"We are BINGE DRINKING!"

Today, I love not being hungover anymore.

The campus bar is the hub of activity around here. Everyone meets there on Monday nights to catch up, dance, and drink the cheapest beer in the province. We love our musty, old, stained carpet and the rotting bar, the poor lighting and complete lack of air circulation. It's our little corner, in the basement of the academic building, and every Friday early happy hour, our halls of learning smell like local microbrew.

Once a year, we celebrate all that is our favourite place. The birthday party for the bar is legendary. Things break, people get messy, and everyone spends the next 24 hours recovering. I started lining up with my friends at 5pm. The bar opened at 7pm. The reason for the line (which started at 2, I'm told, and eventually snaked up four floors of stairs and back down part way) is the prices. Even after the prices went up a bit this year, the birthday prices started at $0.75/drink (beer, bar shot, anything) and the price went up by a quarter every 15 minutes, when they'd ring a bell at the main bar and the whole place would boo and groan. Needless to say, it takes no time at all to get silly.

There was a band, I'm told, and dancing, which I do remember. The usual breaking and bleeding also occurred, not on my part, luckily. Things got out of hand at 11, when they shut the party down early. I didn't make it to bed until... late. I think.

The next afternoon at union council, we were all pretty messy. It was my last council meeting, and we laughed and joked and drank Powerade. The only way I got through the day (God, I'm going to sound like an alcoholic) was by drinking to ward off the hangover. I watched the Oscars with my equally hungover friends, sipping ginger ale for my stomach and gin for the hangover. Today, no hangover. Thank God.