Jamaica’N Me Homesick #3

A person can only attempt to fit 75 pounds of school supplies into a 50-pound-limit suitcase so many times before they throw up their hands and declare they need a drink. Like, now.

I found myself in this particular predicament Tuesday night. Thankfully Eric was within earshot and offered to come to my aid. (Probably wouldn’t have needed that drink so badly had he been within earshot when I was cursing the airline’s weight limits, but that’s a tale for another time.)

So there we are. Me in need of a drink. He in need of me having a drink. Our friends Thomas & Elana agreed to meet up with us to help take my mind of the seemingly impossible feat of engineering I was attempting, and I agreed to down a fruity rum drink in celebration of my impending trip to Jamaica.

We headed to Scotty’s Bar & Grill. And, once a few sips of rum had been consumed, we remembered that dinner had been forgotten. So I ordered a steak salad because, you know, I gotta get into a swimsuit in just a few days (as if skipping a burger and fries one time will make any little bit of difference, but it made me feel better about the impending tropical times). It was good, but nowhere near as tasty as Eric’s Loaded JoJos. We ate. We drank. We talked. We relaxed.

And when Brad (one of the city’s friendliest bartenders, I swear) came to clear away our plates I tried to stab him with a fork so he’d leave Eric’s bacon-bit-sprinkled plate in front of me. “Dude, seriously? There’s still bacon on that plate.” He had to look real close to confirm my claims were true before completely removing the almost-empty from my sight.

When he returned to the table with round two (or was it three?), he also clinched his place as my very favorite bartender in the city. Because there, beside my fruity rum punch, he placed what I am certain was one of the most superbly cooked strips of bacon I have ever encountered.

And that, my friends, is how you find the strength to get back to it and do the thing you think you cannot do.