I planned to take the noon ferry from Port Jeff to Bridgeport, but I arrived early, just in time to get the 11AM ferry instead, so I rolled up to the pizza place an hour early. I had tried to call her and let her know I was going to be early, but her only phone was a Vonage line and it wasn't working, so I waited around for an hour at the restaurant, taking the opportunity to have a glass of whiskey to take the edge off.
I was pretty nervous. Lulu and I seemed to have this intense connection online and over the phone and my experience tells me that this sort of thing often doesn't carry over into real life and I was trying not to invest too much emotional capital in what was to come and partially succeeding.
So, a little after 2PM, I see her come walking down the street. Now in her personal, Lulu said she was 5'10", 150lbs. Even at first glance it was obvious she had understated her weight by at least 30 or 40 pounds. I was a little cheesed, but she was still cute and I figured I'd eat pizza with her and if things didn't go well I'd just beg off the movie and continue on to Albany.
So we had pizza and she was still smart and funny and quirky and cute and it's not like I've ever had anything against big girls, so I figured I'd do the movie and see how things went after that.
I told her I needed to move my car because I was parked in a 2 hour zone. She suggested I leave the car by her house and we could check the movie times on her PC. Those of you in the advanced classes may already see where this is going.
So we get to her house, she introduces me to her dogs, she checks the movie times, we listen to some tunes and...we never actually get to the movie.
So afterwards, we go out and have chinese and then I continue towards Albany. Over dinner, I invited her to come visit me in Albany and she quickly agreed.
We lingered over our Chinese food and then went back to her house for a little cuddle on the couch. But, the hour grew late and I had to get on the road for Albany before I became too tired for the two hour drive.
Rolling into town at about 11PM, I checked into the hotel and carted my crap up to my room, which was on the fifth floor and about a mile and half from the elevator. After I got squared away, I found a few of my football website friends in the hotel bar. We closed it down and then proceeded next door to another bar where I got really hammered. Back to my room and then ffter a little drunken IRC, I set the alarm for 6:30 AM and fell asleep.
Thursday was a fun day for me, but probably is not of much interest to the Shindig crew. I ate breakfast with my football website buddies, then watched a morning football practice, followed by lunch and then a late afternoon football practice, then dinner, a couple drinks and an early bedtime to recover from the previous day's binge of driving, fucking and drinking.
Friday there was only a morning practice, so I went to lunch on my own -- passing up lunch at Hooters with the gang -- and got caught up on my e-mails. Friday night was a Pizza and beer fest with everyone from the football site. The hotel gave us a room and we ordered about 20 pizzas and bought a metric assload of beer. For those of yu who thought the philly shindig was a big gather, there were over 40 people jammed into that room, drinking beer, eating pizza and watching football tapes.
I got really, really drunk on Beer and Bushmills, ate a lot of pizza and passed out for a little while, only to awaken with a serious Dunkin' Donuts jones. Luckily (or unluckily) DD was right next door, so I stumbled over there, got a dozen box and brought it back to the party room. But that was about all she wrote for me and soon I was sleeping it off in my bed.
Saturday was the joint practices with the New York Jets. You actually had to buy tickets for this, so I got one for Lulu as well as myself, since she was supposed to be there around noon. I went to the morning practice and then back to my room to wait for her. She called me at about 12:15 to tell me that she had gotten a little turned around and taken I-87S instead of I-87N, which was partially the fault of my crappy directions.
At 12:45 I hear a knock at my door and there's a tall redhead with a big smile on the other side. Apparently her father made promise to call when she arrived, he being a little concerned about her meeting a strange man in a hotel room in a different town, so I lend her my cellphone and she makes the call and then...well, I'm sure you can figure out what comes next.
We finished up around three and then make our way to the football field for the afternoon practice. Now Lulu isn't a football fan, in fact she's an anti-football fan, but she made her way through a good part of the practice with a little help from my friend Hope who pointed out to her the players with the best butts. We left a little early so we could get a snack since we missed lunch.
Big spender that I am, I took Lulu to Boston Market for a pre-dinner snack. Actually, my motivation was more speed than cost, since I had skipped lunch to do...something else...and my head was pounding. She only wanted some mashed potatoes while I inhaled an entire chicken dinner.
After the snack, we walked back to the hotel to meet up with some of the other football crazies and take a group photo by the big fountain at SUNY Albany. The plan was to actually get into the fountain and take pictures of us standing on these pedestals peeking up out of the water, but the weather was more fall-like than summery and all but two fo us declined to get into the water. So we took a photo of everyone standing in front of the fountain, with Lulu doing the photographing.
The evening's plan was for the football crazies to have our annual dinner at Bugaboo Creek, a Canadian hunting lodge-themed steakhouse with more dead animals on the wall than the Museum of Natural History. It's always a great time, with much eating, drinking and busting on each other.
Now, I wan't quite sure if was ready to subject Lulu to the full brunt of the football website crowd. The football people are, in their own way, as weird, strange, funny, smart and opinionated at the Shindigger crew. Was Lulu ready to see just what a weirdo I really am? Not ot mention that the football peeps are a pretty conservative bunch and Lulu's politics are probably to the left of our own Snarky Liberal Catherine.
Well, I figured, if Lulu couldn't take it, best to find out sooner rather than later. In the end, my concern was misplaced. Everyone had a great time and the football peeps were friendly and polite to my new friend.
With dinner over, we all headed back to the hotel. My football pal Eeyore had taken a bunch of football pics over the last couple days with his new digicam, so I downloaded them on to my notebook and burned him a CD so he could erase his SD cards and take more pics the next day. Lulu was tired, so I gave her a room key and sent her upstairs while I did a slideshow of the pics on my notebook.
The slideshow was fun, but pretty soon we started to wind down. So I packed up my notebook and headed up to my room. She was already in bed, half-asleep and half-naked. We fooled around some, but it was late and it had been a busy day for both of us, so we drifted off to sleep.
My internal clock woke me at about 6AM and Lulu and I had some hot, just-woke-up, morning sex. One of my personal favorites and something I'd been missing for a long time. We went downstairs after and had breakfast with the football peeps, then Lulu wanted to get going back to CT to check on her doggies. So I walked her downstairs and kissed her goodbye.
I spent the rest of the day in a pleasant haze. I went to go see I Robot with some football peeps, then we lunched at Hooters (bah!) and slid back to the hotel where I burned some more CDs of football pics for various friends and such. I watched some TV and then napped until 2:30 AM, got on the road at about 4, hit the 6:30 ferry and was back on Long Island at about 7:45.
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