Matt’s Random Thoughts

So just over two weeks ago I got married, hitched, surrendered, taken, legally wed. You pick the term. I’ve spent a good amount of time reflecting on the event, and wanted to share a few things I’ve learned.

1) People don’t understand what R.S.V.P. means.
For those who don’t know, it comes from a French phrase which means “Please Respond.” That means when WE taken the time to mail you an invitation to the wedding with a SELF ADDRESSED STAMPED RESPONSE CARD, YOU should send it back, regardless of whether you are coming or not.

2) People will say they’re coming, and then won’t show up.
First, see above. There WILL be people who will say they’re coming, and give you their meal choices. Then they won’t show up. Then, to top things off, they won’t tell you why they chose not to come.

3) Invitations say who is invited.
When you recieve an invitation, look at who it is addressed to. If it is to “John Doe”, that means only “John Doe” is invited. If it says “John and Jane Doe” then it means both are invited. Did it say “The Doe Family”? If it does, and ONLY if it does, are your children invited. And this means immediate family, not every third cousin through incest that you can think of.

4) Don’t bring a date.
See above. If your invitation is not written “and guest” that means your guest is not invited. Plain and simple. You can ask, sure, but DO NOT ASSUME. If you bring your guest, it will royally screw up reception seating.

5) Your invitation is to the Wedding AND Reception. Not just the reception.
It’s rude to just show up for the food. Get your lazy ass out of bed, get dressed, and get to the ceremony. However, there are exceptions to this. Just make sure the bridal party knows about them.

6) Give the bride and groom time to talk and eat.
They are humans too, and to survive they need to eat. Yes, you probably do want a picture of them. Guess what? So do the rest of the guests. Give them time to eat first. You don’t want a grumpy, hungry married couple.

7) No matter how hard you try to get thing perfect, stuff will mess up.
People will arrive late. Someone may trip. The kids in the bridal party may not be happy. Don’t be surprised. It happens. If the ring bearer doesn’t walk up the aisle because he’s scared, it’s kind of cute. If the best man or a groomsman doesn’t walk up the aisle, then you’ve got a problem.

There are tons more than this that I’ve learned, but this is a start. I’m going to post a honeymoon post soon.

Monday was a so-so day. I had off, so I spent a good portion of the day sitting at home working on stuff. (By working, I mean doing nothing.) Tara got home that afternoon after a day at Greenwood. Both of us were going to the Presidents Council Meeting that evening at 6:30. Neither of us wanted to cook, so we decided to order pizza.

I called up Chanello’s using a flyer I had gotten from work. We placed our order, and the guy said we’d have it in 30-45 minutes. That would have given us about 20 minutes to eat. While waiting, we got ready for the meeting. Thirty minutes went by. No pizza.

Forty-five minutes go by, no pizza.

We’re hungry. And I really wanted some cheese sticks.

An hour goes by… no pizza. By this point, we had to leave. The meeting was in Williamsburg, about 20 minutes away. I grabbed a slip of paper to write Chanello’s a note.

I said: “Chanello’s, if you say 30-45 minutes, it should be here by then. We had plans, so we left after an hour. Sorry you missed us.” Then I drew a big frowny face on it. I taped it to the door, and we left.

We hop into Tara’s car, and head to the meeting. As we turn the corner to get onto Jefferson, we see a Chanello’s car pulling up to the traffic light. I suppose that was our pizza. By the time they would have arrive at our apartment, it would have been an hour and fifteen minutes after we ordered it. I wonder if it would have still been warm.

Needless to say, we didn’t get pizza, and they sure as hell didn’t get any money from us. I’ve never stiffed anyone before, and at first I felt guilty, but then I realized they deserved it. If you can’t handle business, you shouldn’t provide it.

By the way, whatever happened to 30 minutes or it’s free? Does anyone do that anymore?

What’s worse than having your home built upon a secret indian burial ground? Living in Featherstone Apartments which seem to have been built upon several different insect nests.

In our three years here, we have definately gone through several different insect phases. At one point there were spiders (and BIG spiders at that!). Then there were attack crickets that would jump everywhere and not shut up. At one point we had a gnat infestation. We have no idea where they came from. They just showed up, uninvited of course. What a fun few weeks that was, living in the heart of the swarm.

Our latest outbreak has involved these little black bastards: ants! In the first time in 3 years, we’re being attacked by ants. Not huge “I’m gonna bit you” ants, but little tiny ants. They first appeared in my bathroom, sipping martinis or something around my sink. The little shits would run like crazy when I came in. I sprayed RAID all over the place, but apparently they just laughed at the stupid human and went on about their business. And apparently their business has become international, as they’ve branched off into the kitchen around the sink. Once again the stupid human RAIDed the place, but to no avail. Tara tried using the clorox bleach cleansing cloths. I don’t think that’s working either. Our next step is to drop by walmart for an ant trap. If that doesn’t work, I’m calling the apartment complex.

It’s like these apartments have an STD. Just when you think it’s gone, the bugs pop back up again. Maybe we should take down the “Crabs gather here!” and “Crab Shack” signs.

At least today is my day off. Tara may be at work, and Eva may be gone, but at least I have the rats and ants.

I…got…gas…tonight… It was $1.98 a gallon. I think I actually shed a tear tonight when I was at the pump. Ouch!

I’m sure anyone reading this is also feeling my pain. Gas prices are tremendously high, and from what I gather, it ain’t gettin’ better anytime soon. But what makes it worse is this…

When I first started driving, gas was 89 cents per gallon. Less than half of what it is today. That was in 1997 when I was driving our old brown Toyota Corolla. I’ve since been driving a black Pontiac Sunfire. I got it brand new, and it had 89 miles on the odometer. Now it has about 83,500 miles on the odometer.

Here’s where things get scary. I’d say on average gas has been around $1.50 a gallon since I’ve had the sunfire. I get about 24 miles to the gallon. With 83,500 miles, that means I’ve used 3479 gallons of gas. At $1.50 a gallon, that’s $5218.50 I’ve spent in gas since I’ve had this car. Now if gas were still 89 cents/gallon, I would’ve only spent $3096.31 in gas. That’s $2122.19 LESS!

HOLY SHIT! C’mon OPEC… cut us some slack here! Yes, my next car will be a hybrid. I don’t care if it only goes a top speed of 55mph. ‘Tis a sad, sad time. If gas prices were to suddenly fall, I would actually be able to pay off my credit cards. Now that’s a nice thought. But will it happen? Probably not. Bummer.

In my last post, I mentioned how the dumpster across the way disappeared. I joked saying that perhaps they took it away because too many people from the apartments were throwing their garbage in the condo dumpster. At first I really was joking, but after throwing some trash away tonight in my dumpster, I think people really were using the other one.

I had to take a picture. Unfortunately, it was dark out so the quality isn’t all that great. However, I think you can clearly see that there is so much garbage it’s spewing out into the street. How gross is that! Featherstone either needs to get another dumpster, or come more often to collect it. This is just disgusting. If they are so worried about their image, why do they allow this to happen.

What’s on the plate for today? Here are some updates.

DCON
The rest of it (most of it) went well. ODU won Most Improved Club. I’m so proud of them. Granted I didn’t do much with them this year, it is great to see them grow. They won it a few years ago under Jamila. Lauren is going to do an excellent job with them this coming year. Maybe I can be their faculty advisor. I really didn’t care about the rest of the awards. From what I understand, many of them only had one applicant, so who’s to say the winner really “won”?

Pieing on Saturday evening was fun. We raised quite a bit for the Alumni Association. I have to go to the bank and set up our account. We’re off to a wonderful start though. Just wait until FTR. We may not be able to cook, but we can still make those bitches sing!!!

What would DCON be without drama? The sad part is that it revolved around my division. I can’t say I’m very proud of the way they handled it. In all honesty, it was low, and very disrespectful. On the upside, however, Kiln Creek will be gaining a new member.

School
Hey MacLeods! You can take my life, but you can never take my freeeeeeeeeeeeedom! What the hell am I talking about? This paper I have to write on this coat of arms is taking up every bit of freedom I have. And it’s due Tuesday! Let me commence with the taking of laxatives, because I’m going to need help pulling these 15 pages out of my ass.

Kiwanis
I really hate Kiwanis right now. I joined to do service projects. I thought that was what Kiwanis was about. Clearly I was wrong. They’re talking of nixing our club tomorrow at the district board meeting because we only have six members. Despite the fact that our 6 member club does more than HALF of the clubs in the district (just look up the stats) they apparently don’t value our membership in the organization. They only see numbers. Well you know what, you dumb ass incompetant boobs, go ahead and cut us. If anyone in our club wants to remain a Kiwanian, they’ll join another club. I, however, will not. Nor will I be giving the keynote speech on Saturday morning. Cutting us would, however, all us to just relax and stop having to hear them bitch about how we only have 6 members. Like they’ve done anything to help.

Midwinter
Will I be a Kiwanian at Midwinter? That’s to be determined. If not, no speech for me. I think I’m just going to wait until Friday night to write it then. On the other hand, getting prepared to handled all of these Hospital Dolls and Happy Hats has been a nightmare. I’ll be so glad when this conference is OVER!

I just want a break. Spring break is coming. But that won’t be a break. Why? I start training with the Great Wolf Lodge then, let alone the fact that I have 5 million papers to write for class. I can’t handle all this. ARGH! One thing at a time… one thing at a time.

Okay, back to work.

^$%(*&#$($^ the $(%*&$% #(*&#$&($#!!!

I’m watching this on Comedy Central. They just had the scene when John Candy and Dan Akroyd get into the fight after eating the big steak. They’re supposed to repeatedly say “blow it out your ass” but Comedy Central voices over ass with the word Kazoo. Sure, THAT makes sense.

Stupid candy assed whiny bitches who think f’n curse words are bad. They’re just words people, just words.

I know I’ve complained a great deal recently about my apartment complex. I suppose it’s because after three years here, the pent up frustrations HAVE to be released. Either way, nothing seems to be getting better. I mean, the place isn’t THAT bad. We could have roaches and shootings.

Today, however, was another fine example of incompetance. I was sitting in the living room watching the Ellen show, when I heard something at the door. I get up, open the door, and there’s a yellow/orange card hanging on the doornob.

“Brenda and Duane, please have yourself or Duane stop by Duane needs to initial Back of Lease agreement. Thx Barbara.”

Now Barbara is the Assistant Manager. She’s actually really nice and I like her. However, I would like to point out that the above note is word for word what the notice said, complete with capitalizations. My question is, if the note was written to Brenda AND Duane, why does it say “yourself or Duane”?

However, that’s not the main point. The note was hung on the door. The door contains our apartment number in big black letters. What’s my number? 104. What was the apartment it was addressed to? 102. Did someone not learn their numbers in school? Apparently not. Either that or they weren’t paying attention, and I’m leaning toward the latter. Now I have to go hang it on 102 for them because they’re not competant enough to do so. Let’s see, at minumum wage or $5.15 an hour, for 2 minutes of my time I should get about 17 cents. Perhaps they’ll take it off next month’s rent. No, I don’t think so.

Last night I got a virus. Actually I got spyware, THEN that gave me a virus. I started getting popups, so I tried to run Ad-Aware. A box would popup saying I had violated something or other, and my computer would be shut down. After investigating, I discovered I had gotten the Blaster Virus. But I had Norton Antivirus! And it was up to date! (Apparently Norton was like the broken condom of antivirus software last night!) Perhaps this is related to THIS post.

Anyway, after a long and grueling process, I have finally exercized the demons within my pc and given them a healthy “byte” sized dose of digital Cipro. Bye Bye, you electronic STDs! Norton, Ad-Aware, and Spybot all say I’m clean. Whooohooo! I still have to run Housecall though. (I highly recommend it, as it’s free!)

I was so livid pissed by all of this, but I can’t put my thoughts into words. Instead, I decided to draw a picture. Had I drawn this when I was in Visual Arts in Primary School I totally would’ve won a first place award! (Isn’t that right, Mrs. Yagel?) Or I would’ve been referred to a counselor. Either way, some good would’ve come out of it!

I think we net users should create a lobbying campaign for the “Unethical Treatment of Virus Creators”. You know, we should push to legalize public lynchings of them and such. Feel free to start a petition! (Or just comment here.)