AB Chao,

My husband and I don’t really drink much (just a good bottle of merlot every
so often), but we do like to entertain friends who enjoy mixed drinks. So,
what are the basic things that we need to have a decent liquor cabinet? Thus
far we have some vodka in the freezer, a bottle of Seagram’s 7 (I guess
that’s whiskey?) in the cabinet, and bendy straws (because a party isn’t a
party without bendy straws).

I also have some Bailey’s in the back of the fridge, but I’m afraid to drink
it because, well, how old is too old for liquor? I mean, old scotch is good,
but how long should I go before I chuck out the bottle of Bailey’s? It’s been
living in our fridge for god knows how long. This is a real concern for any
alcohol we buy because those bottles might be sitting for a long time.

Cheers!

A Willing Student

Hi Sars,

Recently a couple that my partner and I are friends with broke up.We’ve all known each other for about six years and are pretty close, even to the point of spending holidays together occasionally as well as going to their house three or four times a month to socialize.This is one of those friendships where we’re closer with the wife than with the husband.Husband is a good guy, we just don’t seem to connect as much or as well as we do with Wife.

Now Wife is moving from across the country and Husband is keeping the house and staying in town.The situation is this: as I mentioned before, we see this couple almost every weekend.Before they broke up, this weekly engagement was pretty regular and was always at their house.Now that Wife is leaving, we don’t really care to see Husband by himself quite as much (say from four times a month to maybe two or three).I’ve suggested to him maybe we could go to a movie once in a while, or maybe to dinner?I did this thinking that not only would it get us all out of the tense house (memories and all) but would also help him get out of the house as opposed to the hibernating he has a tendency to do (not that that’s wrong, but this gentleman will take it to the extreme, hermit-style).

My questions is twofold: can you think of any other way we can spend a little less time with this person without him feeling like we are taking sides in the breakup and also, can you think of other activities we could do together to break up the monotony of sitting in his dark living room?

Again, thanks for your help, Sars.

Insert Witty Name Here

P.S. Ha!Now you’re going to address me as “Dear Insert”!I’m so twelve…

Dear All-Wise Sars,

This is probably more of an etiquette question than
anything else, but please bear with me while I give
you a little background!

Nearly a year ago I got chucked by the ex-Love of my
Life after an eight-year relationship. As a
consequence, I have been busy moving back to my home
country and starting a new life. I also, stupidly
enough, I now realise, started a new relationship two
months ago. Now, this wasn’t meant to be a
Relationship, just a fling; I have made this clear to
New Bloke on several occasions and he knows my
background. My move to my home country, where New
Bloke also lives, took place a month ago — and that’s
when the problems started.

New Bloke has started an increasingly intense schedule
of criticising my behaviour whenever I see him, my
phone calls when I talk to him, yada yada. (This
usually occurs retroactively, i.e. the next time I
contact him, if you get me.) After being told my
behaviour was not up to scratch on several levels the
last two times I saw him (one of the complaints being
that although I was in the middle of moving house on
the second occasion, I was “not supportive” of him),
and complaints about the tone of emails I thought were
quite chatty…well, really I don’t know what it is
I’m “supposed” to be doing that I’m not! So I have
decided that this is all far, far from what I was
after, and apparently far from whatever HE’s after
too, and I am better off out of there.

Here comes the etiquette part. I had been thinking for
a couple of weeks, before all the criticism started,
that being in a relationship now is a mistake and I’d
rather be single, but I thought I’d delay ending it
for a few weeks out of politeness. One reason for this
is, he was the only person who would look after my cat
while I was moving, and he will have the cat until a
fortnight’s time; I didn’t want to end it right then
and have it look like I was just using him. However,
things have got to the stage where I cannot bear the
thought of seeing him for two weekends and pretending
that everything’s all right (we live several hours
apart); in particular I can’t bear the thought of
sleeping with him anymore.

So, my questions are: It IS okay to end a relationship for these reasons,
right? (I thought so, but I’m a bit out of practice.)
If the above is true, then is it justifiable to end
this as soon as I see him face-to-face again (within
reason, not when he’s just in the door) or should I
grit my teeth and hope I can act convincingly for the
next few weeks?

Either way, do you have any tips on how to break up
with someone civilly? Because I haven’t done this in
nearly a decade. I figured I’d say something about,
I’m just not ready, I thought I was, sorry, rather
than waxing eloquent about how his behaviour is
freaking me out — but I don’t know if this is
unrealistic or wrong or anything.

Any advice, including advice that I am indeed being
very selfish and thoughtless here, would be greatly
appreciated!

Just Wanting A Quiet Life

Hello Sars,

A bit of background: I work at a very busy, rapidly growing, up-and-coming young organization.My particular position is part of a three-man team, and the collaboration on this team is pretty intensive — basically, we work together all day, every day.One of our team members went on an extended leave several months ago and just recently opted not to return, so we haven’t been at full strength for a while, and it’s taking longer than we thought it would to hire a third person to fill the spot.

My problem has to do with the remaining team member besides myself; let’s call him “Jimmy” because that’s not his name.Jimmy is the nicest guy you’ll ever meet.He sincerely wants to be good at his job, and you can tell that he’s trying from the bottom of his heart to provide the best possible service to our customers.He and I are friends outside of work, and when things are going well, we make a pretty good team.Sure, being understaffed isn’t an ideal situation, but as long as you pitch in and work together it doesn’t completely have to suck.Right?Right.

That’s how it went at first, but Jimmy’s performance has deteriorated severely as of late.I honestly do feel bad for the guy, because it doesn’t seem to be through any fault of his own, but he is the single biggest drama/chaos magnet I have ever seen.He’s worse than the lady on Murder, She Wrote who left a trail of murders in her wake everywhere she went.Things just seem to keep happening to Jimmy, things that are beyond his control, that end up meaning he can’t get his ass into the office and just do his damn job already.

It is always freakin’ something with this guy.He lives a good 35 miles from the office, so his commute is kind of extended anyway, and he’s late at least twice a week — either he missed the bus (which he’s strangely prone to), the bus ride in was slow due to traffic, the bus ride in was slow due to winter weather.Now there’s a labor dispute in our metro area involving the bus drivers, and although his bus route isn’t affected, the overall traffic patterns around here are…you get the idea.He’s also severely overcommitted outside the office and generally leaves early once or twice a week for City Council, political campaigns, Nuke a Gay Whale For Jesus, whatever.I, with my tiny five-mile commute, am here like clockwork, which I understand isn’t exactly his fault, but…you know, I manage to get on my bus at the SAME FREAKING TIME EVERY MORNING, and I’m not secretly a superhero or anything.

It goes on: he recently had to have minor surgery, which he told us would be a one-day outpatient procedure.Well, it hit him harder than he thought it would, and he missed three days.Then there was the physical therapy — I’ll be in late, I’m working a half day, the appointment’s at noon so I’m “working from home.”

The thing is, the extended absences have kind of a snowball effect on the workload around here.Much of our job involves fielding incoming calls and emails, and even when Jimmy does make it into the office, he’s taken to spending large amounts of time with his phone on “cover” and ignoring his emails because he’s so buried and behind and needs to put in the time to catch up.This leaves me to tackle all the new business, and a small-but-significant minority of those incoming calls?Irate customers waiting to hear from Jimmy, whom he’s either ignored, forgotten about, or not ready to deal with yet.These folks tend to have some choice words for me, and when I get their situations wrapped up and send them on their merry way (having made some nice excuse for Jimmy in the process), he pops his sad Basset hound face over our cubicle partition and says, “Sorry about that…thank you so much.”And then I don’t punch him, because it turns out I AM secretly a superhero after all.

The last straw came earlier this week, when he found out that his cousin had passed away unexpectedly.He instantly had to take the day off to be with his family, and of course there will be further time off in the near future for the visitation, the funeral, and travel to and from.Now he’s back, but he spends his days making sad faces and saying that he’s “having trouble focusing” and his “head is not in the game,” yippety yappety life-is-fragile-and-fleeting blah blah coming-to-terms-with-my-own-mortality blah.I know I sound horribly unsympathetic, and believe me, I have not made these feelings public in the slightest, but it’s wearing a little thin.

While Jimmy’s life is in turmoil, there’s a certain amount of work that needs to get done in a day, and I’m the one doing it.I can’t remember the last time I took a lunch break.There are days when I get home from work and realize that I forgot to get up and go to the bathroom.I’m trying to take consolation in the fact that management is probably (hopefully) noticing that while he’s a nice guy and seems sincere, Jimmy is essentially unreliable, and they’ll remember that when it comes time for promotions and raises.In the meantime, though, I’m sick of doing 80 percent of the work around here, and hoping it will get better when a third person is brought on board isn’t really helping.

Is there any possible way to confront him about this without sounding like a total jerkwad?How do I tell a guy he needs to stop having surgery and being sad when family members die?Even when I read that sentence, I think I’m being a jerk.Jimmy is such a nice guy and I know he’s not deliberately trying to stick me with extra work, and I also know that part of working on a team is picking up the slack when somebody else isn’t able to give 100 percent.Still, though, this is months at a stretch and it’s ridiculous.Is there any way to prevent the chaos that always seems to surround him from leeching its way into my life as well?

Thanks and sign me,
Useless Co-Workers Are No Match for…Ulcer Girl!

Dear Sars —

Okay, query.

It’s about ballpark etiquette.Figured you’d be the person to ask about this, having as you do a lifetime of experience at Yankee Stadium.Now, I’m all about heckling.If one of my boys is dogging it, I’m the first on my feet hollering, “Go back to Sacramento, ya hack!”I’m out here in Northern California, so I get the dual pleasures of going to both Giants and A’s games.SBC Park in San Francisco is all shiny and new and no one gets too vulgar there.I mean, James Earl Jones’s “People will come, Ray,” speech from Field of Dreams is painted on the wall, who wants to swear in front of that?We just make chicken noises when opposing pitchers walk Bonds (seriously, stroll down by the ballpark during a game sometime, listen for the whole stadium bawking, it’s hilarious).

But over in the East Bay, it’s tough and working class and pretty much everybody there can drink a fleet of Russian sailors under the table.As I say, general heckling doesn’t bother me a whit.I consider it a part of the experience, especially when the hecklers get all creative with the insults.But, well, there’s got to be a line, yeah?

Like, last season, during interleague we went to Oakland to watch the Giants-A’s series, and some guy a couple of rows up from us was screaming, “Go back to San Francisco, ya fuckin’ dykes!”Which was a little amusing, as a drunken tool yelling slurs doesn’t exactly make casual bigotry look cool.But, thing is, there were definitely these little kids in the same section, and I could tell their dad wasn’t sure how to deal.He ended up just sitting through it, wincing occasionally, and I kinda wanted to be all, “Dude, look, a stadium usher, let’s go get that guy rolled.”At the same time, though, I’ve never seen anybody thrown out of the Net for being too obnoxious.You kinda get the feeling that if you went up to an usher or whoever and said, “This guy in my section’s too drunk,” the response would be, “Maybe you’re not drunk enough, you ever think of that?”

So, what do you think?At what point is it reasonable to ask someone to sit down and shut up?This is mainly an academic question, as I’ve got quite the sailor’s mouth myself, so I’m not really one for admonishing, but I felt bad for that dad.

Thanks, yo.And hey, let’s go A’s.

In an alternative universe I’d be a Yankee fan, I swear