Pardon The Interruption
Bit of a hiatus here, should have another big chunk of blog in a few days or something.
Monday, April 05, 2004
Interesting Humor
K so now that the monstrosity of a post is out of the way down below, I'm going to try to have this be a sort of convoluted thought process post when I feel like it because something weird happened kind of site. We start with something I read on someone else's blog:
"My grandfather died on April fool’s day, my Grandma always says something to the extent of “he didn’t fool us, he went and did it.”"
I found that kind of hilarious, although it's obviously a sad subject. Something tells me that's the attitude I'll have towards sad events in my life, always trying to make it funny or cheerful so it doesn't bring others down as well.
T-mobile started a new plan that anyone with them should look into. My old plan was 600 anytime, free night and weekend, for $39.99. The new one is 1000 anytime, free night and weekend, for $39.99. Sound strange? Yeah my old one doesn't even exist anymore, so I called up and upgraded. Anyone still sitting around on the 600 plan should probably get around to doing that too, unless you don't want 400 free minutes or something.
Bill Cosby is coming to San Antonio the weekend before my birthday. I remember listening to old tapes of him in the car on long trips repeatedly and laughing every time. Think I'll go catch the show.
K so now that the monstrosity of a post is out of the way down below, I'm going to try to have this be a sort of convoluted thought process post when I feel like it because something weird happened kind of site. We start with something I read on someone else's blog:
"My grandfather died on April fool’s day, my Grandma always says something to the extent of “he didn’t fool us, he went and did it.”"
I found that kind of hilarious, although it's obviously a sad subject. Something tells me that's the attitude I'll have towards sad events in my life, always trying to make it funny or cheerful so it doesn't bring others down as well.
T-mobile started a new plan that anyone with them should look into. My old plan was 600 anytime, free night and weekend, for $39.99. The new one is 1000 anytime, free night and weekend, for $39.99. Sound strange? Yeah my old one doesn't even exist anymore, so I called up and upgraded. Anyone still sitting around on the 600 plan should probably get around to doing that too, unless you don't want 400 free minutes or something.
Bill Cosby is coming to San Antonio the weekend before my birthday. I remember listening to old tapes of him in the car on long trips repeatedly and laughing every time. Think I'll go catch the show.
Sunday, April 04, 2004
The Way Weekends Should Be, Mostly, Part 2
Man, I really should have blogged the second part sooner. Now I'll probably forget stuff. Gr. Anyway, where was I.
So we soon arrived at the reception which was actually in quite a beautiful location. It was up near the top of the peninsula in Palos Verdes overlooking the ocean with a gorgeous view. The theme was movie related, and there really were about a million cute things about the way everything was set up. Being in the wedding party was kind of nifty, as we got to be announced by the DJ and enter to rowdy applause before taking our place at the head table. I tried the elbow wrist elbow wrist beauty queen wave thing, not sure how well that worked out. Got some giggles anyway. So the first part of the reception I had to be at the head table and thus my poor girlfriend was left to fend for herself with various cousins, with mixed results or so I'm told. She and my brother's girlfriend became buddy buddy though so that worked out well. Eventually came the various toasts which were quite funny, punctuated by my father forgetting a major portion of his and the DJ adlibbing the jeopardy music in the background to cut the tension. Eventually I was able to meander my way over to the gf's table and it was no longer necessary to speak in sign language from across the room. Unfortunately that's when we realized we had missed the sunset again, which would have been quiet beautiful from that locale, and really disappointed us both.
Then the music started, and we forgot all about that and began just having a blast. Now the really trippy thing here is after they did the bride and groom's first dance, and the bride and father of the bride and so forth, the first dance where everyone was invited onto the dance floor was of course when I took my girlfriends hand and we made our way out. Only then did I notice that the song that was playing was the same one she sang to me on the night we made things "official." We're talking major creepness here folks. The first dance we ever shared is also the first dance we shared at my sister's wedding, the first dance in public so to speak. The song was "At Last" and I'm sure you've all heard it at one time or another. So yeah, we shared a knowing look as we started to sway, and that was just kind of a cool moment.
Eventually all kinds of varieties of music were played, and we ended up dancing to most all of them, from a raucous conga line around the room to a song where I finally tracked down my mom to share a few twirls to what was the highlight of the evening for me, and I'm sure many of the spectators as well. Late in the evening once everyone is high on life on comes "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniels Band. Now on those long cross country trips as a kid we had certain tapes that would literally be on repeat for eight hours a day, and my dad's favorite had this as one of many songs recorded on it. Thus we all know the words by heart, and being the animated family that we are, can get quite into it when it's played. So randomly here we all are suddenly from various corners of the room in a circle on the dance floor, screaming lyrics at the top of our lungs and acting out the scenes as we go. There was a whole lot of air fiddlin goin on, and I'm pretty sure my girlfriend keeled over from laughing so hard. So yeah, a few minutes pass, the song ends, and we return from whence we came back in reality.
Did I mention how wonderful she looked? I did? Ok, but seriously, I mean seriously, wow.
We must have smiled for like 88 pictures while dancing, and were even caught on video several times unbeknownst to her, so I'm hoping to acquire as much film and footage of the event as possible, so I have lots and lots of evidence that I was in fact dancing with someone who looked that durned good at some point in my life.
K to avoid getting too gushy (TOO LATE) we'll move on to Sunday. The rest of Saturday consisted of cleaning up, trying to stay awake, carrying a bunch of stuff home to the parents house, and listening to the girlfriend speak gibberish in the car while sleeping and pretending to listen to what I was saying. Then we attempted to get up early and raid the parents house for conversation prior to the family brunch starting, but no luck. Something about not getting much sleep for days at a time really makes a person tired. And now Blogger won't let me widen my edit window so that it keeps scrolling back and forth to the sides. Very annoying. Anyway, yes the brunch. We arrived fashionably late and it was more of the same from the days prior, a lot of introductions to those I hadn't covered yet, and conversation with various relatives about the way things have been, the way things are, and the way things are going to be. As far as I can tell a good impression on all was made by the gf, and I was quite pleased with the results. Who knows when she'll see some of those people again, so it was sort of a one weekend shot kind of deal to please the family, and I think she did. Many more "hang on to this one Matthew"s and "treat her good becaus she's a keeper"s. After an hour or two though we took our leave, as we had other plans for the day, those being to head North to Six Flags Magic Mountain. If you know me, you know I love amusement parks. So spending time with someone awesome at one is really just a wonderful thing. The lines were pretty average I'd say for the most part for a decently busy day. We had to miss out on a few of the rides due to the length or them being down for "technical difficulties" but for the most part she got a solid taste of the park. Both Superman and Deja Vu were busted though, and those are two pretty incredible rides, so I guess at some point in the future we'll just have to go back. Highlights included us playing that hockey game that isn't air hockey but has an actual puck that shoots out of the center of the glass dome and you whack at it with little hockey guys and their sticks, kind of the hockey version of foozball. Hadn't played that since I was a kid, and after a lengthy session of both os us pretty much sucking ass, she eventually launched a perfect shot with authority... directly into her own net. So I won 1-0. Haha. I also reestablished my dominance at the whack-a-mole booth, beating down the opposition (probably some little kid but hey, I need my testosterone boost) and snagging a cute stuffed animal puppy that was appropriately named "Winner" on the spot. But alas that was not the end as we later passed by a booth that had Tweety as a prize (consider me impressed if you remember the last time Tweety was involved in my life at an amusement park) and the eager smile on her face meant I had to give the water gun game a shot. Well turns out it was the big prize and after losing the first time (the gun sight was bent I swear) I had it lined up for the next two in a row and Tweety was given a new home. How she managed to stuff both these animals into her suitcase I have no idea (Tweety's head was as big as mine, WHOA DANG THATS BIG), but she said no one had ever won her something at an amusement park, so I was happy to oblige.
At one point she was talking about something pointless that was irritating her, so I decided to invent something I hadn't tried before. "Couple Pauses" or "CPs" as we began calling them (stop reading now if your gag reflex is hard to control). Basically whenever one of us thinks the other is worrying too much or dwelling too much on something, or for whatever reason isn't being the nicest ever, the other can call for a CP at any time, after which there must be some sort of action signifying we're a couple, such as a hug or a kiss, to remind ourselves of what's imprtant. So we agreed no matter what the circumstances that we'd stop and realize our priority is each other and refocus. I'm sure there will be half-hearted hugs in times of anger along the way, but at least that will signify the other is still loved. It's a very good tactic for when someone is "sweating the small stuff" as they say.
So eventually comes the downer for the weekend. We get out to the convertible, and I vaguely remember her side door opening before I actually clicked the thing, which meant it had been left unlocked. It might have been I didn't click the lock button on the keychain as we left it in the morning, or it might have just been jimmied by some jackass. But anyway, even though it was buried under stuff in the back seat, her wallet and cell phone get stolen out of her purse. We actually didn't even realize this until we'd gotten all the way back to the hotel, after stopping by my parents house to chat some more and watch the video of my OTS graduation so she could laugh and negatively critique my Adjutant skills before my frowns suggested she do otherwise. Not that it would have helped if we realized it in the parking lot, whoever it was was probably long gone, and all over the parking stub it says they aren't responsible. I guess if you're going to break into a car, a converible is a nice choice. So we finally get back to the hotel and I'm dead tired, and try as I might I keep fading in and out of consciousness, while she spends hours on the phone with various credit card companies and banks trying to get everything cancelled and blocked. She'd actually just got the cell phone about six weeks prior, and had luckily just shown me all the pictures she'd taken with it. I felt really bad, and it really was kind of a downer way to end our time together. At one point during the night I pretty much broke down, quite pissed at myself that I couldn't seem to stay awake, even though it was obviously a time when she needed me to console her, and she'd flown like three times as far to get there as I had. Eventually everything got taken care of, and she'd luckily given me her military ID to carry into the park so she'd have some sort of identification on her, so not all was lost.
I think we eventually took a nap for like an hour or something, but then it was already time to leave for the airport, as she had a flight leaving just after 8am. Word to the wise, if you're flying on a Monday morning internationally, they're not kidding about two hours early. The check in line was so long that by the time we got to the front it was past the time when she could check her bags, so for about half the line she was pretty much in tears trying to figure out how she was going to get back in time to go to work. Again, pretty much a really bad scenario for how to end a weekend. By some miracle the guy behind the counter is able to put her on the very next flight leaving an hour later, which arrived in time for her connecting flight to Frankfurt in Dallas, which just ended up giving her a shorter layover. Then came the real sad part though, all of a sudden she was rushed to get on this flight, which meant getting through security, and that wasn't somewhere I could go. So we went from thinking she might be stuck and we'd have a few more hours to all of a sudden only having a few minutes. Nothing like dealing with all this crap while also trying to say goodbye to someone you love for what could potentially be a number of months.
Needless to say tears were shed, and eventually after a huge hug and about 88 waves goodbye from across the terminal, and after I left and came back for one more, I finally made my way back to the rental car. Worrying the same thing might happen to my 11am flight, I hoofed it back to return the car, and conveniently forgot to fill it with gas. So I go to get gas and while I'm at the pump some guy walks up to me and gives me this story about how his wife and child need an extra four bucks for gas to get home while indicating a car with a woman and child across the way, then mentioning the police were right across the street if I felt threatened, and he just needed a little help. Well feeling generous I give him a five, since I don't have four, and seeing that I have a few ones he then asks for just two more ones as well and that's all they need. So I give him that and he thanks me for helping a Vietnam vet or something and goes galloping across the gas station towards the car. You'd think I'd come out of this feeling at least ok, but then I see him give the exact same speech to the people in the car, while indicating another car somewhere else. They ignore him, and off he goes to somewhere else. It's a good strategy really. No one will have $4, so while they're reaching for the five or whatever you can see what they really do have and ask for more. Come up with some story to at least hold their attention, and you can probably make at least $20 an hour. So eventually I return with a car full of gas having been conned out of $7 by some guy who I saw at the next intersection riding across the pavement on a bike at full speed. I guess that's what I get for being nice sometimes.
Did I mention the end of the weekend kind of sucked? So then I end up like two hours early to my flight because self-service checkin (which you can't do on international flights) takes like five seconds so after doing nothing in the terminal for all that time I get to sit on a plane for hours trying to figure out when I'll see her again. She actually apparently got upgraded to Business on her flight because she was so sad and the flight attendant felt sorry for her, which was a very nice thing for them to do. It's tough, but no one said it was going to be easy.
I suppose I could mumble something about what's been going on for the past week or so, but it's almost 11:30pm, which means it's almost 6:30am there, and time to be her human alarm clock and tell her good morning. So yeah. We had a great time, but if only it were longer.
Man, I really should have blogged the second part sooner. Now I'll probably forget stuff. Gr. Anyway, where was I.
So we soon arrived at the reception which was actually in quite a beautiful location. It was up near the top of the peninsula in Palos Verdes overlooking the ocean with a gorgeous view. The theme was movie related, and there really were about a million cute things about the way everything was set up. Being in the wedding party was kind of nifty, as we got to be announced by the DJ and enter to rowdy applause before taking our place at the head table. I tried the elbow wrist elbow wrist beauty queen wave thing, not sure how well that worked out. Got some giggles anyway. So the first part of the reception I had to be at the head table and thus my poor girlfriend was left to fend for herself with various cousins, with mixed results or so I'm told. She and my brother's girlfriend became buddy buddy though so that worked out well. Eventually came the various toasts which were quite funny, punctuated by my father forgetting a major portion of his and the DJ adlibbing the jeopardy music in the background to cut the tension. Eventually I was able to meander my way over to the gf's table and it was no longer necessary to speak in sign language from across the room. Unfortunately that's when we realized we had missed the sunset again, which would have been quiet beautiful from that locale, and really disappointed us both.
Then the music started, and we forgot all about that and began just having a blast. Now the really trippy thing here is after they did the bride and groom's first dance, and the bride and father of the bride and so forth, the first dance where everyone was invited onto the dance floor was of course when I took my girlfriends hand and we made our way out. Only then did I notice that the song that was playing was the same one she sang to me on the night we made things "official." We're talking major creepness here folks. The first dance we ever shared is also the first dance we shared at my sister's wedding, the first dance in public so to speak. The song was "At Last" and I'm sure you've all heard it at one time or another. So yeah, we shared a knowing look as we started to sway, and that was just kind of a cool moment.
Eventually all kinds of varieties of music were played, and we ended up dancing to most all of them, from a raucous conga line around the room to a song where I finally tracked down my mom to share a few twirls to what was the highlight of the evening for me, and I'm sure many of the spectators as well. Late in the evening once everyone is high on life on comes "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" by the Charlie Daniels Band. Now on those long cross country trips as a kid we had certain tapes that would literally be on repeat for eight hours a day, and my dad's favorite had this as one of many songs recorded on it. Thus we all know the words by heart, and being the animated family that we are, can get quite into it when it's played. So randomly here we all are suddenly from various corners of the room in a circle on the dance floor, screaming lyrics at the top of our lungs and acting out the scenes as we go. There was a whole lot of air fiddlin goin on, and I'm pretty sure my girlfriend keeled over from laughing so hard. So yeah, a few minutes pass, the song ends, and we return from whence we came back in reality.
Did I mention how wonderful she looked? I did? Ok, but seriously, I mean seriously, wow.
We must have smiled for like 88 pictures while dancing, and were even caught on video several times unbeknownst to her, so I'm hoping to acquire as much film and footage of the event as possible, so I have lots and lots of evidence that I was in fact dancing with someone who looked that durned good at some point in my life.
K to avoid getting too gushy (TOO LATE) we'll move on to Sunday. The rest of Saturday consisted of cleaning up, trying to stay awake, carrying a bunch of stuff home to the parents house, and listening to the girlfriend speak gibberish in the car while sleeping and pretending to listen to what I was saying. Then we attempted to get up early and raid the parents house for conversation prior to the family brunch starting, but no luck. Something about not getting much sleep for days at a time really makes a person tired. And now Blogger won't let me widen my edit window so that it keeps scrolling back and forth to the sides. Very annoying. Anyway, yes the brunch. We arrived fashionably late and it was more of the same from the days prior, a lot of introductions to those I hadn't covered yet, and conversation with various relatives about the way things have been, the way things are, and the way things are going to be. As far as I can tell a good impression on all was made by the gf, and I was quite pleased with the results. Who knows when she'll see some of those people again, so it was sort of a one weekend shot kind of deal to please the family, and I think she did. Many more "hang on to this one Matthew"s and "treat her good becaus she's a keeper"s. After an hour or two though we took our leave, as we had other plans for the day, those being to head North to Six Flags Magic Mountain. If you know me, you know I love amusement parks. So spending time with someone awesome at one is really just a wonderful thing. The lines were pretty average I'd say for the most part for a decently busy day. We had to miss out on a few of the rides due to the length or them being down for "technical difficulties" but for the most part she got a solid taste of the park. Both Superman and Deja Vu were busted though, and those are two pretty incredible rides, so I guess at some point in the future we'll just have to go back. Highlights included us playing that hockey game that isn't air hockey but has an actual puck that shoots out of the center of the glass dome and you whack at it with little hockey guys and their sticks, kind of the hockey version of foozball. Hadn't played that since I was a kid, and after a lengthy session of both os us pretty much sucking ass, she eventually launched a perfect shot with authority... directly into her own net. So I won 1-0. Haha. I also reestablished my dominance at the whack-a-mole booth, beating down the opposition (probably some little kid but hey, I need my testosterone boost) and snagging a cute stuffed animal puppy that was appropriately named "Winner" on the spot. But alas that was not the end as we later passed by a booth that had Tweety as a prize (consider me impressed if you remember the last time Tweety was involved in my life at an amusement park) and the eager smile on her face meant I had to give the water gun game a shot. Well turns out it was the big prize and after losing the first time (the gun sight was bent I swear) I had it lined up for the next two in a row and Tweety was given a new home. How she managed to stuff both these animals into her suitcase I have no idea (Tweety's head was as big as mine, WHOA DANG THATS BIG), but she said no one had ever won her something at an amusement park, so I was happy to oblige.
At one point she was talking about something pointless that was irritating her, so I decided to invent something I hadn't tried before. "Couple Pauses" or "CPs" as we began calling them (stop reading now if your gag reflex is hard to control). Basically whenever one of us thinks the other is worrying too much or dwelling too much on something, or for whatever reason isn't being the nicest ever, the other can call for a CP at any time, after which there must be some sort of action signifying we're a couple, such as a hug or a kiss, to remind ourselves of what's imprtant. So we agreed no matter what the circumstances that we'd stop and realize our priority is each other and refocus. I'm sure there will be half-hearted hugs in times of anger along the way, but at least that will signify the other is still loved. It's a very good tactic for when someone is "sweating the small stuff" as they say.
So eventually comes the downer for the weekend. We get out to the convertible, and I vaguely remember her side door opening before I actually clicked the thing, which meant it had been left unlocked. It might have been I didn't click the lock button on the keychain as we left it in the morning, or it might have just been jimmied by some jackass. But anyway, even though it was buried under stuff in the back seat, her wallet and cell phone get stolen out of her purse. We actually didn't even realize this until we'd gotten all the way back to the hotel, after stopping by my parents house to chat some more and watch the video of my OTS graduation so she could laugh and negatively critique my Adjutant skills before my frowns suggested she do otherwise. Not that it would have helped if we realized it in the parking lot, whoever it was was probably long gone, and all over the parking stub it says they aren't responsible. I guess if you're going to break into a car, a converible is a nice choice. So we finally get back to the hotel and I'm dead tired, and try as I might I keep fading in and out of consciousness, while she spends hours on the phone with various credit card companies and banks trying to get everything cancelled and blocked. She'd actually just got the cell phone about six weeks prior, and had luckily just shown me all the pictures she'd taken with it. I felt really bad, and it really was kind of a downer way to end our time together. At one point during the night I pretty much broke down, quite pissed at myself that I couldn't seem to stay awake, even though it was obviously a time when she needed me to console her, and she'd flown like three times as far to get there as I had. Eventually everything got taken care of, and she'd luckily given me her military ID to carry into the park so she'd have some sort of identification on her, so not all was lost.
I think we eventually took a nap for like an hour or something, but then it was already time to leave for the airport, as she had a flight leaving just after 8am. Word to the wise, if you're flying on a Monday morning internationally, they're not kidding about two hours early. The check in line was so long that by the time we got to the front it was past the time when she could check her bags, so for about half the line she was pretty much in tears trying to figure out how she was going to get back in time to go to work. Again, pretty much a really bad scenario for how to end a weekend. By some miracle the guy behind the counter is able to put her on the very next flight leaving an hour later, which arrived in time for her connecting flight to Frankfurt in Dallas, which just ended up giving her a shorter layover. Then came the real sad part though, all of a sudden she was rushed to get on this flight, which meant getting through security, and that wasn't somewhere I could go. So we went from thinking she might be stuck and we'd have a few more hours to all of a sudden only having a few minutes. Nothing like dealing with all this crap while also trying to say goodbye to someone you love for what could potentially be a number of months.
Needless to say tears were shed, and eventually after a huge hug and about 88 waves goodbye from across the terminal, and after I left and came back for one more, I finally made my way back to the rental car. Worrying the same thing might happen to my 11am flight, I hoofed it back to return the car, and conveniently forgot to fill it with gas. So I go to get gas and while I'm at the pump some guy walks up to me and gives me this story about how his wife and child need an extra four bucks for gas to get home while indicating a car with a woman and child across the way, then mentioning the police were right across the street if I felt threatened, and he just needed a little help. Well feeling generous I give him a five, since I don't have four, and seeing that I have a few ones he then asks for just two more ones as well and that's all they need. So I give him that and he thanks me for helping a Vietnam vet or something and goes galloping across the gas station towards the car. You'd think I'd come out of this feeling at least ok, but then I see him give the exact same speech to the people in the car, while indicating another car somewhere else. They ignore him, and off he goes to somewhere else. It's a good strategy really. No one will have $4, so while they're reaching for the five or whatever you can see what they really do have and ask for more. Come up with some story to at least hold their attention, and you can probably make at least $20 an hour. So eventually I return with a car full of gas having been conned out of $7 by some guy who I saw at the next intersection riding across the pavement on a bike at full speed. I guess that's what I get for being nice sometimes.
Did I mention the end of the weekend kind of sucked? So then I end up like two hours early to my flight because self-service checkin (which you can't do on international flights) takes like five seconds so after doing nothing in the terminal for all that time I get to sit on a plane for hours trying to figure out when I'll see her again. She actually apparently got upgraded to Business on her flight because she was so sad and the flight attendant felt sorry for her, which was a very nice thing for them to do. It's tough, but no one said it was going to be easy.
I suppose I could mumble something about what's been going on for the past week or so, but it's almost 11:30pm, which means it's almost 6:30am there, and time to be her human alarm clock and tell her good morning. So yeah. We had a great time, but if only it were longer.
