Everything's bigger in Texas. We went to Texas last weekend for my nephew's graduation from the University of Texas, Austin. Evan's graduation was on May 20, which happened to be my birthday. While we were there to celebrate my nephew's accomplishment, my family also celebrated my birthday with me. At lunch, following the graduation ceremony, Evan and I were given drinks in shot glasses, which we were told to gulp. I don't "gulp"; I “sip.” The sweet drink was quite tasty, and I had a warm feeling inside. After lunch, I took a nap while the kids went swimming. Soon, as typical of a family gathering (at least OUR family) it was time for the next meal.
After dinner, I was ready for bed, but I knew that, after skipping the midnight movie the night before, my brother would not let me end my birthday early. They asked me what I wanted to do and I said that I'd love to play pool. I hadn't played since way before my surgery, but I used to have fun playing and wanted to see if I could enjoy it again. Since the hotel didn't have a game room we were forced to ditch the kids and hit the bars. Evan, the recent college grad, knew all the hot spots, so my brother, Howard, Evan, and I grabbed a cab for downtown Austin.
One of the bars we went to served up flaming beer shots. Three glasses of beer were lined up on the bar with a shot glass full of liquor balanced on top of them. The bartender then put a shot-full of liquor in his mouth, and doused his fingers with the same liquor. Now comes the exciting part: he lit his fingers on fire and blew the liquor across the flames, igniting the shot glasses on top of the beer. After the fire died down, he put the shot glasses into the beer, and served them to us! I'm not sure what the point of the fire was, but it was cool! It's also the type of thing you have to SEE, so here's a video:
The last place we went was a bar to play pool. I kept up with Howard and Evan. Each of us had one ball left when Howard sank his last ball for the win. Of course, this was TWO HOURS LATER, which proves we all sucked!
