Drinking To Save Electricity

How I Met Your Mother raised a great point last week (the only one in a pretty disappointing episode): all men, at one point in their lives, think about opening a bar. It seems like the best idea in the world. It'll be a great place to watch a game, meet some people and generally have a good time. You'll name it something cool and sport related like "The Bullpen" or "Center Court" and it will be a hotspot in town. It's a fantastic idea... until you actually look into how much work goes into running a successful bar. Having worked in the bar industry for two years, it's more of a pain in the ass than it looks. You have to do a lot of work for not that much fun. Also, you don't want to know how much a liquor license is going to cost you in a state like Massachusetts.

The dream is then modified to wishing you had a friend who owned a bar, and that he's the cool kind of friend who would let you sit in the private back room and not charge you for beers when the game is on. Once you realise that you don't have any friends with the kind of money or brains to maintain a business you modify the dream again to converting your basement into a home bar/mantown hangout. That is, until you remember the high radon tests levels that are always showing up down there. Probably not the best place for a hangout. Then you just have to resign yourself to the lowest standard of keeping the dream alive - the beer fridge.

A beer fridge is an extra waste in my house, because I'm the only one that drinks. Despite what you've heard about the Irish, that doesn't apply to my family at all. Occasionally my dad might have one, but it's mostly the SuperBowl... actually, I think it's just the SuperBowl. As a result the fridge in the basement was constantly humming just to keep my 12-pack of MillerLite cold. A huge waste of electricity, so we shut it down. However, when we found out that Christmas was going to be at our house this year we decided to have some beer around. We picked up quite a bit... only to have people bring whatever they felt like drinking. As a result, we had a bunch of leftover beer. We weren't about to plug the beer fridge back in, so instead we kept the remainder in coolers in the kitchen - and it was up to me to get rid of it all.

Every morning when I would come downstairs the coolers would be staring back at me... mocking my teetotaling ways. So, over the last month I've been slowly chipping away, going from two coolers, to one... to finally just keeping the last 6 pack in our normal fridge. Well, I'm pleased to announce that I finally finished the last remnant of Christmas beer last night watching the Notre Dame/UConn game.

So, moral of the story, if you're planning to come over for the Super Bowl next Sunday... please, don't feel compelled to buy me extra beer. Just bring what you feel like drinking. My liver will thank you.