College life never leaves.

I suppose I should realize and accept the fact that it's hard to turn away from an undergrad lifestyle while still living in the U District. Regardless of only graduating in '09, I've found that I dislike noisy, crowded bars and much prefer the quieter ones where you can actually sit without knocking over someone else's drink. Most of my friends prefer this type of atmosphere nine times out of ten, so none of us were quite sure why we opted to go to Finn's on Thursday night, other than out of fours years of habit (well, for me, two).

Don't misunderstand, my friends and I still have a special place for Dante's as that's our college bar of choice. But more often than not we go to Rat and Raven, a newish English pub that took the place of the Irish Immigrant bastardization.

After about twenty minutes of screaming and being pushed along with the crowd (though I couldn't help but join in on Journey, it is Journey, after all), we opted to go to Rat and Raven to sit and tell some good stories.

Inevitably the undergrad life wasn't quite ready to let us free as at the end of the night there was a near bar brawl in our group, to put it simply. It's one of my favorite stories now, not only because of the sheer absurdity, but also because we escaped from Finn's for a more low key place and ended up with a guy lunging across a table at us-- something I've never witnessed during my undergrad bar hopping.

So does undergrad life ever end in the U District? I'm starting to think it doesn't, and maybe it's futile to resist. Or maybe I should just accept the fact that I'm 23 and not actually old enough to outgrow a young adult life style.

Some Fridays I'd rather be with Super Mario than Mario the drunkard.

Friday nights for a college student should be the highlight of their week, if not a close second to Saturdays. The typical college student should be "getting their drink on" with mutual peers happily attempting to forget the tedious nature of school work they just finished a week of and will have to pick up again the following Monday for another week (rinse, repeat). They flock to Dante's for $3 neon colored jello shots or, heaven forbid their week was horrendous enough for this, buy cheap drinks at Earl's.

For all intense and purposes, let's assume that the typical college student is at least 21, and therefore able to enter bars.

So staying home on a Friday night equates to near launching of the failboat, or so we've led each other to believe. Not being able to find anyone to go out with conveys your sadly small social circle. Choosing to stay in instead of partying conveys that maybe that stick can't go any further. Or you could be That Guy and fly the bars solo harassing the already well established circles of Girls Who Want You To Go Away and the Guys That Will Punch You If You Don't Leave The Girls Alone.

Please don't be That Guy, we don't like you.

So where does that leave me? Blogging about staying in on a Friday night on a Friday night probably speaks louder for me than I'm able to scribe, but let's roll with it for a moment.

I like to think I'm a perfectly socially capable individual that enjoys the occasional (okay, maybe many) drink and conversation applicable to the situation at hand. But my social circle is also limited, and whether this is due to have only spent a year in Seattle thus far or because I'm simply choosy to whom I associate myself with, well, I wouldn't know. And yet for all I know about myself, I can't shrug the little nagging voice asking me what the fuck I'm still doing at home on a Friday night punching Solid Snake's face in with Sonic via Brawl?

So this raises the question, is staying in a sign of social ineptness in a certain form, or is it simply a manifestation of the expectations we project on each other?

Because really, how impressive is it that you spend every weekend playing beer pong and buying $8 mixers for girls you'll probably never see again (or girls, already double fisting with the line of creepy guys increasing)? That's what I thought.