Substance P brings the PAIN

In the small world of Columbia's trivia, me and a few of my friends are known as team "Substance P" (an extremely nerdy medical term, the details of which I will not bore you, but we like it anyway). We play trivia every Tuesday night at the Flying Saucer down in the Vista. The first time we all went to trivia night we tore it up and won first place (your choice of either $50 or 3 t-shirts that say "We Kicked Your Ass at Trivia Night"). We, of course, chose the t-shirts. I'm fairly certain that that is the sucker deal. Anyways, in the next couple of weeks we did not do as well, but did end up getting second place one week which gave us two more t-shirts. There are 6 of us in the group (4 are pictured), so one person still lacked a t-shirt (shout out to Melissa!). We really want everyone in the group to have one so we can be the complete losers who show up to trivia night in all six matching t-shirts. I'm sure that will make us some friends. In the next few weeks, we really sucked it up big time and did not even come close to placing. So, we made the decision to try our luck at a different trivia night. We decided on Wednesday night at Jillian's because the pot is much bigger ($100) and I feel certain there are way more stoopies at Jillian's than Flying Saucer based on my few times going there.

Well, I was right about there being way more stoopies there (our waitress was a prime example, I can't believe she can even remember to breathe) but there was another interesting group there. I failed to mention above that at the Flying Saucer we have a slight rivalry with the team "Swallow, or it's in your eyes." We have never seen them before because they are a real quiet, mysterious team but we had been losing in the previous weeks to them frequently. Let me mention here that Substance P is not a quiet, mysterious team as I act obnoxiously when we do well and make sure everyone else knows it. Last night, we were on fire. They announce who is in the lead after each round and we were always in first place. We went into the final round (think final round of Jeopardy) in first place with 68 points. The next closest team (whose name I can't remember) was right behind us at 67. Well, you can wager up to 15 points and you have to wager at least one point. For the final question you had to put a list of five 80s movies in order according to how much money they grossed, and it was all or nothing. So we, of course, only wagered 1 point. I'm sure you can see where this is going. We managed to guess the answers correctly and were immediately pissed we only wagered one point but waited anxiously to hear where we placed. We ended up getting second place to "Swallow, or it's in your eyes" who had come from way behind by answering the final question correctly and wagering 15 points on it. We couldn't believe it. And not only that we had lost to them, but that the whole time they were the four guys sitting at the table directly beside us that I had been gloating to all night. Oops. We tucked our tails between our legs and ran out of there leaving a grand 80 cents on $80 for our tard of a watiress. So I have decided that they must do a grand tour of all the trivia nights in Columbia. Publick House Monday, FS Tuesday, Jillian's Wednesday, Harper's Thursday. I think one week Substance P should do the tour to see if my theory is correct.

If you're interested, here is the final round question. Give me some guesses and I will post the answers later (sorry Ryan, you can't participate).

Put the following movies in descending order of how much money they grossed (no cheating):

1. Batman

2. Raiders of the Lost Ark

3. Return of the Jedi

4. Ghostbusters

5. ET

Ok, blog-fans...this is my last post before the big trip to Italy. We leave tomorrow and will be gone for about 12 days. I hadn't planned on blogging while I'm over there, but if I get really hard up I will check out a internet cafe and give you an update. I expect some quality comments while I am gone and you can expect one hell of a blog when I get back.

Ciao!

life is NOT better on the beach

So almost a year ago I had really packed on the LBs so I made the extremely unwise decision to go on the South Beach diet. The premise of this diet is that for the first two weeks you don't consume any alcohol, caffeine, sugar, or carbs in order to get rid of your sugar cravings. Well, I'm sure all my blog-fans know this was beyond difficult for me. After the first two weeks you can slowly add back in some carbs and one glass of wine per day, but absolutely no beer or sugary liquor drinks. I ended up dropping some major poundage (which I of course gained back the minute I went off the stinkin' diet) and vowed to myself that I would never participate in the South Beach diet (SBD from here on) again.

In approximately 3 days, me and the rest of the McCullough/Byars clan will be beverly-hillbillyin it over to Italy and in an attempt to not be the fat American in Italy I again made the extremely unwise decision to go back on the SBD. I am anticipating a 10 pound weight gain while in Italy from what I can only guess will be a gorge fest on pasta, pizza, wine, bread, and gelato so I thought that maybe I should drop 10 before I go. This time around I decided to modify the diet ever so slightly by continuing to drink wine throughout the first two weeks. Well, let's just say I figured out why you are not supposed to drink any alcohol at all during the first two weeks. It has nothing to do with alcohol spiking your blood sugar or any of that crap and everything to do with what you eat when you're three sheets to the wind. Let's just say that I think I have managed to gain 10 pounds in two weeks on the diet so when you add in the 10 I plan on gaining in Italy, I have really gained 20 pounds while dieting. Is this even possible??

Which leads me to the title of this blog. Have you seen those commercials for the SBD where there are all these beautiful people at this amazing party standing around eating appetizers and drinking out of pineapples with little umbrellas talking about how great the SBD is?? Well, that is a load of crap!! They can't drink those drinks! Life WOULD be much better on the beach if that was what the diet about. Anyways, I digress. Don't do the SBD. Period.

Goodnight blog,
Jessie

UPDATE from previous blog: My mother really enjoys the blog but thinks that it is very inappropriate for a doctor to have a blog entitled "My Life as a Lush." I, however, think that my blog title is very indicative of my life and appropriate. What do you think blog-fans?? Should I change the title of my blog? If so, any suggestions??

in the beginning....

So I'm sure most of you reading this blog have thought to yourself at one time or another, "why is it so hard to get in touch with Jessie?? I mean, I call her, I email her, text her, snail mail her, and nothing." Well, my friends and family, it has nothing to do with how much I love or hate you and all to do with my sheer laziness. However, armed with 3 loooonnngg months off and a new digital camera and facebook, I am making a full-hearted attempt at staying in touch. Here it goes....


This weekend myself, Jodie (my heterosexual life mate or HLM) and Aurelia (friend from high school who I lost touch with but recently have gotten back in touch with due to her wise decision to move back to Columbia) took the 3 hour car ride up to the booming metropolis of Waynesville, NC for a girls only mountain weekend. First things I noticed as we entered Waynesville: we were the youngest people there by a good 30 years and a full set of teeth is absolutely not necessary to reside here. All fine and dandy by me as I packed only comfy clothes and had no intention of leaving the moutain house until Sunday when it was time to leave. I know Aurelia was stressin over planning stuff for us to do the whole time we were up there, but clearly she did not know of my ability to fully enjoy myself doing absolutely nothing. You know how there are some people that gotta be doing stuff all the time and seeing all the sites to have a good vacay?? Well hey, that ain't me.


So we stopped at the local Ingles on the way into town to pick up some necessities and then headed to the house. We popped open a bottle wine, I cooked us up some bleu cheese hamburgers, and the fun began. In the hours that followed, we basically played special olympics trivial pursuit 90's edition (I am pretty sure one pie piece was earned in two hours), Aurelia fell off her chair (which I didn't get a pic of in my drunken state because I couldn't figure out my new camera), and a random dog scared the living day lights out of me when he showed up in the window. Think, Cujo. All in all, a great night.


The next morning I woke up at 6am to the sound of 4 million birds wanting to mate. Literally, I thought I was inside a bird house these freakin birds were so loud. As soon as the loud leader of the crew would shut it, a new and louder bird would chime in. In classic Jessie fashion, I could not be the only one annoyed by the birds so I casually called Jodie's name as she was sleeping in the twin bed beside me. As soon as she woke up, I asked her if she heard the birds. "What birds?" she asked. It only took her about 10 seconds before she was soo annoyed by the birds that she wanted me to die. Well, she couldn't sleep anymore so she got up at 6:15 am and made coffee and did all that and I, of course, peacefully went back to sleep 'til 9. Sarah, does this remind you of anything???


The rest of the weekend was spent drinking, relaxing, and talking and we sadly made our way home tonight around 7. A great weekend was had by all!! All right, I'm off to cap off my weekend with the Food Network Awards and then some bird-free sleep. Comment, please!!