It was a late night last night. A late, late night. But what fun.

It was Jessie's 33rd birthday. Jessie is the super sweet, cute owner and head bartender of the theatre bar where we all hang out far, far too much. As someone said last night, it's kinda like our rec room.

So anyhow, it was his birthday, and I'd made a deal with him months ago that I would come down and work behind the bar so he could be a patron for the evening and celebrate is style. Ever since last spring, when Jessie conned me into this idea he had of occassionally having "celebrity" bartenders (I say conned because it turned out that I was the only one who ever did it), we've joked that I'm his back-up guest bartender for special occassions. Luckily for me, Jim, the other regular bartender, decided to come in to work last night, even though Jess had told him he didn't have to. I say luckily because it was pretty seriously busy in there until about 12:30 and I would never have survived on my own. Instead, Jim waited until it slowed down a bit and then had me behind the bar for a bit while he sat down with the gang and had a break and a couple of cocktails.

I got there about 9 and hung out with the usual culprits for the first little while, until the birthday party kicked in in earnest. There was a big cake, decorated on top like a football field, complete with little goal posts and pint-sized footballs. With lots of green icing. Which means lots of sticky stuff with lots and lots of green food colouring in it. After we'd all eaten about half the cake, it turned in to a food fight. It all started with Jessie rolling the little footballs in cake and icing and chucking them around the bar. Eventually, I think he was wearing half his cake.

At one point, I was in the bathroom, actually sitting on the john, whe Jessie came flying in and lobbed a huge piece of cake over the top of the door at me. I tried to dodge, but being on the toilet limited my mobility. I ended up with a huge smear of green icing down my back, but the majority of the cake went all over the walls, floor and the toilet itself. Mmmm ... green icing all over the back of the toilet. Marcie and I were busy trying to remove the green stain from the back of my orange shirt when some poor, unsuspecting gal came in to use the can and walked in to the stall and walked right out again and said "Ah, excuse me ... that's not barf is it?" We laughed and said "No, it's just birthday cake, and it's on it's first incarnation. No in and then out again." She thought we were nuts.

So I did my stint behind the bar from about 12:30 until about 2:00, and Jim got all wired up on this idea that he is going to train me to be a real bartender. We decided that it couldn't hurt to have a new skill under my belt, since all I've ever done my whole life is work in theatre. No one could believe I'd never had a waitressing or bar job in my life. The good part of the evening was that I was practicing this new thing ... called pacing. One drink, and then a water or a diet pop and then another drink maybe an hour later. So I didn't get totally smashed for once, which felt good. Especially since we didn't actually leave the bar until 5am. But poor Jessie wasn't pacing. Everyone was buying him drinks and shots and he was just a mess by the time his girlfriend finally dragged him off home. I'm sure he'll really feel a year older today.

Today's been a write off so far, due to the not getting to bed until 5:30am thing. T and I slept until noon and then got up and had scrambled eggs and then went back to bed. But it's now time to get it in gear. I have two scripts to read and send notes to the playwrights on, plus laundry to do and packing for my little weekend trip tomorrow. Thank god I'm not hung-over. Just tired.