The cookie bandit strikes

My mouth is dry and I open and close my mouth as if to taste the dryness. My room is very dark. I realize that I am hugging something: a plastic tub of Trader Joe's Swiss Almond Crunch cookies. Clearly, I am a little dissoriented as I reach for my alarm clock. The green numbers read 3:24am.

I stare at the clock and kind of wonder how I had gotten home, and how was it possible that 2 French 75's manage to put in a position in which I wake up in my bed with a stranger, albeit a tub of cookies, in my bed.

Since defending, I have ended almost every night with either a beer or a glass of wine. It is not that I am an alcoholoic, it is just that now I felt like there was nothing keeping me from not drinking every night. My lab is moving and the sheer chaos that is occuring everyday is maddening. Part of me is extremely irritated that things or so disorgaized. The other part of me is irritated that I am doing scut work for a man I am currently not in the best of terms.

In typical fashion, I sent out a plea for escape. Perhaps happy hour? Good thing I have friends that are happy to oblige in happy our. On Thursday, as I watched other members of my lab freeze their fingers off on the dry ice trying to read the minute labeling left 5 years ago from non english speaking postdocs, I snuck out of the lab at 4:30pm. I met A and R at Brassierie Jo's. Massachussetts does not allow the sale of alcohol at a discounted price, but to make up for it bars sell appetizers cheaply during normal happy hour hours. I was excited when I walked into the bar and I recognized the bartender. He was an older gentleman, the kind of person who takes bartending seriously. He dresses up, calls you madam or miss, and is impeccable about his manners.

A and I sat at one end of the bar, and I immediately shouted the bartender's name. He had no idea who I was, but was incredibly polite and offered up some small talk. I asked him for some band-aids, because I was wearing ridiculous roman sandals (which ET#2 abhors). For the first 10 minutes our lovely bartender went all around the kitchen and hotel front desk looking for my bandaids. How nice.

Anyway R soon joined us, and we proceeded to order French 75s. It is a nice summery cocktail and it came in a pretty frosted martini glass. What harm could a lemony drink cause. We ordered a number of sandwiches, fries, etc.. We chatted. We ate. We drank. At around 6:45pm we left the bar.

Now, I thought having been drinking so much this past month that I would have built up a tolerance for the EtOH. Not so. At precisely, the moment that I thought it would be a great idea to go in Sephora and test out perfumes, I should have realized I was hammered. I think I might have hugged a sales lady who thought I did not need eye cream. She said it is something you need in your thirties. Flattery will get you everywhere.

Then we decided we needed sweets. We are in Trader Joe's and I purchase a tub of Swiss Almond Crunch cookies. The three of us dig into them. Delicious. But what is a delicious cookie if you can't share them. We see a girl behind us, and for some reason we think it is appropriate to give her cookies. I think we were rewarding her for her cute shoes. I am not sure. She did take some. That action emboldened us.

I then proceeded to offer cookies to people all along Boylston Street. There were two men in business suits eating their dinner peacefully at Atlantic Fish. "I think your meal would be better with cookies, " I said. One of the men agreed and took a handful.

I offered cookies to hipsters, yuppies, and tourists. Only the tourists seemed skeptical. "Those city folks might try to taint cookies with drugs," they might have thought.

We went into the Globe, because once you are drunk more salty foods are needed. I offered cookies to our waiter, a twenty something himbo. It might have been the cocktail goggles but I could have sworn he was flirting with me. He took a cookie, but still managed to mess up our order.

Much is fuzzy after that. All I know is that I woke up with a practically empty tub of cookies, a sign of successful cookie banditing.