Party Time

Mon Nov 19th, 2001 04:32:10 AM EST

Diary Entry 61
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The Stanford C.S. department gives us first-year Ph.D. students $300 per quarter for social events. We decided to use it to throw a big party in celebration of the end of comprehensive exams. The party was tonight in Andrea's apartment, the one just above mine.


It is kind of counter to my idea of the main purpose of a party (i.e., to meet women) to invite only computer science Ph.D. students to it. But at any rate $300 buys plenty of beer and Thai food for 20 or so people. It started off well enough around 7 pm and carried through 11 pm, and that's when the trouble started.

As it turns out, some of us have less tolerance for liquor than judgment to stop drinking. Two guys in particular became a bit overly sloshed. I'll just call them A and B. B wasn't too bad, and we managed to send him home in someone else's car.

A didn't want to leave, but it became increasingly clear that he was in no condition to stay and certainly not to keep drinking. In the end, Andrea and her boyfriend (?) Ryan and I surrounded him and managed to talk him into ``going for a walk'' with us. He wanted to use the bathroom beforehand, leading to some tense moments where we hoped that he wouldn't pass out in there with the door locked, but we did get him outside to the third-floor balcony.

There, he just wanted to smoke, but he kept dropping his matches and his cigarettes. He told Andrea and Ryan a couple of times how much he loved them. ``I love you the most, Ryan.'' In the end he dropped his book of matches down the stairwell, so we helped him down to get it.

The next step was to get him to his apartment, across a few hundred yards of courtyards. This wasn't too bad, except that he wanted to sing the whole time. First was R.E.M.'s ``Losing My Religion,'' then something in Croatian whose title he said translated as ``Cold Beer.'' We came across a guy parking his bike who fortunately humored A punching him in the shoulder. Finally we arrived at A's apartment door. He managed to find his keys and let us in.

Inside his apartment, the first thing he did was go to the stereo and turn it on full blast. Not a good idea: he has three roommates. We did a little dance around him turning down the volume every time he turned it back up. Todd, one of his roommates, showed up soon after. We eventually convinced A to go to sleep. Whew!

We got back to Andrea's apartment, where the party was just winding down. I helped clean up a bit and left.


Last updated 03 Apr 2004 21:17. Copyright © 2004 Ben Pfaff.
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