I took
my California-based nephew out for his 21st birthday celebration and lived to tell the tale. I'm not sure how he's doing this morning, though.
1) We started with dinner at 6:15 at Miller's Pub. We each had prime rib, with potatoes and baby carrots. I had a pomegranate martini, he had a mojito (first legal drink!) and a beer.
2) Then we walked over to Navy Pier, wandered around and rode the ferris wheel. I know it's a touristy thing to do, but he's a tourist, after all. And walking to the pier, around the pier, and riding in the mostly open-air ferris wheel car would be good for him, if he intended to do a night of drinking. He was happy with all the skyline photos he was able to take from that height.
3) A stroll over to The Regal Beagle. We had cheese fondue (a favorite of his when he was a little boy) and he had a Tequila Sunrise and I had some rum drink named for Tony Danza. (It amused me.)
4) We took a cab across town to a bar he had researched, only to find that, at midnight Sunday night/Monday morning, they were closed. So we asked the cabbie to take us back to the neighborhood I'm more familiar with. We ended up at the Sax Bar near the House of Blues. Lotus Martini for me, Tequila Sunrise for him.
5) We walked (rather shakily on his part) to Mother Hubbard's, a lovely bar with a 4:00 AM license. I switched to ice water, he switched to Corona. It's now 1:00 AM. Before he could finish his first beer, the house bought him a shot of tequila for his birthday. Which he manfully downed … and promptly vomited. (Twice.) I was surprised that he came out to finish his beer and order another one. We played a game of pool and he forgot to finish it.
Then we walked over to the train station. Naturally all the commuter trains had departed for the night, but the station is a good place to get a cab. All the way over he kept asking, "How far IS IT?" I pretended I didn't hear him and kept babbling about different sites as we walked along the Chicago River. If he needed to deposit the contents of his stomach anywhere, I wanted it to be on an empty city street, not in the cab or my mom's carpet. We got home via cab at 2:30, he was "home" to my mom's before 3:00.
I learned that my nephew is high-energy and finds most things funny. That he worries about a friend who is in the service and has seen duty in Afghanistan (he wears a pair of dog tags with his own name on them to show solidarity). That he sees himself as a party monster, that he loves AC/DC and Beevis and Butthead … and my mom (his grandma). That even with an assist from lots of fresh air, starches and carbs, he really should stick to beer.
Here's hoping that he enjoyed his 21st birthday in Chicago. I'm not checking in on him, though. I think he needs his sleep.
Big game tonight, with the Cubs battling the Brewers for sole possession of first, and my boys in blue won 6-4. It was a come from behind victory, and the final result was in doubt from the very beginning as the Cubs and the Brewers traded the lead back and forth for more than three hours. I love games like this -- where every at-bat is a duel between pitcher and hitter. Home-run powered blow-outs are satisfying once in a while, but games like this ... where every pitch and every swing matters ... are deliciously tense. Especially because 1st place in the division was on the line.
