Bowling with the Mervyn's Peeps

So, as some of you may know, I worked for Mervyn's for three years until their recent bankruptcy and closure. And thus, I've made a ton of friends there. Get it right, they may be former co-workers, but they've all become my good friends now. So, imagine how I'd felt when I get an invite to go bowling. Freaking Awesome. That's right.

We met up at 8:30PM earlier tonight, Sunday, February 09 at Cloverleaf in Fremont. I haven't been here in a while, but it was still in the same location, same building, same hard to see sign in the dark. I walked in and I didn't see anyone! Crap, am I early or am I late? Better call one of the others to see if they came yet. I gave Maryann a call and she said everyone was inside. Oh, guess I didn't look far enough. So, in I go and the greeting, handshaking and hugging begin. This a takes a few minutes. We start chattering aimlessly while we wait for everyone to show up. Questions like, "Where are you working now?" and "So, what's new?" are flying around insanely. Once everyone is there, we collected money and got the lanes. Let the bowling begin.

It was so much fun. We all knew we sucked, but that's the best part. You're not trying to out-bowl anyone. It was a chance to hang out, without the loom of work hovering over our heads. Some highlights of the night that I noticed:

• On the first game, I got a score of 81. BLEH. But then, a miracle in the second game! I got 5 strikes in a row! Insane! I've never gotten more than 2 stikes in a row. Final score was 177. Not to shabby for a really bad bowler such as myself, who's everyday goal would be to break 100, LOL.
• Kenneth let Emily pick any random ball for him to use to try to finish up his frame. Amazingly, with a psycho 16 pound ball he's never used before, he spare'd it. Very nice, Kenneth.
• The group picture we took with everyone in it and the poor random girl in the next lane who had to take the pics for us. I swear, she went through probably 5 cameras. And it was her turn to bowl.
• Half the people's faces were red from drinking. That's was funny.
• One of our lanes froze up. We were just sitting there a good 10 minutes. BTW, we had 3 lanes.
• A bunch of the girls got Chocolate Cake shots. Those are quite tasty, I've had one before(thanks for the rec, Martin). I never knew Cloverleaf had shots!
• When we were leaving, everyone went around hugging everyone. Then, we stopped and started talking again, LOL. Round two of hugs before we finally left.

All in all, it was great getting to hang out with all my friends from Mervyn's. Even so, a bunch of people couldn't come. I hope the next time they're able to make it because it was awesome and they're missing out.

PS: The next SoN (Stories of Note) post will be up later.