as we were leaving half the company showed up. So, I decided that in order to not look like asses, a fake phone call to meet a friend (Jen Gold to be exact) was necessary.

Plan worked and we were on our way again.

At this point we decided to take the skywalk and stop in Kristie’s hotel before grabbing a cab. As we approached the hotel, another coworker yelled that we couldn’t get in there. So, we tired the door and found that it was indeed locked. But, my feet hurt and we didn’t feel like taking yet another detour, so we opted for sneaking in an open kitchen door. As we snuck in, I was sure some chef with a knife was going to chase us out, but we ran into no one. In fact, the whole restaurant was empty. This seemed a little odd, but nothing to perplexing. However, as we began walking down the immobile escalators, things started to definitely seem wrong. When I saw the flashing fire engines, I knew we had made a mistake. As we neared the bottom, several of the wait and hotel staff stood there shaking their heads at us. Of course they asked where we were coming from, to which K replied our rooms, to which they said the place had been evacuated for a half hour. Oops. O well, they ushered us to safety and offered us nice white sheets.

After Kristie was accosted by a doctor, we finally found a cab and made it to Federal Hill. We checked out several more bars here, but nothing too exciting to report. In general, I found the people of Baltimore to not be very exciting or nice. The only person that spoke to us was a boy from DC who spent a good 20 minutes trying to convince us to go back to DC w/ him that night (Leti - we actually considered this for a minute, but we changed our mind once his friend called us soccer moms). Our final bar of the night was a dive karaoke bar where we decided to sing “Sweet Home Chicago” to spite everyone for not talking to us. However, K chose the Frank Sinatra version rather than the Chicago version and I refused to sing about halfway through the song. The two of us sat down our mics and just walked out. Actually, K walked out w/o even grabbing her card and we had to come back and get it. At least it was only her card and she remembered it in the cab – much better than I did last year.


Who knew work trips could be so entertaining?