It was Thirsty-Thursday so a group of my friends decided to preemptively celebrate the birthday of our red-headed, saint patty’s day born, Irish friend.  We headed out to Parish Cafe for mug beers, deserts, and camaraderie.  I had already been out to dinner elsewhere so when I arrived at the bar I asked for a water instead of my usual mug of beer.

Cheersing to our friend's quarter-life crisis. Note my water in the bottom right-hand corner, and yes, someone else is drinking out of my mug.

We frequent Parish Cafe quite a bit because a few of us have beer mugs there.  The deal is that you have to drink 100 beers in 180 days in order to get a mug.  While it wasn’t difficult to do physically, it was certainly difficult on the wallet.  Beers can range from $6-$14 depending on the alcohol percentage and style.  So our mug beers cost a minimum of $600 to obtain.  However, this number could easily be doubled or tripled when you factor in the food we purchased along with many of the beers we had.  Newly employed and recently out of college, my roommates and I decided it would be a great idea to blow our first paycheck on beer mugs at Parish.  It wasn’t a total waste because #1 it’s kind of cool to have a mug of beer with your name on it and #2 it’s the same price as a normal draft beer only you get half-again as much beer.  The moral of the story is that the monetary return on investment in beer mugs is pretty low but the social return on investment is pretty high.

You can get your mug laser-engraved with whatever you want on it. I chose "World's Best Grampa" it's an inside joke between me and my friends but I get a lot of great comments from other people who notice it.

The night turned from beers to whiskey pretty quickly after arriving.  I had already told the bartender about my sober month so when all my friends ordered whiskey shots she brought me an orange juice shot, I thought it was a nice touch.

My shot of orange juice next to four (large) shots of whiskey.

So after several beers, a shot, and a few drinks we all disbanded and went our separate ways home.  I managed to get to sleep before 1:00am so while I stayed up much later than my previous month’s challenge would have allowed, I went to bed sober so I woke up the next morning relatively ok, still tired but no hangover.  This wasn’t the case for at least 3/4 of my friends who all told me how crappy they felt the next morning.  The hangover eventually wears off so the question is: is it worth it to feel like crap the next morning in order to get tipsy with your friends the night before?  The jury is still out on that one.  Rarely do I ever drink to the point of regretting it and if I manage to get a hangover it’s usually not that bad (unless liquor or wine is involved).  Usually it’s just a few mugs (or a growler if I’ve been hiking) of beer which doesn’t lead to a hangover.  All in all it was a good night out with my friends and aside from someone sniping my beer mug and having to drink an OJ shot, I hardly noticed that I hadn’t been drinking.