mrs-roboto's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Four Days of My Life That I Will Never Be Able to Get Back Welcome to the long weekend from Hell. Did I mention we were having company? No? Oh, I guess that's because I knew in the depths of my subconcious what a bad, bad, bad time this was going to be. This is so horrific that I really don't know where to begin so bear with me if I babble. I promise at some point you can laugh at my pain. About a year ago, someone I went to high school with tracked me down. "Tracked me down" is probably overstating things a bit. I signed up with the alumni online (not really a moment of nostalgia as much as a "my life is more interesting than yours and I accomplished stuff you claimed I was incapable of doing so in your face" moment). I was not the most popular student in my high school, nor did I particularly enjoy my time there. Whenever a teacher or authority figure would say, "These are the best years of your life," I'd cringe. How could living with my parents, making minimum wage at a crap job, and being told what I could and could not do constitute for the best years of my life? Kill me now if this is as good as it gets. So to make a long story short, an old classmate contacts me. It's a classmate I can't remember ever being particularly close to; but then again I've pretty much blocked those times out of my mind. I keep in touch with a few people from back in the day but only one of those people would I actually refer to as a friend and she and I talk regularly. I see her whenever I'm back East. But C* started emailing me and I was intrigued and curious. It turns out she has become a very big muckety-muck at a Fortune 500 company and has married a fellow muckety-muck. According to information I derived from her emails, they were both very well educated (I'm talking PhD's before 30), and well traveled and seemed like all around interesting people. So when they asked if they could come visit us here in Seattle, I thought, why not? Famous last words. Let's start with how BORING these people are. These people are the most boring people I have ever met - EVER! How it is possible to be this highly educated yet have nothing interesting to say, I have no idea. Despite being dull as a butter knives, C* and her spouse manage to talk from the moment they wake up (7:00 am) till the moment they fall asleep (midnight). They talk about their cats, they talk about their car, they talk about their jobs, they talk till my head feel like it is going to explode. To make matters worse C*'s spouse has a catch phrase he uses every ten minutes. It is "OUTSTANDING!" Everything, whether seriously or sarcastically, can be described as "outstanding." Oh, and did I mention, he has a stammer? Yes, he stammers through hours and hours and brutally boring stories that have no point or punchline. It's painful. Pete and I were discussing who was duller (privately, of course), him or her, and it's a draw. Pete says it's C* because he can't remember a damn thing she said despite hearing her talk for twelve hours a day and I say it's her spouse because he likes dragons and Magic the Gathering and all other things of that nature and talks about these topics like a mindless baffoon. So somehow we all survive till yesterday, the day they are scheduled to at last go back home. I am running low on patience and getting very whiney. I spend the day dreaming about their departure, which works out fine since they talk for ten hours straight and never notice that I have zoned out, not speaking at all. Their flight is scheduled for 7:30 PM and Pete floors it all the way to the airport. I've already checked the flight number online and it says "On Time." We slow down in front of the boarding area, open the car door, and push them out with a "bye now" and ignoring their pleas of "you guys should come see us in _______ soon." Once they are out of sight, Pete and I simultaneous exclaim, "OUTSTANDING" and drive off into the sunset. We decide to stop and get some Thai food on the way home as well as some serious
alcohol to dull the pain. We begin to laugh and snark about their visit. (Did
I mention this guy uses "literally" to begin every sentence? Do you
know how annoying that is?) The tension in my shoulders slowly starts to subside.
I start to breathe a little easier and Pete and I begin to plan our evening
- watching TV in silence never sounded so good. We head back to our safe place,
our home. We enter to a ringing phone. It's C*. Their flight isn't until tomorrow
night, they misread their tickets. Who misreads airline tickets???!!! How stupid
do you have to be to screw up something this simple. These people are PhD's
for goodness sakes and they can't arrange travel properly! So they need to come
back to our place. Talk about "outstanding!" I am pretty sure the
gods heard Pete and ragging on and on about these dorks and this is their way
of teaching us a lesson. I'm sorry Vishnu or Allah or whoever, I promise never
to be such a snarky b-yatch again, just get these people back to the East coast
before I kill myself! 12:05 p.m. - 2002-08-06 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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