Going The Wong Way

Noticing Wedding Gifts

I often figure that when I am in a large crowd, I will be much less noticed than when I am alone. This often turns out to be true, and I often enjoy blending in with the crowd. It provides a measure of anonymity that is sometimes desirable.

Weddings can be small or large affairs where each individual guest is merely a single person in a larger group. So it can stand to reason that each guest will think that they do not stand out too much.

While we (my wife and I) made a conscious effort to be thankful for everything that was given to us, I have an insider’s tip for everyone that has not gone through a wedding yet: the bride and groom notice a lot more than you think. That means that your thoughtful, generous, cheap, or even missing gifts are noticed. This directly correlates with how close to the married couple you are. Do not be fooled into thinking that of 10′s, 100′s, or even 1000′s of gifts yours will not be noticed. While the day of the wedding might be a blur, the aftermath of finding out what people decided to gift you with is a much longer process that allows for more consideration.

The purpose of weddings is definitely not gifts, but I figured that this tip might be useful to a lot of people who had not discovered it for themselves already. Either that, or we are the only ones, and we might have noticed you (for good or for bad). Remember that sometimes it’s the thought that counts and sometimes the thought only gets you so much. And then you have to at least give a well thought out card!

Crom, The One Without License Plates

Crom bought a new hybrid vehicle approximately 1 year ago. When he bought it I could not help but overhear him proclaiming its merits. He talked about how it had all of the latest gadgets, of which I believe the only one that I actually heard him specifically mention was the Bluetooth. The same song came out of his mouth for the whole week. Not a big deal. Everyone gets excited when we get a new possession, right? Lately I doubt that he has been as excited about it. It’s a Toyota after all.

After a year of owning the car, he still does not have license plates on it. It appears to those who do not know that it is a new car. When I noticed that this was happening (it’s hard not to notice after a few months) I was very curious as to why someone would want to do this. My pondering led me to the following:

1. The license plates that he received were 6BAD666, 1SAD120, etc or which he otherwise found offensive.
2. He is in love with the dealer that sold him his vehicle
3. Now he has the ability to run red lights or drive toll roads without paying
4. He desires to remain as unique as possible (i.e., a recently purchased Toyota)
5. He actually purchases a new model of the same car every couple of months
6. The Department of Motor Vehicles has made its first ever mistake

I am of a mind to tear his precious new car papers just to see what happens. Or maybe just draw a happy face with a Sharpie marker.

Meet Crom

I have a co-worker who I will call Crom (thankfully not his real name). He is a balding, single, middle-aged computer programmer. There are numerous things about him that I do not understand. Some of them are very amusing and some of them are difficult to understand.

I have decided that my own thoughts (while arguably interesting and intriguing) are not the only thing that I want on this blog. I want to season the meat and potatoes of this blog’s content with some posts about my everyday life. You will be able to judge the amusement factor of these posts for yourself.

Anyway, back to Crom. He sits in a nearby cubicle and has been working in this office for over a decade. That makes his tenure longer than the newer people (like myself) but definitely not as long as the old timers (of which there are a whole lot, some of whom have been around for a couple of decades!). He works rather autonomously on single-main projects. I suspect that he and I do not share the same sense of humor. We also do not share the same idea of manners but more on that later. For now, just take note of this man as he will very likely come up again.

Political Corruption: Pork Barrel

Pork is delicious when it means the consumed meat from a pig. Conversely it is awful when it refers to the appropriations of government money for local projects. While I might be a big supporter of the former, let’s not forget that the late Senator Robert Byrd was a huge proponent of the latter.

When he passed, I heard a radio commentator quote an unnamed source from West Virginia saying that they would not know what to do now that he wasn’t in Washington to send federal funds back to them. It makes sense for them to think this way because he sent back billions to them during his tenure (Citizens Against Government Waste has a tally of Senator Byrd’s pork that will boggle the mind). So it is true, they just lost a major source of income. What’s a person to do?! I have an idea: start making your own way instead of swiping money from the rest of the country.

I am sure that the people of West Virginia are not the only ones. There are recipients of pork everywhere, and they should all be ashamed. This corruption needs to stop. We all know that politicians are self-serving, power-hungry individuals. Do not feed them your vote or willingly eat their pork! Does anyone think about the fact that the politicians are taking money from everyone else just so that they can remain in office? It seems like pork barrel politics could also be called much much worse.

Wavering Importance

If it’s true that the importance that things have wavers according to what else is happening then I guess it just goes to show that this blog didn’t have a really high place in my heart. While I have been making sure that it’s still running and checking on it every now and then, I have not written a new post in quite awhile. But now that I am sitting here in my very own house with this ring on my finger I guess that the blog is rising back up.

I sure am glad because I have not had a public place to air my thoughts. And that means that either I have been keeping it in or even worse I have not been having any interesting thoughts. I enjoy writing posts that act as a running commentary on interesting thoughts that I have rather than those of a personal nature, but I figured that I needed to break back into this whole blog thing with something easy. And what is easier than spilling about what has already happened to you?

So that was my way of saying sorry for not writing, but I was busy buying a house and getting married! But I’m back!