9am: Breakfast, Starbucks HQ
Breakfast at Starbucks? With their foul-tasting, bitter coffee? You're joking, right?

11am: Argosy cruise & luncheon
"Hey, I'm drunk!" our fate. . . I mean, date. . . announces blithely as we pick up the phone way too early, eyelids firmly glued in place.

"Go back to bed, we're asleep," we cry.
"But my hair's in a bun and the room keeps spinning! "

Our date makes it on to the cruise liner, but throws up three times, once as we pass Bill Gates' mansion. The Mei Mei chocolate fortune cookies melt on our hands and make a sticky mess on our suits as we remember too late we're dressed fancy. Luncheon consists of succulent roast beef and trying to avoid being blinded by the man from Seattle Weekly's horrendous red shirt. A nice lady hands us beer. Why are we here? Oh, culture. Yeah, we're into that.

3pm: Gala concert, Recital Hall
One rapid switch of dates later, we're listening to a ravishing version of Mozart's succulent Symphony No 40 in G minor. Perhaps Maestro Schwarz knows his classical shit after all. Annoying then, how our heads droop earthwards every few seconds.

Plus, there's no free champagne. Bummer.

7pm: Dinner, Museum of Flight
A German professor keeps making obscure territorial jokes about Bavarians and American beer. "Why do you drink it cold?" he trumpets loudly. "Because it has no taste." He has food in his beard and a red blotchiness that won't go away. The Englishman next to me has a cute nose, but no soul. My companion keeps whispering in a volume commiserate with the amount of white wine she's quaffed that she's frightened. We run home, only to be called far too late by a drunken Kathleen Wilson determined to make the Pioneer Square scene.

Oh my God.

Sunday September 14

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