"Do you always bowl like that?" or "What can I say? That's just how I bowl."

P'raps you'd like to hear about something other than snowstorms, traffics and maps for a short while.

The London readers might remember hearing the details about last year's Christmas party with Blend at Asia de Cuba. The one where we started abusing our livers during a lengthy 1pm lunch followed by a hard-hitting happy hour. After a number mojitos, glasses of wine (red and white), Irish lattes and then MORE mojitos, I blindly stumbled through Soho and miraculously found a bus home, though not after making a few intercontinental drunk dials asking for directions.

This year, with the new job, new crew, wasn't nearly as drunken (and I only speak for myself), but just as good of a time. We started at the office with a champagne toast around 4:30 while our creative director spun the jams on our turntable deck. At 5:00, a 15-person black van pulled up outside -- whicih our crew quickly named the Chubby Chaser, which, I learned, has an entirely different context in Australia -- and took us to Secret Location #1: Lucky Strike. For the first time since high school, I went bowling. And even back in high school, when we went bowling I'd usually just watch my friends wear rented shoes and cheer for whoever was losing. With the bar at our disposal, we bowled the first game - 11 of us across 3 lanes. I came in a very shabby second to my coworker, as my boss announced he'd dish $300 to the winner of the second round.

Now, if you know me at all, you know I can get pretty competitive. But, then, we've already established that I'm terrible at bowling, and I know when to pick my battles. So while I wasn't throwing the game, I wasn't hoping to make any bank, either. So when in the first couple frames, I bowled mere 3s and 4s, I knew it was a lost cause.

Until I started hitting spares and then, to my surprise, strikes. I found a sweet spot with the purple 9lb ball, and I like to think I had pretty spectacular form. Did you know they taught bowling in 4th grade at Stilwell Elementary in Stilwell, Kansas? I always thought that was odd. Cause bowling doesn't really require a lot of, er, physique. Anyway, I digress.

So my coworkers on the other two lanes start taking note of my sudden successes and remark with surprise matching my own that, behold, I had the score to beat. Well. With a strike or two in the final frame, I ended with a far-from-perfect 118 - coming in three points behind my boss, who said it didn't count since he made the bet. And thus I was awarded $300 in winnings. Crazytown.

From Lucky Strike, we moved on to our dinner reservation at Tortilla Flats for BINGO and margaritas (and the odd tequila shot). There, Chris asked me, "Do you always bowl like that?" The question caught me so off guard I think I just laughed . If I'd really been thinking on my feet I would've replied, "What can I say? That's just how I bowl." With the exception of the guacamole, the food was subpar, and the drinks were tremendously strong.

From there, we dashed into a number of bars in the area; one by one they were deemed unfit for the likes of our trendy know-the-scene crowd. It should be noted that this string of events included: ordering a bottle of champagne, deciding the bar was too dead, pocketing the bottle of champagne, and taking it to the streets. At another next place, I lent my boss money so he could bribe an ID-less coworker into some downstairs hotel bar. When we got upstairs, assured by hotel staff there wasn't a downstairs bar, or that there was and it was closed, or that it was open and we, er, just couldn't go, we left there too.

It was then we decided to nab the first LIMO that would take the 10 or 11 of us across town to the east side, to THE BOX -- described in NY Mag as "An intimate take on Hammerstein ballroom for circus stars, human oddities, and avant-garde thespians from France, Russia, and even Brighton..." This place was ridiculous. Reportedly full of hookers and fashionably interesting/bizzare people and, it goes without saying, bottle service costing a few thousand dollars. The show there started at 1:30 near 2:00am, but I couldn't stay out any longer and peaced out around 12:30 or 1:00. I hear the show was as wacky as promised to be, "but good."

And that, ladies and gentleman, readers of the highway to hell, is just how we bowl.