I feel old now

I knew this day was coming. It's one thing to watch your friends get married, but it's another thing completely when they start having babies – at least to me, it is. In other words, it wasn't really a big deal for me to watch my two best friends from high school get married – it was a lot of fun and I had a good time.

But now, they're both having babies!! Of course, I'm very excited for both of them, and they're due only a month apart, which means their babies can grow up being friends, just like their mommies did. How cute is that?

I just have a difficult time imagining the friends that I used to make prank calls with and write lewd stories about annoying teachers with being mothers. After all, it doesn't seem like all that long ago that we were playing cards together in 8th-period study hall.

Basically, it just makes me feel really old, and when I think about, I keep hearing that "Lion King" song, "The Circle of Life" playing over and over in my head. That circle moves much faster than I thought it would.

My first Breathalyzer

I had my first experience this weekend with the dreaded Breathalyzer. You see, in Sioux Falls, they like to do sobriety checkpoints – meaning they force you to stop and blow. Since I work at the newspaper, I knew this was going on, but it completely slipped my mind.

So I went out after work on Saturday night with a few co-workers. I had one beer – though it was a tall Blue Moon, probably about 20 ounces or so. I left the bar at 2 a.m., and hopped on the interstate to head back to my apartment. And that's when I hit the checkpoint. I had to stop, and one of the scores of officers who were out there came up to my car and asked if I had been drinking. I decided it was in my best interest to tell the truth, since I figured that I'd probably be Breathalyzed no matter what.

So I explained, yes, I had one tall beer at Bostons and that I had just left there. I blew a .05 – which was pretty surprising to me, since I figured it probably would've been lower than that. But now I know, I can't drink more than one tall or two small beers and still drive.

But the stupidest part of this whole thing was that they wouldn't let me drive home, even though I wasn't drunk. They said I had to join the long line of slightly tipsy drivers pulled off to the side of the road and call someone to come get me and drive my car home – no easy feat at 2 in the morning.

So then I have to spend about an hour parked on the side of the interstate waiting for a ride in my cold car until Sean comes to pick me up – after hopping over a 7-foot high fence and walking up to the Interstate. We then drove back to his car, and I hopped back in the driver's seat of my car and drove home – what were they going to do, arrest me? I already knew I wasn't drunk.