My vacation prelude: drinking, and more drinking.

So two nights before my vacation, I went up to meet a friend for dinner and drinks, and after like four or five beers, I headed back home, in time to catch at a bar another friend who was out with her friends the night before she was leaving for vacation.

On the subway ride back, though, three black security guards got on the train, and the one huge black woman with dyed hair and pink painted nails with swirls on them as soon as she stepped on was like, "Oh, I am going to be sick, I am going to be sick, this car smells a wino, you know the smell of alcohol makes me sick" and she sat in the seat in front of me and talked loud with the other lady security guard for like eight stops before getting off, every once in a while saying she was going to be sick, and as soon as she got off, I turned to the other security guard and was like, "Man, I feel like a jackass, I had a few drinks with dinner so she was probably smelling me," to which the other woman just smiled and looked down and shook her head glumly and was like, "It be like that."

At the bar later, it turns out my one friend's friends were all people from the Italian restaurant where she works, and the one waitress was talking about how the previous night at close they were in the kitchen and heard something scuttling around in the ceiling tiles, so they removed a tile and a young rat got disoriented and half-fell out of the tile gap and was hanging barely by its front legs, squealing, since one paw was tangled in an electrical wire, and then one of the cooks got a broom handle and pretended like it was a pinata and started taking swings at it.

"Fuck," I was like, "So it was just hanging there?"

"Yeah," she was like, "What was left of it," and then she went on to describe how she was glad he swung away from the food prep area, since the invoices that were pinned up in the area of the direction he did swing at got all covered in little drops of blood.

"Damn," I was like.

"Yeah," she was like, "And all the fucking Mexicans just stood there with their camera phones taking pictures."

Then next night, the night before my vacation, I had some pizza with some people at an informal pre-spring break department gathering where the department paid for the booze and the pizza, which turned out to be from that Italian restaurant where my friend worked, and though it was difficult - and I mean difficult! - I ended up choking down like six pieces.