How old am I?

You know how you can tell you're a little too old for younger-type shenanigans? Hangovers. Bad ones. That's how you can tell.

Friday night I went for a beer with friends after work. We're all trying to figure out how we're going to deal when the office closes, so a little camaraderie is a good thing. We go for beers, I have a few... a few big ones. Cold, Polish beer is really tasty and the large, chatty group was into hanging around until at least round 3.

I leave after the third, head back to Brooklyn to meet MT for dinner at our new favorite little French bistro not far from our house. When I get there he has a bottle of Cotes du Rhone waiting. It's cold outside. Really cold. In the 30s. Perfect red wine weather (as if you need a weather permissive state to imbibe in the wonders of red wine). We have a glass, order our meals, Philippe, the owner, chats it up with us a bit.

Dinner was delicious, as it always is at this particular place. Dinner was so good, in fact, that I didn't notice the first time Philippe came over and filled my glass from the bottle he had opened after MT and I finished ours. That first pour from the second bottle turned into a second pour, and you really can't stop a Frenchman when he wants to pour the wine. It's like trying to stop a flood with your little finger. Just not happening.

All said and done, I had the beers before dinner, split the first bottle of wine with MT, had at least another 2 glasses from Philippe... and woke up Saturday morning feeling like hot death with a side of oww. It was bad. Apparently I called Kristie when we got home after dinner and talked her ear off for a few minutes before telling her I had to go because I was going to throw up. Yeah, I don't remember the throwing up part at all (counting my blessings on that one). We had to get up early to help a friend move Saturday morning, and when we got to her place she took one look at me, just put her arms around me and said reassuringly, "Aww, Melissa, it'll be OK."

Yes, it will be OK. It will definitely be OK because I am never getting that drunk again in my life. I know my 30 year old limits.

The perfect footnote to this tale is that the very next night we stopped by the bistro to take a poster to Philippe (he's hanging it in the dining room) and what happened when we walked in the door? He hugged us and promptly asked his wife, Marie, to pour us a couple glasses of red. Ah, the French.