mär d grä

Mardi Gras (mär d grä) : An occasion of great festivity and merrymaking (Sums up people getting crazy, the long days and even longer nights...)

This weekend was wonderful. The Burketts all came to St. Louis and we had a huge throw down that lasted all weekend. Thursday night John and I picked up Keenan and Monte from the airport and it was so great to have them here. We caught up and I even got a second wind at stayed out until after 1am...getting up for work was a little rough. I was spastic all day at work trying to get out early, but that didn't happen. I came back and we went out to Blueberry Hill for dinner and had a nice relaxing night before the Mardi Gras festivities the next day.

Mardi Gras a good time, but it would have been a little less stressful without the 700,000 people. We lost Steve for about 2 hours and he was only standing 50 feet from us, but we couldn’t find him. Cell phones don't work when 700,000 people are drunk dialing their exes, so we left voicemails and almost had to resort to smoke signals. We eventually found Steve and had another reason to celebrate.

We came back to the neighborhood and stocked up on some good food. I was convinced I was going to pass out at the table because I was in "comfy mode". All I sought was complete comfort and it took everything in me not to go home and crash. Maybe my veggie burger was a magic burger because guess what, the second wind hit.

We got locked out of the apartment, it is a long story, but that gave us only one option. We had to seek refuge and shelter at the bar. We were just going to hang out for a bit, but we should have known better. We arrived at the bar before 8pm and probably left 2 drinks too late. I couldn't believe we were all such troopers and made it through the day. Well, not everyone made it, the boys were the fastest to drop. Soon our necks hurt because were carrying around so many beads --that should be the universal sign to call it a night. I'm glad we got locked out because we had the best time at the bar. A great band played songs and we drank lots of wine. Even the bartender became our best friend, giving us Mardi Gras masks after he realized we were going to be the bar rats for the night. Even though I used the nastiest port-a-pottys (potties?) all day and had to wait an hour for each, was a nanometer from getting my shoes urinated on by some jack*** in the crazy crowd, and ran on minimal sleep the past few days, I still had the best weekend. I better relax now and try to get some quality sleep without beer, jager, and lots of wine in my stomach. This weekend was truly a great festivity full of merrymaking.

To truly display the fun we had, I think a before and after photo gallery is required:

Before

After

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Even More After