So, the other day I wrote about how we had our squeaky brakes checked out by Crappy Tire, and after they were finished "fixing" them, our breaks started to fail and smoke. At that time I mentioned that we attended a birthday party later that evening… which I said was another story in itself. So I’ll elaborate a little more on that before I get to the rest of the nonsense that happened this weekend.

First, I’ll be upfront and say that neither J nor I really wanted to go to this party. A couple of our friends managed to gracefully bow out, but for some reason we felt like we should make an effort… even though last year’s party was so very painful.

Now, what makes hanging out with Birthday Boy (BB) so painful, is that usually when you get together with friends, you hope to enjoy some decent conversation. So while BB is a nice enough guy, MAN!, he’s seriously lacking in the social skills department… and it’s gotten a lot worse over these last couple of years.

Prime example: J n’ I are standing around talking to BB, and I’m about to tell a funny story, but then I say, “Actually, I’ll let J share the story, because he can tell it much better.”

So J starts telling the story, maintaining eye contact with BB the whole time. J is in mid-sentence when BB just gazes off and looks over to his son who is standing nearby. He interrupts J to say, “Hey Son, what’s up?” So J obviously stops speaking, and waits for BB’s attention to return. Once it finally does, J picks up where he left off. He gets another few words in before BB’s attention turns towards the backyard, and he interrupts J AGAIN.

“Where’s so-and-so?” BB asks J.

J points, “I think he’s over there.”

“Oh…” says BB, moments before he turns and walks away.

NICE!

J is left standing there feeling like a chump. I assured J that BB is the real chump because he always friggin’ does this. He never used to, so I don’t know if he has developed ADD or what, but the guy has NO attention span… and it has become especially noticeable over these last two or three years. It makes him less desirable to hang out with because he can’t hold a conversation for longer than a minute. And yet, I’m sure he doesn’t even realize that he’s doing it.

A short while later, BB opened his gifts, and even though it was just a $20 itunes card, um… I’m pretty sure I didn’t receive a thank you. Again, another issue relating to social skills. It's not that we were expecting huge praise... but some acknowledgment is nice, y'know?

Then there was the final minor nuisance of the evening…. J n’ I followed the party's BYOB policy and brought a small pack of coolers to sip on as we mingled with this strange mix of people. (BB had a few co-workers there who are all in their early 20’s and then he had his parents who are in their 70’s. The only people in our age group were two former co-workers of ours – one who had been fired – so that’s always kind of awkward.) Anyhow, like I was saying, we brought a couple coolers to numb the pain and keep ourselves entertained, but before J could grab his last cooler, this flake grabs it and drinks it right in front of us. Jeez Louise, it’s BYOB you idiot. Did you bring it? Noooo. So don’t f*cking drink it! Sorry… it’s just the principal. If we brought a big case of beer, it wouldn’t matter, but we only brought a couple of drinks each... and that was our last one. Some days I swear Common Sense should have his face posted on the back of a milk carton. Of course, we didn’t bother saying anything, because as far as we were concerned, after the day we had, this was just par for the course. By this point we had grown bored and irritated, so I suggested we head home.

Of course, just as we headed down the driveway, my flip flop broke. Ha. Figures.

The next day we picked up our car from Crappy Tire, but as we drove down the road, we began to slide a little bit at the intersection, and the breaks began to smell burny again. J’s bro, who was with us, took the car for a short test drive himself to ensure that it wasn’t all in our heads. Yup… he agreed, they still weren’t working. Argh.

J called CT to complain, and so we decided to grab a quick lunch at White Spot (since that's where we had parked)before taking the car right back. We put in our orders and then waited, and waited, and waited. Our waitress promised that our food would just be another second as she grabbed us refills… even though my pop was still full. Then we waited, and waited, and waited some more.

A few tables over a baby screamed bloody murder for what felt like forever. The only thing louder than the child is when its mother shouted at it to “STOP!!!” Yeah, that’ll work...

I’m not a parent, so I can’t speak with any sort of authority on the issue, but I will say that if I *were* a parent, and my baby was bawling at the top of its lungs like that, I think that I would take it to the washroom or outside until I could figure out what the hell was wrong with the cranky little thing -- even if that meant that I had to get my food to go and then eat it later. Yeah, I realize that it totally sucks that parents often can’t enjoy your nice lunch out, and I really do sympathize with those who will never get to eat a warm meal again for the next 10 years… But seriously, who sits there for a half hour, eating their lunch while their child screams itself hoarse – and then yells at it to STOP?! For those of you who are parents out there, please tell me if you would agree, or if you think I’m being an unreasonable b*tch.

Oh yes, good times...

So we finally managed to catch our waitress, and she assured us (again) that our food was coming up any second… So we waited, and waited, and waited some more, as everyone around us was served their food before us. Finally, J n’ I looked at each other, and said in unison, “I want my weekend back.” Ha. We were like, "Screw this... let's go!" Bro, who was starving, tried to convince us that we should stick it out and wait a little longer, but after an hour of waiting, and most of it spent listening to this baby behind us (who was still crying at top volume, btw), we had had enough. We left four dollars on the table for our drinks and told our waitress that we had to leave. She promised us that our food would be up any minute... but we had heard that song n' dance twice before. Forget it.

Back we went to Crappy Tire, who agreed to take another look at our car. We grabbed lunch at Boston Pizza, and then loitered around the nearby plaza. We finally got a phone call, CT would need another day to work on the car…. but they agreed to do the work for free. (And so they should.)Something about putting on even better brake pads and how they would also put on new calibers or something like that… Anyhow, we’re supposed to get the car back today… and man, I sure hope they get it right this time. I mean, I appreciate that they swallowed the cost for the tow truck and all this extra work… but last week we just had squeaky breaks, and now we have no brakes at all, and we’ve been totally inconvenienced for two days…

Oh well, c’est la vie. We're just happy that this crazy weekend is over with. At least at work, life is predictable… well, for another week anyway…