Math.

(Slightly Cranky Waitress x 3 hours of sleep) + 8 hour school day - any desire to go to work + 4 shots of espresso gulped in the car on the way to work = hilarity.

I don't often drink coffee, and I don't like energy drinks. I suck down Diet Coke in probably pancreas-cancer causing quantities, but that caffeine level doesn't seem to affect me. A regular coffee from Starbucks does nothing for me, even when filled with the insane amounts of sugar required for me to enjoy it. To get any benefit from caffeine, I have to have a lot of it in a concentrated form, which is why I don't often utilize my espresso machine--I don't actually want to cultivate a serious caffeine habit.

Today, though, I knew I wasn't going to make it through my shift without some artificial energy. So I fired up The Machine and made eight shots of peppermint espresso. I chugged half of it, iced and with cream, on the way to work. The rest I took with me in case I crashed hard--Friday nights are always so long, even though I got someone to take the closing part for me. I even used a "no sidework" coupon I had, so I thought I'd be home and in bed hours and hours ago. Ha! Of course I got a table of hellion children that it took me 45 minutes to clean up afterward.

Anyway, I was a freaking nut the entire night. I think I managed to act fairly normal around my tables, but in the back was another story:

• At one point I was idly flipping my hands around and someone asked what I was doing; I promptly told her I was swimming and proceeded to breast-stroke, freestyle, and butterfly back and forth across the kitchen.
• I took a roll of printer paper, held on to the end, and threw it at a friend--who didn't catch it, and it rolled halfway across the restaurant while I scampered after it giggling madly.
• The same friend and I were dancing in the front of house at one point. I had my arms full of dishes and was headbanging.
• For the sake of this one, let's pretend my name is Jennifer. For some reason religion came up, and I said I'm a "Jenniferian" (with a muscle-man pose, I don't know why) and proceeded to lay out the tenets of my faith: thou shalt love cats, thou shalt feel free to lust after thy neighbor if he's hot enough, assorted other bullcrap.
• I remember at some point declaring that Bitter Divorced Man "will slap a bitch!"
• I kept singing/humming bits of Stephen Lynch songs at people who knew it. My friend Rachel was particularly horrified by some of the lines of "Waiting".
  
• Another time I sidled up by another friend, holding a fork. She tried not to look at me but she knew I was up to something, so eventually she did. I licked the fork. Why? I don't know. But she cracked up.
  

Basically, I was my own primary source of entertainment tonight. Go me!

With that, my friends, I'm taking the weekend off. I'm not even going to think about work again until Monday. See you then!