In that situation, the student's family were wondering why his friends didn't make sure he got home safely.

In high school, I was the kind of person who made sure people got home safely since I didn't drink. That tends not to help one's social status at that age.

I was going to say that, but honestly, when I was 21, if I got too drunk, I would often just head home by myself. And I often get quiet when I feel out of control (ie, too drunk), so even my friends might not have known that's why I was leaving.

So much this.

And you know, by the time I was 21, I was a pro at drinking! So we weren't taking so much care of each other anymore, which I don't even mean in a bad way, just that we each believed we were capable of seeing ourselves home safely.

At my alma mater, a college student got really drunk and fell asleep on the train tracks. In that situation, the student's family were wondering why his friends didn't make sure he got home safely.

Oh god, that sounds horribly similar to what happened to my brother-in-law. We'll never know what happened that night for sure, but what we do know is that he went out drinking with friends, took the subway home alone, and was subsequently hit by a train -- somehow, he'd fallen onto the tracks, and nobody was around to notice (it was very late). The friend who was the last to see him alive is a really decent, responsible guy, and I know it absolutely tears him up to think about whether he should have done something differently that night -- called him a cab, accompanied him home -- but I'm sure it never even occurred to him that that might be necessary. J. was a big, strong guy and I don't think they'd been drinking crazy amounts, just a regular night out. Sometimes terrible things just happen.

When I was 21, if I was drunk, my friends were drunker. No help at all.

Timelies all!

It's-nothing ~ma to you, Maria.

So, 11 advertisers have dropped Rush Limbaugh, and a radio station in Hawai has dropped Rush's program.

Triviality to you, Maria!

Problem with having work buds is that sometimes it takes forever to get to the work part of the conversation, and I still haven't finished telling him everything I needed to tell him, because we got distracted by things remarkably resembling dick jokes.

Still, he left Sour Patch Kids on my desk this morning, so he gets leeway.

Good lord, Maria, talk about the universe piling on! Much nothing-ma to you!!

Today I have: played with cat, returned a dress, got three other dresses to the alterations place and pinned (to pick up Saturday), got cash, requested the personal trainer at the gym call me to set up sessions, and dropped stuff off at the dry cleaner.

Still on the to-do list: figure out what's in my bank account, call old job to find out how much vacation they're paying out (their records didn't match mine but seemed to be outdated), re-do my taxes to include extra W-2 I forgot, and do a bunch of cleaning/reorganizing/optimizing in the house.

Oh, and catch up on the TiVo.

Test-ma to you Maria.