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I was thinking of starting a weekly, biweekly, or whenever "blast from the past" post (better name to follow). Back in my "wilder days" my friends and I would meet at a local bar religiously ever week. My friend, who we'll call "Ken", would write an email invite that eventually evolved into what he called the "boozelist". It usually consisted of the current weeks invite, time, meeting place, interesting facts/histories/stories about booze, a drink recipie, and a recap of the previous weeks meeting and any intersting happenings of the weekend. The following is a email, slightly edited, from "Ken" regarding one of the weirdest Sundays we've ever experienced dated 6/2004. FYI, "Passenger 57" = myself.

My Sunday was pretty f******** retarded. Now I have a history of getting myself involved in some pretty bad scenarios, but this last weekend was one of the weirdest to date. Fortunately “Passenger 57”, the infamous Black hole, was along for the ride. Things started Saturday night while “Passenger 57”, and myself were standing outside of my apartment watching other people having a lot more fun than us. As we were lamenting this, my neighbor the crazy lady appeared and started to talk to us. Now the crazy lady had introduced herself to me the first day I moved in by telling me the building was going to be condemned after the fire marshal did his inspection. Well this was a week later and as of yet nothing had happened. She had also posted a letter for the other tenants informing us that she was suing the apartment building for deplorable living conditions.
Now two things stood out immediately about this letter. The first was that she was suing them for a half million dollars, and the second was that it was hand written. Nothing says professionalism than an angry hand written letter. I thought it was pretty funny reading about how she had stopped paying rent in May and how she felt that she was suffering from mental anguish and that the place was not fit for a human such as herself to live in. So my first impression was correct when I assumed that she was a loon.
As I return to the story please remember that “Passenger 57” and I were drinking so our decision making process was a little askew. She comes up and tells us that she wants to ask us a question. So this old lady with her walking stick beckons us into her apartment. I'm thinking she is going to ask us our opinion on the hellhole she claims that she was living in. Honestly I was curious to see what it was that she was complaining about. So having my beer bottle ready in case I needed to use it as a cudgel, “Passenger 57” and I followed her in. It was pretty much a mess, but it was the mess of someone in the process of moving. So I was pretty surprised when she then offered to pay us to help her move Sunday evening. Now I can be bought, and I never turn down the prospect of earning some additional drinking money. Not wanting to get involved in anything too time consuming I ask about where exactly she's moving too. She produces this paperwork on a 300k home in the Bryn Mawr neighborhood that she says that she has purchased. I conferred with “Passenger 57” and we said sure what the hell we'll help you move. Mistake...
Sunday at around 5pm a good two hours earlier than planned she knocks on my door. I open the door and she asks if I can drive a truck. Now the night before she hadn't even gotten a rental truck, so I gave her the phone number of the place where I got mine. She had gone ahead and rented a truck but needed me to go with her to pick it up. Breaking one of the rules of childhood that I should have continued to follow throughout my adult life I decided to get in a car with someone that I thought was insane. That short car ride removed any doubt in my mind of her mental condition. After being introduced to Celeste her car, hearing stories of Celina and Polly(her last two cars, one of which she claims was a Porsche) I was ready to risk trying to do a tuck and roll out of the car at about 50mph.
Crazy Lady tells me that instead of moving and unloading the stuff into the new house, we are going to leave it in the truck because she is having trouble with the owner of the house. Apparently the person she is buying the house from doesn't actually own it, the house belongs to his mother. So he wasn't able to produce a title. None the less she wants me to park this truck outside the house after we're done loading it. Yes, you're right this has screwy written all over it. Who the hell buys a house and then can't even get a hold of the title? Was this house even for sale? Of course Crazy Lady handled the whole deal herself, because she said that she had taken real estate classes. OH, by the way she is also running for State Senate (DFL). Then came the punishing blow. Now considering that she said that she had just bought a pretty expensive house in a nice neighborhood, “Passenger 57” and I were thinking that this old bat my have some cash floating around. Both of us had dollar signs floating around our heads while considering the proposal. She then tells me that she has a microwave that she doesn't want and says that we can have it as payment for our work. My jaw dropped… seriously. The true horror of the day became very evident, I was about to do a lot of work and I wasn't going to get paid a damn thing. She also goes on to say that she has two TV's and that I could have one of those instead. I couldn't even pawn those pieces of crap.
We get to the truck rental store and I'm introduced to Regina (the truck). As soon as I get in I'm on the phone with “Passenger 57” His response was pretty much exactly what I expected "What the F***?" Fortunately he heads over anyway to deal with this sh!tstorm.
I park the truck and Crazy Lady says that she is going to finish packing and she'll come get us when she's ready. An hour rolls by and at about 7pm she knocks on my door. “Passenger 57”, and I walk into the apartment and amazingly enough, our day just got even worse. The place looks exactly the way it did the night before. She hadn't packed a damn thing. She tells us that a friend is coming over to help. At this point we are thinking "yeah right, friends." After we haul out her bed and the solid oak bed frame, someone actually does show up, Craig. Now Craig was an alright guy and had two things going for him, one he wasn't nuts and two he was fully aware that she was. Since Crazy lady only had a couple of boxes and had only scotch and masking tape she went out to get extra supplies. Craig asks us how we knew her and then let's us in on the big secret. Crazy Lady in addition to having Parkinson's happens to be bi-polar. Sonuvabitch, you kidding me, I would have never known. Now Craig is a little pissed off himself, he thought that he was coming over to help her move some paintings. Craig tells us that she was served with a notice of eviction. They go to the same church so he was just trying to be helpful. A half hour goes by and Crazy lady is still gone. We toss pretty much everything that we can into the truck and we just wait. Finally she comes back with some fruit boxes. She then hands Craig the three things of tape she bought, Craig says "Wow, you bought masking tape, mounting tape, and electric tape but you didn't buy any packing tape, that's great." At this point “Passenger 57”, and I are literally throwing her clothes into the truck and into “Celeste” her car, and as the hours pass Crazy Lady's grasp on reality started slipping. The more Craig talked to her about the plan for moving the more it changed. Suddenly we weren't going to drop stuff off in front of the house, we were going to take it to storage until the situation with the house got settled. Then she wasn't buying the house because the guy was a putz so we were going to put stuff in storage and she was going to move to Florida.
As “Passenger 57” and I were waiting for boxes to be packed Crazy Lady started freaking out, "I can handle this, I can handle this" she keeps repeating to herself. We found an ass-load of medication in the kitchen cabinet, so I was hoping that she was taking it. Basically we wound up just packing everything for her. At this point Craig has his car full of all of her plants and the full contents of her refrigerator. Throwing things away apparently was not an option. About two and a half hours have passed since this ordeal started and one question remained, “what the hell were we going to do with this stuff?” Craig starts pressuring Crazy Lady into explaining what is going on, last week she told him that she had closed on a house and today there isn't even a house. Finally it comes down to this. I'm supposed to take the truck, with all of her belongings in it, drive it back to the rental place, and leave it. Craig is going home to throw out most of the crap from her refrigerator and she's going to check into a motel after I return with the key from the truck.
So basically we wound up moving someone out of their place, packing all of her belongings in a truck, and leaving her somewhere without a clue what she was going to do next. I can only hope that the people at the rental agency are going to understand why one of their trucks was returned, full and locked. After it was all was said and done, three hours of manual labor earned us a grand total of zero. Not really a booze story but let me tell you after that experience I need a drink, make that several. The one thing that still sticks in my craw about this whole experience, even to this day, was a moment of sheer panic when I realized that Crazy Lady’s apartment didn’t overlook the park but was obviously more spacious than mine.