That’s the number of mixed drinks I had last night.  Granted, the first three were so widely spread out I was able to complete the full ebb and flow between them.  But given that I don’t drink in such quantities often, I always forget the critical steps I should be taking to avoid the kind of hangover I’m experiencing this morning.

Prior to the drinking, yesterday was somewhat tedious.  My absence from work has been growing increasingly palpable and desperation is setting in – especially since one of the only other persons who could adequately be my substitute is sharing a hotel room with me this week.  Throughout the training session yesterday, my attention would be slightly divided from the material at hand by a stream of emails of people clamoring for someone to address their issue.  For the most part I’m able to mark them as read and move on, but some bait I cannot leave untouched (though I’m careful to avoid catching any hooks).  I do manage to get caught by one – despite my efforts to provide a best fit solution via email, others seemed intent on needing it explained over the phone.  So after our training day is done, I get on the phone, re-explain the solution, wait for the gradual collective “oh, yeah that makes sense”, and get on with other more pressing matters (like figuring out where we are going to drink) – today’s edition of it only took about 10 minutes.  I must be slipping.

So we head out to meet up with the colleagues from our NY office (which is generally a sales office).  As with SF, the office is much smaller and quieter than the main hub that I’m accustomed to.  As I get introduced around, I am faced with a mix of “Oh! It is so good to finally meet you in person!” and “Oh hi … and what department do you work in?  Are you new?”  I felt like after nearly 4 years I had known and been known by almost everyone at least by reputation (not to be haughty, but I’ve worked on things that nearly every department in our company should be aware of).  Don’t get me wrong, I’m wasn’t upset or concerned, just mildly surprised.  But in my experience notoriety is more burden than reward – especially when sales is involved, so I made little effort to cement myself  in their minds any further … other than joining them for a 4-hour happy hour event at a rooftop bar.

So that brings us back to the drinking.  The waitress attending our party was horrible at her job.  I got the impression that the bar in question aimed for looks over talent in their hiring practices – I guess most guys might be content to wait a while for a drink so long as they can wile away the time ogling the server.  I am not so easily distracted by shiny things.  We ordered a round of drinks and then waited about 45 minutes to receive them.  After 2 rounds of this, most of us got in the habit of asking for the next drink as she was handing us one.  Even at that, I only managed to get 3 drinks to my hand over the course of 3 hours.  So we relocated to a more traditional and less pretentious pub where the drinks flowed more freely.  I guess one needs to be careful what they wish for.