Random

Thank God that this day is almost over!  This has been a very crappy day, hence this blog will basically be a rant of this day.  So thank you to those of you who choose to read it, but also please take things with a grain of salt.  My emotions are high and I just need to get this out so I can go to bed in peace.

This day had it’s potential.  I started the day by seeing "The Longest Yard" with my family.  That was a pretty good movie (for what it was – a comedy about football).  Romo was in it, which was hilarious, as well as Michael Irvine.  I would recommend that you go see it, especially if you like Adam Sandler, football or any combination of the two.  Burt Reynolds wasn’t too obnoxious either, and usually I can’t stand him.

The potential carried into a completion of a home project that was long overdue.  At my parent’s house the gate of our fence has had a hole in it for almost a year.  During that time the dog loves to get out and just chill in the front yard.  He really doesn’t run away, he just sits in the front yards, bugs the neighbors and the people walking by, but just hangs there.  But he will (hopefully) no longer be doing that now that we’ve repaired the gate.  We pretty much reconstructed the whole thing and it looks really good.  We also laid out a bunch of 2×4’s so that he’ll stop messing with the actual fence panels.  So I felt productive and that was nice.

Then things started to go south… 

First off it rained all day and it’s been a chilly 40-50 degree day – a real turn from the 80’s that we were experiencing earlier in the week.  Usually I love the rain – it is probably my favorite weather..  But I don’t like rain when it’s rained all day, is freezing cold and I have 13 Rockies Tickets.  Yes, we had 13 tickets for my family, my sisters’ friends and boyfriends and a few of my friends.  We were going to have a grand old time watching the Rockies get beat by the Cardinals and then get to see some really cool fireworks after the game.  This was going to be the third fireworks game I would have gone to, and when it comes to fireworks games I was 0-2.  The first year I got 2nd section seats for the family only to have the stupid 3rd level overhang completely block our view of the fireworks.  The next year I thought I had the problem solved by getting right field box seats, but behold – that stupid overhang came back again…  But this year was going to be different.  I spent an hour figuring out their stupid on-line ticket system so that I could get tickets on the 3rd level (no overhand), behind the dug-out, getting aisle seats on the 2nd row of the section.  We were going to have our perfect unobstructed view of the fireworks. But then the rain had to come and ruin it.  It was pouring in Fort Collins which really convinced my friends, as well as my family to not really want to go.  Finally I resigned to my family and told them that if they didn’t want to go we didn’t have to…  So they didn’t and we didn’t go.

It was probably good that we didn’t go.  The game was delayed 1 hour and 40 minutes, and when it did start it didn’t get over until 11pm, and after having to move their 10’s of fans from the left-field boxes over to the field the fireworks probably wouldn’t have started until 11:30 at the earliest.  Which means as I’m writing this as 12:15am they would just be getting over and we’d be heading home…  So yeah, it was probably good but…

I am now out $360 in 13 tickets!  That’s right, I’ve basically taken $360 and flushed it down the toilet.  Actually flushing those tickets down the toilet would probably give me more entertainment than they’re getting sitting on my desk right now.  So now I am $360 poorer.  THIS SUCKS!  My only hope is that I can call the Rockies Ticket office and see if I can do some kind of exchange for some tickets, but it says right there on the ticket – No Refunds/Exchanges…  I went through and read all of that small print on the back of those tickets and right now my chances don’t look good.

Now I understand it’s money and in the end I’ll get over this – but for tonight I think I’ve earned a night to pout about this…  I just think about how much $360 could be used for other things right now…  I’m just really pissed.

On top of that I’m really struggling with my sister.  I’m really sick of the drama that has gone on all throughout this weekend, and only now am I beginning to feel the effects of dealing with this crap.  As I am writing this I am less than 24 hours away from her going away for the whole summer (her leaving early is another point of contention).  I have spent the last 4 days at my family’s house virtually all day and yet my sister has only been at home for about an hour during that whole time.  I’m pretty pissed that we have all this family that have traveled long distances to see her, that my mom has made serious sacrifices all throughout this weekend for her and she’s out with her friends this whole time.  I understand that she wants to see them too, but this whole "leaving early" thing she brought on herself…  I guess what it all boils down to is that my sister keeps making these stupid choices and doesn’t encounter any of the consequences from them.  A perfect example is what happened tonight…

So my sister decides to go off and watch a movie with her friends so she gets into the car, backs up, doesn’t look and NAILS my other sister’s boyfriend’s car right in the rear fender.  We go out to see what happens and she gets out, really doesn’t assume any responsibility for it, then goes nuts on us somehow trying to make it our fault.  Does it stop her from going out?  No it doesn’t!  She pulls the car back into the garage, and angrily gets into her friend’s car and leaves…  And there she goes – gone without even really looking back.  Not once did she apologize to my sister’s boyfriend and she just leaves our family to deal with the crap from this.

I know that this is probably just random rambling, but I’m just really pissed that she doesn’t accept the consequences of her actions.  She’s 18, she’s going across the country for school and she doesn’t even know what it’s like to be out in this real world.  I know that part of the college experience will be to teach her those lessons, but I just think back to myself and my other sister when we were that age and we were so different.  Why my sister just doesn’t "get it" – I have no idea and I think that’s what really frustrates me.  I’m really mad that she takes advantage of my mom.  My parents have worked hard to make sure that my siblings and I had all the opportunities and resources we need – and still for my sister that’s not good enough.  I spent my tax return buying her a brand new laptop, but she still complains when I gave my youngest sister my USED PDA (palm top).  The grass is always greener with her.  Ambition is a good thing – lust is not.  Academically she’s the smartest person in our family, but it doesn’t mean crap if you don’t have common sense and can’t apply your knowledge.  She knows how to do well in AP classes and get accepted into MIT – but yet she still doesn’t understand the meaning of hard work or the value of sacrifices of others.

This sounds really horrible – I love my sister and all but I’m really looking forward to her being gone for the summer and hope that she’ll grow up in the process.  Welcome to the real world…

So that’s my rant.  I’m sorry for the emotionally-laced tirade.  Here’s to a good night’s sleep and the promise of a new day…

Going back and re-tracing my steps from the beginning it’s been nuts just to think about where I’ve been.  My day started off with my sister and I going to Loveland to join my family for Mass (I usually go in Fort Collins, and usually I end up playing drums at the Saturday night Mass, so it was a bit weird for me to have to go to Mass on Sunday first off, then secondly have to go to Loveland..  But that’s where my sister Amanda wanted to go..  Afterwards we got some food, ran some errands and came back home.  While I was at home I worked with my uncle to repair the gate at my parent’s house (the freakin’ dog knocked a huge hole in it and always gets out), then helped my mom get ready for my sister’s "real party" (and I burned a hole in my finger during the process), then went to the "real party", came back and watched my first NASCAR Race on TV, switching back with the NBA Eastern Conference Finals, then ended my day by drinking a lot of beer and playing Mexican Train with my family….  So yeah it’s been another long day.

About this weekend though (and something I said I would explain a bit)

1) The "Real Party" – So with my sister graduating high school, she (along with everyone else) wants to have a party.

Sidenote: Who the heck came up with the idea of the graduation party.  I understand you want to celebrate your achievement and go out and have a good time – I get that.  I understand that a lot of times the party isn’t so much about you, but about your friends and family who have a chance to celebrate you or to do nice things for you.  I get that as well.  But I still don’t get the concept of having a party while everyone else is having a party, then expecting people to show up.  Whether it’s high school or college graduation, it never changes.  As an underclassman you’re expected to go to these parties or run the risk of tarnashing your friendship ranking with that person.   And if you’re a graduating senior don’t even think about being able to go to other people’s parties.  You have your own to tend to, but what do you do?  I’ve seen people leave their parties to go to other people’s parties (like my sister).  That defeats the whole purpose of the graduation party.

So my sister Amanda, (whom I love dearly, but being whom she is often have a challenging time with) decides not only to have one party but to have to parties.  Well check that – at first she only wanted one party, but it was the one she wanted to throw jointly with two of her other friends.  Well somehow she forgot to mention any of this to our family when they were going through the decision making process "Ooops!", and all of the sudden we had a party that our family was slated to go to & help prepare for.  While all of this was going on, my mom, being the awesome mom that she is, is already actively in the planning stages of our family/friends party of our own…  I know that party planning is a lot of stress, but I know that in my heart of hearts my mom really wants to throw the party.  Like I said in my little sidenote – the party isn’t always so much about the person being honored as it is for the friends and family of that person.  Well my sister didn’t realize this, so all of the sudden we’re faced with two parties that are competing against each other.  And while we were going through and setting forth our plans to celebrate my sister at our family/friend party, my sister was actively sending out invitations and planning logistics for the "real party" that was going on with her two friends.

So over the last few weeks that his gotten really ugly and our family is taking it’s usual sides ( the ENTIRE family vs. my sister).  Both my oldest sister and I were probably the most frustrated because here we were doing all of this work out of the sense of respect and the notion of support for my other, while my sister couldn’t care less and had virtually no stock in this party that was being thrown for her.  She really didn’t invite anyone (as she was inviting them all to the "real party").  So this left us all with a bitter taste in our mouth.

So we went and did both parties.  The family one turned out to be really nice.  Like I said, virtually no one came, but we had some great family up there.  My uncle from Texas has been up all weekend, and then I had an aunt and cousin up here yesterday as well – people I haven’t seen in a long time.  So it turned out to be really nice, very relaxed and we just had a good time.

The "real party" went about as well as I expected.  There were a ton of people there, but really no one that I knew.  I showed up, ate some pretty good food, listened to the band there, talked with my sisters some more and then took off less than 2 hours later.

But now at least our drama-filled weekend is over.  I think it’s funny that my mind has been so weighted by these high school graduation situations, but when it comes to my sister Amanda, everything become a big deal…  But now she’s off to Boston for the summer in less than 48 hours, so here comes the next scramble/drama/adventure.  While I’m really going to miss my sister I’m also looking forward to the stress level at my parent’s house going down about 15 notches by the end of the week.

Tomorrow is another big day.  My uncle is taking off Tuesday, so I’m going to try to get some more quality family time and enjoy my day off of work.  We’re heading down to the Rockies game tomorrow night, something I’m a bit concerned about because it is COLD!!  I don’t know what happened to the weather, but today we didn’t get back 60 and it turned out to be a downpour this afternoon.  I’m just hoping that the rain holds out tomorrow and lets us have this game.  Fireworks are going on tomorrow night as well – should be a good show.

And as I am writing this the day is far from being over, unfortunately.  Currently I am working… Yes I realize it’s 12:44am.   Tonight I happened to log in to do some maintenance and as it turns out something here got really hosed…  No I didn’t break it, and it just happened to be coincidence that I happened to log into work when it went down…   Unfortunately there is nothing I can do and I’m waiting on another team to get their part done before I can do anything.  It sounds like it may be a long night…  Ugh….

But that’s not even the beginning of my day!  I had a pretty decent day at work – a typical Tuesday full of meetings.  I also met with my Pastoral Council Vice Chair today about what exactly we need to do.  After that meeting I felt a lot better about what was expected of me.  This whole "being the Pastoral Council Chair" thing is something that I’m reluctantly doing, but at least now I’m beginning to think of some opportunity with it..  We’ll see if I say the same thing when I actually have to start doing work for it…

But tonight was really interesting.  I went to my folks’ this evening.  With my sister’s graduation coming this weekend and this week being finals week (my mom is a teacher) there is a ton to do leading up to it and I wanted to see what I could do to help around the yard.  So I get there and my mom is grading papers, my sister is out and about with some guy (which is a whole other story), and my youngest sister was working.  So I helped out a bit, then hung out while my mom was grading and we were watching Law & Order SVU’s finale (which was interesting by the way).  Then like at 9:30 my dad comes down and breaks out with "your grandparents are coming over in 20 minutes"..  

Wait… you mean my Grandparents from Arizona?!?  Rolling in at 10pm on a Tuesday night??

Sure enough they roll in…  I don’t know where this bright idea came from, but I’m glad that the communication system is working so well at home.  I only happened to be down there by sheer coincidence, and it would have been very likely that I wouldn’t have been there at all.  My sisters are all doing their homework and working, and here we are with a huge busy week.  Just kinda random to have family showing up.  My guess is my dad knew about it, but didn’t break out with the memo until right before they called.

Now I’m not saying that I wasn’t grateful to see my grandparents.  I was, it was good to see them – but truth be told: we’re not really that close and the last time I saw them was almost 4 years ago.  They’re very nice and very sweet people, especially my grandmother, but it’s just that our family has never been really close with that side of the family, communication is sparse at best so we never really know what’s going on.  That makes conversing out of the blue a little more difficult.

So I stuck around long enough to be polite, and God bless my sister Jessica who did the same as well.  I don’t think either of us really said anything during that time, but at that point she went to bed and I went home.  I probably could have stayed longer, but I also wanted to be conscious of my mom staying up grading papers and my sisters needing to do homework and just thought about how this was a really tough night to host family.  Very interesting night indeed.

As I drove home it made me think about how much I miss my other grandparents.  I was quite a bit closer to them.  We went out to the squelching heat of Carlsbad, New Mexico every summer to go visit them and as much as I joke about how hot and boring it is out there, I had a lot of good memories that I took from that place.  My grandmother passed two years ago and my grandfather passed about two months ago and I just go to thinking that I may never go back to Carlsbad ever again.

Maybe someday when I have kids I’ll take them out there to visit some distant cousin or something, just to subject them to metropolis that is Carlsbad, New Mexico.

Hadn’t posted in a couple of days, so I just wanted to briefly catch you up on what’s been going on…

Today I am feeling very lackadaisical, I’ve been walking around in this "ho-hum" feeling all day.  I don’t mean to dwell on depression, but as I ask myself why I am feeling this way I wonder if it’s due to any (or perhaps a combination of) the following:

– Today is Monday

– Today wasn’t the most productive day at work.  I ended up having 4 meetings back to back, which really put a cramp in my being able to do work.  I’m also in the middle of projects.  After finishing up so many things last week I have new things I’m able to take on, but now it’s a matter of getting started on these things.

-The weather.  It’s been really cloudy all day, really stormy and I’ve head some thunder – but no rain.  There’s no sun either, but it’s still a little hot.  I hate it when the weather is like it.  Either rain or clear up and get sunny – this in-between stuff makes me feel "blah"

-My sister is leaving in 8 days for the summer.  And another Gaudreau moves out of the house – three down, one to go!  It’s kinda funny too.  My sister Amanda is definitely one of the most challenging people in my life, and I think her being away from home will be good for both her and our family, but it’s a bit sad to think of her heading out, especially three days after her graduation party…  I still think it’s kinda lame for her to be leaving this early, but she wants to go to Puerto Rico (despite all of our family’s objections).  I just think about my summer after I graduated high school, and how in many ways that was the best summer that I ever had.  I hope she’s not being robbed of that.

– I haven’t seen Joel or Emily for over a week.  We’ve all been really busy, and Em’s been out of town for the last week.  I guess you don’t realize how much your friends help shape your mood until they’re not around.  Hopefully that’ll change a bit this week.

So that’s my day so far…

Alright, go Fridays!   Pretty typical day, just glad that the weekend is here and I am just thankful for that. Workwise I ended one of the most productive weeks for me in a long time…  Except until about 4pm Friday afternoon..  I decided to work from home (mainly because laziness and convenience took over) when the power went out!  Everything shut down without warning!  I talked to some of the neighbors and it looks like the whole complex was shut down!  You don’t realize just how much you use electricity until you don’t have it.  I still had my laptop on battery, but it did little good since all internet activity was shut down.  So I took this as a sign that maybe it was time to take a break and possibly be done for the day.  So I started to read.  A half-hour passed – no power.  At that point I decided to nap.  It was funny because it was so noisy outside.  It seemed like everyone was running between apartments acting like we’re under some kind of emergency.  It was really funny, but really loud.  I finally drifted off to sleep.  Next thing I know it was 6:30pm and the power had kicked back in..  It’s just funny to think about not having electricity = naptime…  You’d think I’d find ways to be more productive during this time, but noooo…   Oh well.

I then joined my mom and sisters for dinner and on the way home I gave my youngest sister and her boyfriend a ride back to my folks and chilled there…  So here’s where my funny story of the night comes in…

So remember yesterday how I took Sam over to the doctor’s office in the morning?  Well while she was there she picked up a booklet and a bunch of flyers about the 3rd trimester, giving birth and all that good stuff…  Well come to find out that she left it in my car, in the back seat no less.  So here I am giving my sister and her bo’ a ride home (she’s riding shot and he’s in the back) and he didn’t say anything about it!  Now it’d be one thing if they gave me a little crap about it, but he didn’t say A WORD!  And I know that he saw it.  I keep my car pretty clean and it’s the only thing back there, and it’s RIGHT ON THE SEAT!  The funny thing is that I didn’t realize it until after I got in the car to leave my parents’ (and my sister and her bo’ left a lot earlier to go play poker).  How much do you want to bet that there was a pretty good gossip/rumor discussion going on in the car on the way there?.  I had the same thoughts so as soon as I hit the road I called my mom (even though I saw her 2 minutes before) and told her the whole story…  Now I know my parents know me better than to suspect anything, but if our family does one thing well, it’s GOSSIP!  So it’s important that I send out the truth dispatchers right away and dispel any rumors or conjecture…  But still, how funny…