Mr. Hagman, are you happy with your bourbon?

Jiminy crickets I'm hungover. It hurts. It burns. I was in desperate need of some advice last night, so I went out to dinner and drinks with one of my favorite, if not more ridiculous people in the world, Lara. Lara is not to be confused with Laura, mind you, who is also one of my favorite people in the world, but that is neither here nor there. I'm sort of oddly dependent on Lara a lot like I am with Helena, except whereas I can't make a life decision without consulting Helena first, I can't make a creative decision without running it up Lara's flagpole first. (Side note: the phrase "running it up Lara's flagpole" sounds like a delightful euphemism for something not entirely Christian and I'm heavily into it. It might even be Dr. Reuben & The Blanket Statements' first breakout hit. Coming to a haunted movie theater near you.)

Lara was a year below me at AU and she moved onto the floor where I lived Sophomore year right after College Roommate Danielle and I moved out and into our apartment. (Did that make sense at all? Re-reading that sentence felt like taking the SATs all over again but I'm too hungover to fix it. Much like the real SATs.) One day early Junior year, I went back to the good old dorms to visit Laura with a U but ended up talking for an hour with this pint-sized, ADD-ridden visual media major who was like, "HI! I'M FROM YORK, PENNSYLVANIA! I LIKE GRAPHIC DESIGN! I'VE SEEN YOU AROUND! I WORK AT HOT TOPIC! PLEASE DON'T JUDGE ME! ARE YOU JUDGING ME? I LIKE YOUR SHOES! I THINK YOU'RE JUDGING ME! I'M GONNA QUIT MY JOB SOON! DO YOU WANNA SEE MY T-SQUARE?!" I was like, holy jackpot. Not only are you my new best friend, you're my new assistant. I design AmLit, AU's literary magazine. Now you do too. No, you don't have an option. Here are your keys. Be in the office tomorrow at 9pm sharp with a bag of chick-fil-a and a semi-positive attitude.

And just like that, Lara became AmLit's new design assistant and one of my biffly-biffly^max, as we spent the next two glorious years holed up together in either the office or the design lab, giving each other design advice, emotional support and a lot of Adderall. All-nighter, after all-nighter, after all-nighter. You don't forget a person after an experience like that. It changes you. Like 'Nam.

Lara and I were quite the team. Although equally awkward and inappropriate, she had mad technical skillz and I could conceptualize like a motherfucker. Together we were unstoppable. It got to the point Senior year where I relied on her advice about pretty much everything. Design related or otherwise. I distinctly remember running over to her apartment at 8 o'clock on a Saturday morning a few days after getting a new tattoo, banging on her door until she answered and being like, "HOLY CHRIST ON A CROSS MY TATTOO IS ODDLY INFLAMED I THINK IT'S CANCER I SHOULDN'T HAVE GOTTEN IT DONE IN MIAMI PEOPLE DO STUPID THINGS ON SPRING BREAK THE GUY DIDN'T SPEAK ENGLISH I'M GOING TO DIE MY MOM WAS RIGHT YOU HAVE TO HELP ME!!!!!1" She picked up my wrist, stared at it briefly through bleary eyes, dropped it and deadpanned:

"Meg. That's a bug bite."

I looked down. "Oh!......Yep. Yep, it sure is.......Well, I guess that explains why it itches, huh?!" Slams door.

So last night when I needed some creative advice, I knew Lara was the right person to go to. However, as with most advice sessions involving me and alcohol, I got drunker than I meant to, became emotional and rambled for slightly too long about how I'll never become successful because I get aspie-anxious talking to people on the phone. This would all be par for the course, except that whereas I drank an entire Liberman mop bucket of Racer 5, Lara had AN beer because she had to go home and pack for her 4am flight to SXSW this morning. Damn her. Damn her for so many reasons.

That being said, I think it's virtually impossible for me to feel like a lushy ho in front of Lara. And I mean that in the nicest way possible. For you see, one time in college I drove Lara and I to Penn Camera on Rockville Pike to get some supplies and things went a little awry. Not being the brightest flash in the camera store (SEE WHAT I DID THERE?!) I locked my keys in the car and we had to wait an hour or so until my dad could leave work to bring me the spare. Both being in that early stage of 21 where it's still exhilarating to be able to go into any drinking establishment and legally order whatever you want, we decided to kill time by going to the bar at the Ruby Tuesday's and orderin' us up a couple of Ruby Relaxers. It was about two sips into my Relaxer when I realized that drinking a giant novelty rum drink half an hour before my dad comes to hand deliver me the keys might not be the best idea, so I slid my Relaxer down the sticky bar and told Lara it was all hers.

Now, let me tell you something about a Ruby Tuesday's Ruby Relaxer: potent. Potent, potent, potent. Seriously, after two sips I was like, "Wow, I have to drive. Enough." One whole Ruby Relaxer is a lot of drink. It's served in a giant goblet able to comfortably accommodate a small gerbil doing laps, so after two Ruby Relaxers, Lara was sufficiently tanked. On a Wednesday. At 3pm in the afternoon. Waiting for my dad to come get us. Bless her heart. She was slurring all over the place and her giggling was reverberating off the walls. To make matters worse, there was a group of very large and very scary thugs sitting down the bar from us who had clearly just ducked out of work early to get a drink and work out some personal issues they were having. Unfortunately things were less being worked out and more quickly escalating into a near fist-fight. So just to recap, at this point I'm in a Ruby Tuesday's on Rockville Pike with a shit-faced Lara sloshing around to my left and the entire cast of The Wire about to break out into a less graceful version of Michael Jackson's Beat It video to my right. That's when I saw my dad in the parking lot.

To give you some background, it's a bit of a thing amongst my friends that my dad is a handsome gentleman. I want to say he didn't do some light L.L. Bean modeling, yet why lie? I'm told that Mr. McBlogger is a silver fox, but being his daughter and not from dat dem der mountains, I don't really want to expand on that. (And by the way, I realize I'm opening myself up to a ton of "your dad" jokes on today's comment thread, but I ask you "friends" of mine to behave yourselves and remember that not only is Mrs. McBlogger is a dignified lady, she's also a dedicated 2b1b reader. Thank you. Assholes.)

Up until this point, Lara had only ever seen pictures of my dad and in her very inebriated state, she was incredibly excited to meet him in person.

"Hey my dad's here, let's close out and go," I said.

"Ohhhhhhhhh my gawd. YOUR DAD. I can see him across the parking lot. He's such a silver fox," Laura woozily slurred.

"Yeaaaah, gross......Ok, well, enough of that. Let's go."

I walked Laura out to the parking lot, gave my dad and a hug and thanked him for coming. "AHEM," Laura coughed.

"Oh, sorry! Dad, this is my good friend Lara from school. Lara does design with me and we work on AmLit together."

"Oh, well it's nice to finally meet you Lara! We've heard a lot about you," my dad said as he shook her hand.

To this day, I am haunted by the memory of what happened next. I can still so vividly see Lara's limp little wrist shaking my dad's hand, her glassy eyes fixed on his and her mouth open like she was a bulimic in line at an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet. And then, she said it.

"Missshter McBlogger, are you happy with your wife?"

I swear to everything that is good and holy, that is what Lara said upon meeting my father for the first time. Quote, "are you happy with your wife?" I have no idea what happened next. I think I blacked out because the next thing I remember is my dad giving me the AAA card I left at home and telling me to drive safely. I think I spent the entire drive back to campus shouting "LARA" in various tones and frequencies. To this day I'm not sure if my dad heard it. If he did, I think he took the very McBlogger way out of pretending like it never happened and moving right along. Still, that doesn't mean I didn't hear it. Shudder, shudder.

So that is why I don't feel embarrassed this morning about drinking my weight in beer last night and rambling to a sober Lara about my shortcomings on the phone. Because she tried to stepmom me in a parking lot after one too many Ruby Relaxers. Christ.

BUT! Speaking of drunken friends! It's time to check in with the drunkest of them all. That's right! It's America's favorite fictional holiday—T.G.I. Hagman!

As of March 12, 2010 at 9:50am, Larry Hagman is........alive! And thank Jah.

Welp, I hope you all have a glorious weekend a-boozin' with friends that are near and dear to you. Before you go, would you mind doing me a favor? Would you be a lamb and go here, scroll down to the third category of "People and Places," click "34 more", write in 2birds1blog for Best Local Blog/Blogger and submit it? And if you've already done that: a.) bless your heart and b.) why not vote my broke ass getting fired for Best Local Scandal (a few items down from Best Local Blog/Blogger)? Maybe get a few friends or loved ones to do the same? Perhaps hire a hobo to do so if you have none of the above? Thanks! Polls close Monday, so it's time to hustle. As always, we appreciate all you do to keep us going and totes LYLAS! Have a great weekend and we'll see you back here Monday morning. Buh-bye.