I'm getting too old

Damn it! I can see it now, I'm becoming a cranky old man way too quickly.

Last night a few of us from work decided to head out to a nearby bar for a couple of drinks. Of course for me this means a massive consumption of coke. Since I stopped drinking (6 years ago on Feb 1st.) I have found that I cannot be in a bar, club or any other place where drinking is going on without having something of my own to sip on. So in a bar where waitresses seem to have ninja-like skills in slipping me full glasses of coke I tend to drink a lot of the damn stuff. But let's face it, I'm getting old and without that kick of sugar and caffeine I probably wouldn't make it past 10 pm...or maybe that's just the boredom setting in.

See going to bars no longer holds much appeal for me. Admittedly the bars here are smoke free so that helps at least. And the drinking age of 21 eliminates a few of the underage drinkers, though they all seem young and stupid to me...god I must have looked really stupid when I was that age. My only saving grace was that I was a quiet drunk...well most of the time.

One of the biggest turn-offs to the whole bar scene now is the noise. I swear that the DJs in all clubs and bars follow some kind of strict formula for music levels, it goes something like this:

• 6:00 - 9:00 pm : Play good music at a volume where you can hear people talking at the table next to you
• 9:00-10:00 pm : Up the volume about to about 90 dB, start playing "fun" rock music from the past two to three decades.
• 10:00 - 11:00 pm : The volume edges over 100 dB and seems to be getting louder by the minute, the songs are becoming more sexually suggestive.
• 11:00 - 12:00 am : The music (if you can call it that) is hitting the 130 dB mark and all class has been leached from the music and replace by crass lyrics about pussies, ass, hos and any other sexually explicit concepts you can think of.

Of course all this time the "kids" are coming in sporting their wannabe cool outfits. You know, the mini-skits in January, the one nice collared shirt the frat-boy owns or the favorite gangsta-rapper street wear.

So yeah, I'm getting a bit tired of that kind of crap. I'd like to stay out late in some place other than a coffee shop yet still be able to have a multi-syllabic conversation with the person next to me after 10:00 pm. But that seems rather unlikely, the concept of a nice quiet pub seems to be lost on most people. And seeing as I'm going to be drinking the free cokes all night, I don't think I'm any one's target market these days.