Pre-birthday Minicrawl
With about 26 hours' notice, I sent out an invitation to about 30 people to meet for happy hour at the Power Plant in Parkville. When the time came, all that attended were Chris and me. One might think that it would be akin to inviting the whole class to my 8th birthday party, and nobody coming, like that heartbreaking scene from Little Man Tate. Exceedingly sad. But not so.

It was actually very nice to sit and enjoy a nice dinner and a couple of cheap cheap happy hour beers at one of KC's best local breweries. We talked about Chris' first couple days as a bona fide, firm-sucking attorney, beer, girls, and various other topics that come up when you have only beer to guide your thoughts. We settled our tab after eating, and went down to North Kansas City in search of a bar called Paci's, where Josh and I had a lovely drink, some two years ago. We never found it. Instead we parked in front of the River City Tavern, one of many bars along Swift in North KC. There was a dune buggy parked outside, so we figured it could only be good.

It was. We walked in and there was an immediate booming bark from an agitated dog on the other end of the bar. We bellied up to some draws of Bud(the better of their two beers on tap), as the dog sniffed around our legs in its way of warming up to us. Soon, the dog, which turned out to be a puppy still clumsy with its large body, was not only allowing me to touch him, but was biting away at my hand, ankles, and knees like we were good old pals. When I stopped antagonizing him, he'd start barking. I love dogs, and I miss my old dog.

After settling our $3 tab for two beers, I washed the dog slobber off my hands and wrists, and my frenzied new friend continuously bit at my ankles as we walked out. We went about a quarter of a mile up Swift to a place called the Chip Shot. I've since discovered that it is my friend Scott's tenth favorite bar on the planet. Make no mistake, it was a fun place. The TV was showing local(!!!) ultimate fighting competitions, and the sufficiently attractive bartender had us written up on our check as, "the cute guys." To get us to stay, she gave us a free round. Chris was lagging on his bottle of Bud, so I ordered a third draw of the local cheap(but delicious) favorite, Flying Monkey.

After resisting the bartender's brazen advances, we headed back into town and tried out the Studio bar, a new place on McGee. It took me one draw of Nastro Azurro to realize that they had built in what had once been Bender's, where my friend Ryan's old band played some of their formative concerts, and where I had some of my drunkest times in Kansas City. Except for the front windows, the place was completely unrecognizable. After a short time, we were the only ones there, and it occurred to me that the three people that were working were just waiting for us to leave, so they could go home.

I dropped Chris off and picked up a burrito at Pancho's. I turned 29 without noticing the clock hitting midnight, and was in bed by 12:30am.

titan replied:
tip for the johnson countians out there: you will always, ALWAYS, suffer a swift, humiliating defeat from fighting competitors hailing from kcmo or kck. bet on it.

happy birthday.

7:14 PM, Aug 8, 2007

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