I worked 55 hours this week. Combine that with 3 hours a day commuting, and it's always the blog that suffers.

I spent much of the weekend with Bill and Terri, both of whom are Carnegie Mellon grads, and I crashed at their place Friday and Saturday nights. CMU's annual carnival is this weekend, highlighted by a They Might Be Giants concert and by Buggy. We failed in our efforts to see TMBG, because the show was moved from a wide open area for all to a small gymnasium for those willing to stand in a long line for a lonf time. So Friday we just went to the young alumni reception (I was a paying guest), and then went back to their place and watched Fast Times At Ridgemont High. Mmmm...Phoebe Cates.

Buggy started early Saturday morning. Bill was out of the house by 6:45, while Terri and I left at a more reasonable 7:30. Buggy is difficult to explain, but basically take a college student 5-foot-2 or less and 100 lbs. or less (almost inevitably, thus, female) and shove them into an aerodynamic engineless vehicle with an extended bar in the back for pushing. Have two people (in series, not parallel) shove her up a big hill, then have her steer down a bigger hill going around 40 miles per hour, finally have two more pushers take them in to the finish line.

In short, imagine a relay race with a human baton, and a big street luge in the middle.

The most inexplicable part of Buggy for those of us who didn't go to CMU is not the 40 mph plunge down the hill that involves narrowly missing a big public statue, but rather the incredible number of hours put in for months at a time by a team of mechanics leading up to race day. I suppose it's one of those labors of love that anyone not involved in could never understand, so I won't cast any aspersions, because god knows how many hours I spent on quiz-bowl and at The Pitt News in college.

But anyway, I went to Buggy for the first time this year, because Bill and Tom have been telling me for years to go, because the rest of the weekend sounded like fun, and because I was legitimately curious. As expected, I found one race interesting, a couple of races mildly interesting, and then the interest quickly wore off. So I left around 10 a.m., took a quick detour through a Carnegie Museum exhibit I'd been wanting to see for a while, and then went to work. I put in seven hours there, then went to dinner with Bill, Terri, and some of their CMU friends.

The day was building toward the Buggy party in the evening, where current and alumni members of the SDC (Student Dormitory Council, I think) team celebrated third-place finishes in the men's and women's divisions. To put it mildly, I got hammered out of my gourd at this party. I had been a long time since I had gotten that drunk, and I'm not sure exactly why. Part of the reason is that Bill was bartending and using big red plastic cups, so I was drinking a bit more than I realized. But I had made a conscious decision in advance that I was going on a bender. Maybe being back at a college party just got me in the mood, or maybe I was drinking because I realized just how far removed I am from college. But mostly it was a happy drunk, which is good because when I drink heavily I can go into either outgoing mode or sullen mode. This time I was basically outgoing. Some theoretical observer watching me might look askance at describing my behavior as "outgoing", but the fact of the matter is I am painfully shy in a crowd full of strangers, especially at a party, and the fact that I eventually did start talking to and even flirting with people suggests serious alcohol-related loss of inhibition.

This morning, on the other hand, was not good times. Jerry Seinfeld's vomit streak was substantially longer than mine, but I had a pretty good one going until about 6 a.m. this morning, and then a much much shorter one that lasted until about 11 a.m. in Starbucks. I would rank that purge as tall, not grande or venti, but it still counts. I am now up to a good five and a half hours, and hopefully this one will continue in the days, weeks, months, and years to come. I've also been dealing with a pesky low-grade headache all day, though a nap after I drove home helped substantially. Not surprisingly, I react worse at 28 than I did at 22 (or, OK , 16) to this type of binge.

Was it worth it? At Starbucks I probably would've said no, but I did have fun Saturday, and it's not like my sloth today has ruined any big plans. So yeah, as a once in a great while thing, I guess it was.

Of course, that could change deciding on how much Bill decides to tell the world about the evening...