Chapter 3: In which I ponder why I go to drinks so often

For someone who doesn't drink alcohol, I sure do go to a lot of things that are planned around the consumption of it. and it means that I shell out $5 dollars for a diet coke and then watch the rest of the people impair their natural thinking abilities. Why?

Well last night and tonight again it is part of the mass exodus that has hit the workplace. Going to drinks for the farewell sort of like this: A soldier is about to bolt from one trench to another in WWI and so not to get mown down by the machine guns of the Ottoman empire (here chosen because of the word Empire, not because I hate Ottomans) calls to his buddies that will stay in the trench and latter get hit by mustard gas "cover me." I won't blame you if you don't get that.

But, as many 'oh, we'll miss yous' as are uttered at these anti-sobriety shindigs, you have to know that the people left in the trench are a tiny bit envious that the other people is getting out. Maybe it's the faintly impending sense of doom that Project Negative Value creates. Who knows? But that explains all the times we go out otherwise, to escape.

And Tonight, it is for Henry, who I will miss, along with his extensive vocabulary. But not his cigars.