I had a lovely birthday, thanks for asking! It was very low key, but nice. My mom and my sister took me out to lunch in Athens at a place called Wildwood Deli. It's a tiny, tiny, tiny place off of the square. Like, only 2 tables inside kind of tiny! The food was delicious, though, so if you're ever rolling through Athens, I very much recommend it. Honestly, all I had was a ham sandwich, but it was the best dang ham sandwich I've ever eaten! Then we walked around and browsed in some of the shops for a while and then went home! I had a lot of fun spending time with them!
In the usual stripe of my birthday, there was a snag in the evening, but it was a small one. Steve came home early and told me he wanted to take me out to dinner, which I thought was very sweet, but since my birthday is on Valentine's Day* AND it had fallen on a Friday, I knew it would be a mess out there trying to find a place to go. We decided on a place (a place we've been before and liked) and even though it was one of the nicer places around, we got a table right away since we got there so early. I wish I could say we had a lovely dinner, but we didn't. In fact, we didn't even stay for dinner! Don't worry, we didn't get into a fight or anything, and I'm even willing to say it was all my fault that we ended up leaving before the waiter even came over! OK, when we were seated, they gave me a rose and placed two pieces of paper and a menu on the table. Steve picked up the menu and opened it, but said "This is only wine. Where is the food?" That's when I looked down and saw that the pieces of paper they'd laid down were the menus for the evening. Apparently, it was a set menu and it was $100 a plate. Say what? NOPE. Look, I'm not adverse to expensive restaurants and I'm not adverse to having money spent on me, but I couldn't in good conscience let Steve spend that kind of money on a dinner we'd just stumbled upon with no notice! Had we planned it, sure, but we just got a table by chance! I think it was just sticker shock. To Steve's credit, he was willing to pay for it, but I didn't want him to. We didn't really know what to do, but I just gathered everything up and took it back up to the hostess and told her we were leaving. She looked a little shocked, and we probably looked cheap as hell, but we left. Ugh, it was a bit embarrassing. I felt bad for messing up dinner, but by then everyone was out and we knew anywhere else would be crowded, so we just got barbecue and went home. Honestly, I think I liked that better anyway!
Don't worry, I'll let Steve buy me expensive food soon, but I at least want some warning first! :)
I was remembered by lots of friends and family, so that made my birthday wonderful no matter what we had for dinner! I love my friends and family so much for thinking of me. They're good people.
*As far as Valentine's Day itself goes, I'm growing more and more indifferent about it. I mean, I like the sentiment behind it, but I hate the drama! But I love the chocolate, too, so I don't know what to think about it as a whole, so therefore I call indifference. I will tell you that the backlash against it all is getting on my nerves. You know, celebrate it, don't celebrate it, I don't care. However, I get really tired of the people who are so above it all. They are the ones who talk about how stupid it is and how they don't need a special day to blah, blah, blah. Of course it's stupid, it's a made up holiday, but geez. Lighten up, Francis. Have some red foil Hershey kisses and chill the hell out about it!
Monday, February 17, 2014
Thursday, February 06, 2014
OOPS
I'm a terrible person.
I mean, I'm not a terrible person on purpose (at least not normally) but I did something recently that makes me feel like a terrible person.
I think I may have mentioned this before, but one of the members of our church is a severely autistic man. Since I don't know know enough about autism and it's different forms, I don't know how to explain his issues, but he's very childlike and he has the amazing ability to know what day a certain date fell on, and he can remember birthdays and dates with freaky accuracy. In fact, that's kind of his jam. When he meets you for the first time, he'll ask your birthday and even if he sees you once every three years, he'll remember when it is.
OK, so one of the things I do in my job is update and print the bulletins (you know, the little programs that tell you the order of service and when the next potluck will be.) We have a new one every week, so I have to change the date on the outside each time. I've put the wrong day on them a time or two, which is great fun when everyone and their mom let's you know you've screwed it up, but I'm human and it happens. At any rate, I'm usually pretty faithful to remember to change the month and day, if for no other reason than I don't want 10 old ladies and 40 engineers telling me the date on the front is wrong!
/Exposition
When the year changed over, I forgot to change the year on the front of the bulletin. It's an honest mistake, since I'm usually so focused on getting the month and day right AND since it's the thing I change least often, but still, every date in the bulletin still said 2013 up until about the third week in January. I'm guessing it's not something other people look at very often, either, since it took that long for someone to point it out to me. However, by the time they said something, I'd already printed the bulletins for that week and couldn't justify wasting the paper just for a date misprint, so I fixed the digital file so that the year would be right for the next week on. Well, apparently that week was the one where someone must have pointed out the mistake to the poor autistic man, because as soon as he could, he came over and said "It's 2014, right? Not 2013?" He looked really concerned and so I said "You're right, it's 2014, I messed it up." At that point, I didn't feel bad, just dumb, but then he said "It's not my fault is it? It's not my fault?" I told him that it was all my fault, and he walked away.
Look, I know I didn't do this on purpose and I know that I don't need to feel bad about forgetting to change the date. Intellectually, I know this. But here is this man, who apparently thinks that he controls the correct flow of time by remembering the date, and because I accidentally forgot to change a number, I threw a cog in his universe. I temporarily disturbed his personal space-time continuum to the point where he thought it was his fault that the date was wrong and I feel awful about it. Seriously, it's been two weeks and it still nags at me!
This is probably a dumb thing to worry about, but geez. I've never been responsible for throwing someone's world into chaos before. Maybe this is going to be my super villain origin story. Ugh, what if I become this man's personal nemesis?
Great, now I feel terrible AND drunk with power.
I mean, I'm not a terrible person on purpose (at least not normally) but I did something recently that makes me feel like a terrible person.
I think I may have mentioned this before, but one of the members of our church is a severely autistic man. Since I don't know know enough about autism and it's different forms, I don't know how to explain his issues, but he's very childlike and he has the amazing ability to know what day a certain date fell on, and he can remember birthdays and dates with freaky accuracy. In fact, that's kind of his jam. When he meets you for the first time, he'll ask your birthday and even if he sees you once every three years, he'll remember when it is.
OK, so one of the things I do in my job is update and print the bulletins (you know, the little programs that tell you the order of service and when the next potluck will be.) We have a new one every week, so I have to change the date on the outside each time. I've put the wrong day on them a time or two, which is great fun when everyone and their mom let's you know you've screwed it up, but I'm human and it happens. At any rate, I'm usually pretty faithful to remember to change the month and day, if for no other reason than I don't want 10 old ladies and 40 engineers telling me the date on the front is wrong!
/Exposition
When the year changed over, I forgot to change the year on the front of the bulletin. It's an honest mistake, since I'm usually so focused on getting the month and day right AND since it's the thing I change least often, but still, every date in the bulletin still said 2013 up until about the third week in January. I'm guessing it's not something other people look at very often, either, since it took that long for someone to point it out to me. However, by the time they said something, I'd already printed the bulletins for that week and couldn't justify wasting the paper just for a date misprint, so I fixed the digital file so that the year would be right for the next week on. Well, apparently that week was the one where someone must have pointed out the mistake to the poor autistic man, because as soon as he could, he came over and said "It's 2014, right? Not 2013?" He looked really concerned and so I said "You're right, it's 2014, I messed it up." At that point, I didn't feel bad, just dumb, but then he said "It's not my fault is it? It's not my fault?" I told him that it was all my fault, and he walked away.
Look, I know I didn't do this on purpose and I know that I don't need to feel bad about forgetting to change the date. Intellectually, I know this. But here is this man, who apparently thinks that he controls the correct flow of time by remembering the date, and because I accidentally forgot to change a number, I threw a cog in his universe. I temporarily disturbed his personal space-time continuum to the point where he thought it was his fault that the date was wrong and I feel awful about it. Seriously, it's been two weeks and it still nags at me!
This is probably a dumb thing to worry about, but geez. I've never been responsible for throwing someone's world into chaos before. Maybe this is going to be my super villain origin story. Ugh, what if I become this man's personal nemesis?
Great, now I feel terrible AND drunk with power.
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