Now taking applications for a best gal friend.  Must enjoy happy hours, spontaneous trips to wine country, the ability to gossip about everyone and everything but in a non-petty, non-mean way and be comfortable regarding all facets of conversation including but not limited to relationships, sex, work, health and food.  Must be able to commit to at least one outing per week, either surrounding food or some cultural event (retail therapy is acceptable and encouraged).  Should mingle well with other existing gal pals.  Should also have the balls to call me out on my shit as needed.




Must have sense of humor and appease me when I want to stage photos with you as the subject. 

Recommended Qualifications; but negotiable:
Live in the San Francisco Bay Area
Be Canadian to keep up my quota of Canadian friends.
Have a comfortable couch or guest room where I can crash at a moment's notice
Have the same taste in sundresses and large sunglasses




Please send resume with references and shoe size to WillMissJessHorriblyWhenSheMovesToNewOrleansNextWeek@sadfriend.com
 

So we gathered all the usual suspects - Chris, Deb, Nicole, Kristin, Laura (and not pictured, Jason and Bob)



Don't you just love how shorts and bowling shoes go so fabulously together?  We're so stylish.

One of the best parts of the night was when they called random raffle ticket numbers and both Laura and Chris got to go up and bowl in front of everyone for a chance to win back their entry fee ($17).  But, you don't just bowl at Pot O Gold...you have to humiliate yourself.



Get ready....




Get set....


  

ROLLLLLL!



And Chris wins!!

Thanks guys for a really fun night.  Twenty-eight may have passed fairly quietly, but I have a feeling that this could be a really great year.

So each date was more painful than the last.  He kinda reminds me of the character "Crazy Eddie" that Adam Goldberg played so beautifully on Friends. His laugh was more of a snort, and it both annoyed and frightened me.  He would talk about things that he loved and declare them as, "Better than sex!" and I'd sit there and think, "Really, your pesto pasta is better than sex with you? Okaaaaay...."  Not that we were heading in that direction, but it was just another reason to steer clear of him.  He told me that he had only had one good friend in his life, but that he lived far away and they never saw each other.  He told me this on the second date and I had a fleeting thought that maybe this "friend" was weirded out by him too and chose to not visit on purpose.  Ladies, I eventually learned that fleeting thoughts like that one are also known as RED FLAGS.

Anyway, so being a nice girl, I told David that maybe we should just hang out as friends.  So the third "date" was more of a group thing.  It was the night of the Chinese New Year Parade in the City and I invited David to join my roomies and a couple of guy friends for the afternoon festivities and then dinner.  I forget (or blocked out...) some of the specific things David did and said that made every interaction with him awkward and painful, but by the end of dinner I wasn't even talking to him and one of the guys that was with us leaned over to me and whispered, "WHO brought this guy??" obviously unaware that it was me who had invited him and subjected everyone to his winning personality.

After dinner we decide to hit up a new club, and fortunately, David decided that he needed to head back to the east bay on BART, so he shared a cab with us back downtown.  During the drive David started chatting with the cabbie and asking him if he was from Russia, which he was.  David spent the whole 15 minute ride trying to persuade the cab driver to score him a particular type of Russian vodka the next time he went home and bring it back to David.  At the time, one of the other guys said something like, "um, it's illegal to do that." which now I'm not sure if that's true, but at the time I bought it and it made the whole experience even more awkward as the rest of us sat in silence and listened to David pester the poor cabbie about  vodka.  The cab driver tried to be nice at first and just sort of laugh off the request, but then David tried to discuss how much he would pay the driver to do this for him and he kept trying to persuade the cabbie to change his mind.  By the time we got to the club the cab driver was getting pretty angry with David and wanted all of us out.

My roomies and friends ran up to the club and I was stuck there with David who was still talking the poor cabbie's ear off.  I just wanted to get away from him, so I asked him if he knew where the BART station was from there.  He said no, and I pointed and said, "It's over there." pointing somewhere in the direction of the Civic Center (oh yeah, we were down near the Tenderloin, which isn't the best area to be wandering around if you don't know where you're going).  Then I left without another word.  I pointed and left David there in the middle of nowhere, as far as he knew at least, and then I rushed inside the club.  I vaguely remember him calling after me, but I didn't bother looking back.

I remember running into him about a year later while I was waiting for a bus and he asked if I was hungry and wanted to get a bite to eat.  I was with Karl by then and I didn't want to talk to David at all.  Not because I had a boyfriend, but because he WEIRDS ME OUT.  Luckily, for once, MUNI was on time and I was able to make a quick getaway on the bus.

I haven't seen this man since 2005.  BUT, he THINKS he's been seeing me regularly.  You see, he thinks Clair is me.  He goes up to her after mass and will say,"Hi Stephanie!"  She has been on camping trips and to parties where he's also been in attendance and he absolutely cannot figure out that we are two completely different people.  He came up to her at a party this weekend with his new girlfriend and gave her a big hug and told Clair, "It's so good to see you Stephanie."  Even as I type this I can't help but giggle.  He's such an odd duck.

Clair just realized that there's a party we're both planning to attend in the middle of May that David will probably be at.  We think this will be the PERFECT opportunity to go up to him at the same time and just confuse him even more. 

Hey Clair, maybe we should plan to dress alike and I'll wear my glasses and make this even more fun!  hehehehe