It was only a dream...

It brought a little tear to my eye tonight to read my friend Jonathan's blog, in which he mentioned that the Cubs' spring training has begun. Could it be? Is it spring already? What a heart-warming sign!

Surely the best spring training story ever, though, came to me a few years ago. K, who is currently exiled to the state of Washington, had the chance to go to Arizona with some friends to watch a few games.

Sounds benign on the surface, no?

Not only is this the best spring training story ever, it's also the best drinking story ever. You see, there are professionals among us. Those who never settled into the steady hum of adulthood, and figured out ways to drink more alcohol than one would ever think possible.

Joining K's group was a guy, if I remember correctly, from California. I believe his name was.....Skittles.

Yes, Skittles.

Skittles was a paramedic, or some such thing. He brought with him to Arizona all of the supplies one could possibly imagine to enable the drunken festivities - including several IV bags, and copious amounts of saline solution.

The way I understand it, they would watch baseball, drink until they couldn't think straight, and then crash for the night. In the morning, when the hangovers proved relatively inconvenient, he would hook them up to a saline IV to rehydrate themselves - at which point everything was hunky dory for another round of ball and brew.

I guess if you're going to suffer through another disappointing year for our dear Cubs, that's the best way to start it off, no?

Not even in my wildest college days could I have dreamed of pulling that off. Queen of the beer bong I may have been...but I was also queen of puking in my front yard and waking up on the bathroom floor in a puddle of drool.

So here's to the Cubs, to unfathomable amounts of beer, and to the coming of spring. It's about damn time, don't you think?

Now pardon me while I go turn my thermostat a bit higher.