Olandria Carthen pulled up to a sprawling Dallas Airbnb somewhere around 7 p.m., five hours later than planned, cartwheeled in the entryway, and immediately started manifesting owning ten houses exactly like it. The rest of the birthday crew had already been arriving in waves, doing entrance dances at the door per standing orders. What followed was two days of a group of people who genuinely like each other figuring out how to have the most fun possible with a mansion, a slippery garage floor, a last-minute Best Buy run, and a collective resistance to going to bed before sunrise.
Why the garage became the best room in the house
The Airbnb had a pool, a movie room, multiple bedrooms, a pool table, and enough square footage that Olandria got legitimately lost during the house tour. None of it impressed the group quite like the garage floors. The moment Olandria spotted the polished surface, the plan shifted. She announced they were turning it into a skating rink, retrieved a soundbar from Best Buy (they went bigger after debating output levels in the aisle), confirmed that the bass could not be heard from the street, and that was the night settled. The confessional room got set up in the movie room upstairs, with a ring light and a freshly purchased pair of microphones, and within an hour friends were on camera delivering takes like: ‘Asia has a limitation of none. And if she cries tonight, I’m laying that ass down in that room.’
Groceries happened at a Kroger the group entered with 15 minutes before closing, sprinting through aisles, someone colliding with a worker, someone else hunting for jelly through every department including pet food. They made it through checkout two minutes after close and considered it a victory.
Morning accounting, one missed flight, and a hairline on the wall
The night-one debrief happened at 4:12 a.m., with Olandria and Sam doing a quiet recap in the kitchen. One of the twins had vanished for the entire evening and slipped back in through a window despite, as Sam pointed out, six different available doors. Sam rated the night eight out of ten. Olandria rated it eight out of ten. The skating rink plan had not happened yet. The tipsy board game never started because everyone got too tipsy before the game could begin.
Morning arrived fast. Olandria went room to room checking on people. The detail she kept returning to: one friend had leaned so hard into the wall at some point during the night that her entire hairline left a transfer on the paint. Olandria inspected it closely before helping her up. Sam, who had rented an electric car and spent a confusing stretch of the trip unable to charge it, then had a full taco fall onto a white shirt, appeared in the kitchen wearing a Medicube face mask, having gone to sleep at 5 a.m. and woken at 8. He called jumping in the pool that morning, despite not knowing how to swim, his favorite moment of the entire weekend. He stood at the edge for several minutes, visibly shaking, farted, then cannonballed in anyway.
Olandria made Rotel for the group before they got ready to go out, using white cheese instead of cheddar, eating hers with spicy nacho Doritos. One friend, who had been sick all day, had two plates and reported feeling significantly better.
By checkout, the dishwasher was running, the trash was out, and the seasonings were left behind as a gift. Michael had missed his 8 a.m. flight. It was 12:30. He was, by his own account, still drunk.
Sam, poolside, reconsidering his choices
Sam stood at the edge of the pool in the morning light, having announced to no one in particular that life is about real experiences and not just what you see online. His hands were shaking. He farted. He jumped.
By 3:25 p.m., Olandria and Dez were gassed up and Houston-bound, roughly three and a half hours out. A winter cabin trip was already being discussed for the next link-up. The garage floors, as far as anyone reported, remained unscuffed.
