Last night, vodka almost killed me. And not in the way you think.

So, it’s Restaurant Week in Boston, a misnomer since it actually lasts two weeks. Julie and I decided to go out to Tremont 647, a restaurant neither of us had been to. I was wearing a cute red dress from ModCloth for the first time. The food was excellent, and afterwards we decided to go out for some after-dinner drinks. I had been to a South End martini bar called 28 Degrees for a Boston Bloggers event last summer (there’s another one coming up soon, and I’m looking forward to meeting some new people!) and I wanted to go again for a normal night out.

Julie and I went to 28 Degrees, which is a very nice, lounge-y bar that also has a DJ playing. We were delighted to secure seats at the end of the bar, near the wall. I ordered a Ginger Snap Martini and Julie had a Cranberry Sour. We were sitting there drinking and talking and having a lovely Friday night.

Then all of a sudden there was a gigantic crash and my new red dress was absolutely soaked, and the bar in front of me, my purse, and my lap were all covered in shards of glass.

What the hell?

My first thought was that someone behind me was either crazy or somehow offended by us sitting there drinking and talking and had thrown a drink at us, so I turned around to see who was there, but the people behind me looked as bewildered as I felt. The bartender was apologizing profusely, so then I thought maybe he’d broken something, but then he told me what had actually happened: on the shelf on the wall next to me, the vibrations from the music had inspired a big vodka bottle to start dancing, and it had shimmied its way off the shelf to its spectacular demise on the bar in front of us.

Seriously. Aside from being very lucky that it was something clear rather than red wine or something else that would ruin my brand-new dress, I don’t know how we weren’t hurt. And what if we had been? Can you imagine being killed by a falling bottle of vodka? I just finished Six Feet Under, a very weird but sometimes touching show, on DVD, and someone dies at the beginning of every episode, often in a very strange manner. Death by vodka bottle seems like something that would fit right in on that show. And can you imagine calling my parents if I had been hurt? “Hello, Mr. and Mrs. H., your daughter was injured at a bar. No, she wasn’t drunk. No, she wasn’t in a bar fight…she was just hit by a falling vodka bottle.”

And dying this particular Friday night would have been especially tragic. Not only would I have not gotten to accomplish the rest of the items on my bucket list, I would have missed the return of Mad Men and the Hunger Games movie!

To be clear, though, I still definitely recommend 28 Degrees. The staff was very nice and found us two new seats at the bar. They also gave us all our drinks on the house and threw in some bread pudding as a we’re-so-sorry-please-don’t-sue-us gift. Julie, I’m sure, will be blogging about our Friday night desserts soon!

So, that wasn’t the way I would have chosen to get free drinks, but, hey, I’ll take what I can get.