The Night I Threw Up on My Knee

This post is pretty outdated, since the events contained here actually happened weeks ago.  Oops.  You'll understand momentarily, because I was obviously in no shape to write in the day(s) after it all happened, and then I've been out of town for the past week.

So the only friends I've really made so far are the girls from the office.  Unfortunately, it's not the office I actually go to every day since I sit at the client's office and not with the other agency people, so it's a real treat when I get to hang out with them.  The day after the sauna, the office girls (heretofore to be referred to as The Wundergirls) invited me out for drinks.  It was a Thursday.  In Helsinki, that can mean only one thing:  you are going to Kaarle to drink cheap sparkling wine and dance on tables.

My new American-friend-in-Finland Joe explains:

"It is a typically Finnish metastasized after-work party in which 30-50 year olds act like they just discovered this amazing new substance, alcohol, that makes you act crazy.  It is really funny how in Finland at every age people act like frat boys when you pump them with beer, and the Finnish definition of going out for a beer implies that you will not remember how you got home.  I have Finnish friends who are married with kids and go out once a month or something, and if they can remember how they got home or if they do not have a mind-numbing hangover the next day they get mad at themselves for not drinking enough!"

We ate at a Tex-Mex place (irony duly noted), and then headed to Kaarle early so we wouldn't have to wait in line to get in.  I'm sure I've complained about how expensive everything here is, but there is one thing that is dirt cheap: those dang bottles of sparkling wine!  If you know me, you know that I am not supposed to have alcoholic beverages with bubbles.  I'm certainly not supposed to have a bottle and a half's worth of alcoholic beverages with bubbles.

Needless to say, I don't remember the second half of the evening.  Here are the scattered memories I do have:

• Hearing the Finnish version of "Is This the Way to Amarillo?"  (Irony duly noted AGAIN.)
  
  
• Going to the bathroom and realizing halfway through that I hadn't bothered to shut the stall door.
  
  
• Standing on the booth seat and dancing like I was in a Scandal video being chased by The Warrior.
  
  
• Practicing my pronunciation of "Pohjoinen Hesperiankatu."
  
  
• Being walked down to the entry way by one of the Wundergirls, and having her help me put my coat on and putting me in a cab.  I don't remember deciding to leave or wanting to leave, I think it was decided on my behalf.
  
  
• Riding in the cab, and suddenly throwing up in my own mouth.  I was terrified of getting anything anywhere in the cab, so I just held it.  Then the cab driver asked me something, I forgot about what was in my mouth, and so I answered him and got puke all over my knee.
  

Now that that's explained, today in an email one of the Wundergirls addressed me as "Vomit Stain Lady" to which Leslie suggested I start going by "VSL".  And that looks like "YSL" aka "Yves Saint Laurent", which makes me laugh so hard that it went from something so nasty to so classy!  I will get to work monogramming everything immediately.