weekend extravaganza

This blog is about my weekend. As you may (not) know, I just got a puppy about ten days ago. He's 3 months old, and he's adorable. This weekend was my friend's 21st birthday- in Manhattan. So I asked my mom and sister to puppy-sit for the weekend. I drove to Manhattan after work... wait, let's back up a bit.
I got a job in Olathe, but I live in KC, so the drive every day is horrible... not to mention expensive. I've been looking at a place in Olathe that's fairly nice and inexpensive to move to.
On Friday, after work, I was planning on meeting the new roommate there to fill out an application, etc. Friday right before I was going to leave, Joe called and said Bret's party was that night, and they were leaving in an hour. I wanted to carpool (gas, etc), and I asked if they could postpone leaving a few minutes (thinking that I could quickly fill out the application and rush to KC to meet them). Things didn't go as planned. It took longer to drop the puppy off at my parent's house than I had expected. It took longer to fill out paperwork at the apartment. So, I called Joe and told him to leave, and I took my time and looked at the model apartment. I deposited my pay check, so that the one I wrote for the apartment would clear, then headed up to Manhattan.
Dirty, smelly and stressed, I drove trying to get there for the party before it was too late in the evening. However, mother nature had different plans. She wanted me to drive slower and even to stop completely. About halfway to Manhattan, torrential downpour, the likes of which I have only experienced while watching safely from indoors, errupted upon me. It was already dark outside, the rain was so thick, I couldn't see anything except every two seconds when the lightning, which was right on top of me, would light the entire spectrum of my view.
Crazy as I am, I was enjoying myself. I forgot how much of a hurry I was in, and I enjoyed the ride. However, when I saw a long line of cars pulled over to the side with their hazard lights on, I started to wonder if I should do the same. Instead, I called up Matt to get a weather report. I wanted to know if there was anything I might be driving blindly into that I wouldn't want to be driving into. He answered, and I asked if there was a tornado anywhere. He immediately said, yes, it's right next to us. My heart pounded, because I hadn't expected that. I had called him to get an okay to keep driving. I asked, are you serious? He said, no. I yelled a bit, explained my situation, and asked "politely" if he could kindly check the weather. There was nothing to be reported. He left me with kind advice to turn on my windshield wipers to help me see. I thanked him and hung up.
When I finally arrived in Manhattan, Joe and Sarah had already gone to join Bret's party. Matt was in a stupid mood and was thinking of staying in. I asked directions to the party, and Matt ended up driving us there. It was loud and crowded, but Bret seemed to like the present that I gave him. (It wasn't stuff I just gathered at the last minute from my car.) They wanted to go to a house party and then hit the bars at midnight when he officially turned 21. We followed them in a car-train of about four cars to the house party where apparently nobody knew how to get to. After circling the same block five times, our leader finally parked and we all trudged out and proceeded to circle the same block on foot five more times. The house party, like all house parties, was crowded and loud. Matt and I decided to stop and get food and meet them at the bars at midnight. Food was good, but then Matt wanted to go to bed. So he dropped me off at the bars and went home.
Bret quickly became intoxicated. I watched as this happened and then, I watched as he and Price just left randomly around 2am without saying goodbye. Joe, Sarah and I met up with Sarah's sister at Gumby's after the bars closed, then went back to Matt's. Everyone was asleep, and I didn't really want to share the living room with an engaged couple, so I decided to drive home. I was fine for the first 3/4 of the drive, but the last half hour, I started to get really tired. When I got back to Olathe, the sun was starting to come up. My puppy was ready to wake up when I got to my parent's house. I slept about four hours on the couch, but had to get up to get ready for the Chiefs game. I gave more instructions to my family about puppy-sitting and left.
Saturday:
I drove back to KC to shower and change. I was in charge of getting two dozen buns for the tailgate. Then I proceeded to follow the vague directions to Phobia's (Phil's) house. This is a guy from chiefsplanet.com that I've met a few times, and he offered me a free ticket and tailgating, so I said yes. His wife was coming, too, along with another guy from chiefsplanet.
It was sort of akward at first. We left at 3pm thinking the gates opened at 3:30. Phobia's wife, Pink, was hungry and a bit cranky with him. I was sitting in between them for some reason, and I felt very weird sitting in the middle of a semi-marital argument while waiting in line for the gates to open at Arrowhead. The gates didn't open until 4pm, so I had to do this for 45 minutes. The tailgating was fun, food was awesome, and I got to meet some people from chiefsplanet. The coolest thing about going to a game with Phobia, is that he knows just about everybody. We parked next to X-Factor and the Red Man. First Down Elvis (Steve), met up with us, and Weirdwolf came by with his two girls all dressed up, too. Hanging out with the superfans at Arrowhead makes you feel like you're hanging out with celebrities. You're sitting around having fun conversations, and every two minutes, people walking by will stop and want their pictures with one of the superfans. Or, they'll just yell out, and being superfans, they'll encourage it. All the while, Phobia is getting more and more intoxicated and asks all those people why they don't want pictures with him, too. Going to the game with Phobia is an experience. He yells out random things that are very funny, but if you are his wife, you are embarrassed. Lucky for me, I'm not his wife, so I spent most of the time laughing.
We had what I call good seats. Right on the 50-yard line, high up so you can see the whole field. Perfect view to see everything going on in the game. Phobia and Pink, however, thought we were so high that the birds were flying under us... which they did sometimes. So near the end of the third quarter, they wanted to move behind the endzone. Not wanting to be separated from my ride, I went. The view down there is not the best. It's cool because you can see everyone close up, but you have to watch the jumbo-trons to see exactly what's happening. I got a cool shot on my camera phone of the field and goal post, though. They also left with nine minutes left in the fourth quarter wanting to get back to the car and get more food. Again, not wanting to leave my ride, I went. The Chiefs scored again while we were in the parking lot, but so did the Cardinals. We lost 17 - 24. First Down Elvis, and X-Factor were already out in the parking lot, so I didn't feel as bad seeing that the superfans left before we did. Weirdwolf had already left, too.
Phobia proceeded to drink two more beers, and Pink was sleeping in the cab of the truck. So, Phobia handed me the keys to his huge-ass truck. Now, this isn't your normal huge-ass truck. No, this is extra huge-ass truck with tires that are taller than my waist and longer than some people's homes. The windows are tinted so you can't see out the back or sides, especially since it's already dark out. So, there I went, with two people I barely knew, not knowing exactly how to get back to his house from where I was. We were following someone who also didn't know how to get home (don't ask, because I don't know why, I was just doing what Phil said). When the guy in front turned down a random street, Phil decided he would ride with them, and I was supposed to turn around and go to Raytown road. We found Raytown road, but Pink didn't know which way to go on that road. Needless to say, we went the wrong way. We had to turn the huge-ass truck around and go back.
Seeing as how I'm writing this all in the past tense, you probably guessed by now that I made it out alive. I drove back to KC to get a change of clothes. I wanted to spend the night in Olathe again since that's where my puppy was, and because I was going to have food with Austin in Olathe anyway.
So that's where I am now. I'm running on about six hours of sleep from the last 48 hours. Wish me luck!