Ready to Rumble!

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Like most single ladies do, we spent our weekend on the prowl.

Yesterday, our first stop of our 12-hour summer kick-off event was a sports bar for the USA-England World Cup game. We entered the English pub with high hopes: we are athletically-minded girls who enjoy the nature of competition, we can talk somewhat intelligently about most sports, and thanks to years of training from our collective five brothers, we can drink most men under the table. However, when we arrived at said destination, the only room available was in a dark corner behind the bar-mounted video game. While we appreciated the patriotism of the giant foam finger and Mad Hatter Stars and Stripes, it would have been nice to see the game and potential date-ables (and for them to see us). Making the best of the situation, we ordered several pitchers of warm Bud Light (sorry, bartender: $10 pitchers of imported beer is not what we call a deal).

To celebrate the victory (the tie was a win in our books) and to foreshadow Germany's performance over Australia today, we headed downtown to a Biergarten where we proceeded to drink large quantities of warm German beer while listening to a raucous rendition of "London Bridge is Falling Down" by the Des Moines branch of Douchebags International. Unfortunately, the older women who were on "Crawl for the Cure" did not find the young gentlemen nearly as endearing as we did, and they were firmly escorted to the exit.

After our entertainment disappeared, we made it to our third stop in our attempts to drink around the world (no free t-shirt at the end of this journey): a classy Mexican restaurant. We parked ourselves in a primo location of the fabulous patio just prior to the Saturday night dinner rush, hoping to enjoy the beautiful summer air and watch the pretty people of the city schmooze over cocktails and guacamole. Alas, a relaxing evening was not in the cards for us: our two friends (a married couple, don't get excited) were spotted by three ridiculously inebriated acquaintances who unfortunately decided to join in (i.e. ruin) our night. After being peed on by a baby whose mother did not pack additional diapers, stepping on a pint glass that one of the acquaintances haphazardly threw on the cement patio, being called an "f-ing bitch" too many times to count, and apologizing profusely to every other patron on the patio, we finally had had enough: we were going to fight. Just kidding: we left.

Thank God for $5 Sangria.

Because our sense of decorum prevented us from lashing out on people who actually offended us, we decided to take our posse to another bar: to challenge a foursome of international visitors to a rousing game of shuffle-puck. After engaging in an intense battle of psychological warfare and utilizing all methods of intimidation, we made up for the World Cup tie and soundly trounced ass against Spain, Puerto Rico, and Peru. Go USA.

Our weekend did not end there, though. Not only are we interested in athletics, we are also very socially minded and wanted to show our support for everyone in our community by standing on the corner and waving a rainbow flag during the Pride Parade. Interestingly enough, one of our ex-boyfriends was proudly throwing Tootsie Rolls from one of the floats... (Did we mention ignoring red flags?)

Because this was probably not the best place to find a date (we apologize, Mr. Leather Iowa 2002 - we are as uninterested in you as you clearly are in us - can you hear the whip cracking?), we headed to yet another World Cup game, this time at a friend's house. We entered the basement party with a six-pack of beer and some Gatorade to replenish the electrolytes we were about to lose, and found ourselves in the company of two married couples. Again, not the best place for singles.

We topped off the entertaining - yet unsuccessful - weekend with a small dinner party for our sister and her boyfriend. (Once more, could we plan this any worse?) On the menu was spicy shrimp linguine, pan-friend okra, and steamed broccoli, followed by a cinnamon-sugar cheesecake topped with fresh red raspberries.