Good People

There are some pretty dishonest people in the world today, and they just keep getting worse. It seems too, with the economic woes on everyones minds, that the number of dishonest people in the world keeps growing as formally honest people give in to their dark side and start commiting small acts of dishonesty to save a buck. Sometimes it seems you don't know who you can trust as you hear the stories, and live some yourself, as sadly our own family members, and those we count as friends, can often be the ones we have to worry about. Then something happen to restore, once again, your faith in people. While small things happen everyday, I was more surprised than usual today, and my thoughts rested on all of this.

I was driving home from work as usual, and I came around the bend in the road that takes me to the last leg of my journey home, when something caught my eye. I looked over to see a sign posted at the bend in the road so as to been seen from either direction, by all who drove past. The letters and numbers were large and there were two flags on top of the sign suggesting that the person posting it had a real desire to address the situation. In large black letters, the sign read; "LAPTOP FOUND- 555-5555". Obviously it contained a real phone number that I can't recall, but you get the point. "Wow!" I thought, "As people are trying to take valuable property from other peoples homes, or businesses, or are try to dishonestly get a better price than they should, someone out there had found a laptop (that the owner was no doubt sick about and chalking it up as gonner) and they were actively taking the steps to restore it to its rightful owner.

That computer in the hands of so many other people would have been kept or sold, but the right person found it.

Thank heaven for those people who are still honest in our world today.

I Realize I'm a Mean Person, But I Always Have Been, It's Nothing New.

Okay, so while I should maybe be finally telling you all about my cruise, I'm not, I'm venting, because I need a place to vent and this is it. This is another long one, it requires detail.

OKAY, first of all, I really, really do hate to date. I do! I first hate the awkwardness of it, and then I hate that without fail, either, he's a manorless fool, or he likes me and I'm not interested.(I know, heaven forbid I like someone, but such is my lot in life). SO, I really do try to avoid dating if I can. Every now and then I get asked out by someone I mistakenly think I can go out with and have fun, and when/if the inevitable happens, they won't hate my guts.... like I said, mistake.

For those of you who do not know, I do indeed have a Facebook account. Now I beg of you not go try to find this poor fool, I really have nothing against him personally, but you will see my dimela.

Lots of people I have gone to school with have sent my invitations to be their freinds on FB. I typically accept the invitation, and it was no differt for (let's call him Milton to protect the innocent) Milton. A few weeks, maybe months later I happen to jump on FB real quick before work, and the contemptible messenger informs this dear soul that I am online, so he begins to talk to me. Eventually he tries to ask me out. Now, I realize that it takes some courage to ask someone out (but ask me out on Facebook and I don't care who you are, there is absolutly no class involved), but I am not one to feign any similitude of interest when none exists, so I thought long and hard about how to respond.

Now, I thought the easiest thing would be to tell him I was dating someone, but that would make me a liar. Then I thought, well, I could either say I'm a lesbian or I'm schedueling my terminal illness to take me later this evening... but again, both lies. I thought about how guys claim, "Just be honest with us, we want the truth, don't lie about why you are saying 'no'!" So I thought, well, at least no one can fault me for not being honest, or not handeling this the way guys think we should. So, I tried honesty.

"You know, I'll be honest, I'm just not interested, and I don't want to lead you on and pretend I am when I'm not. I'm sorry, but I don't think we should go out." There, I said it, I was nice, I told him I didn't want to lead him on, who can hate me for that, and I'm not going to Hell. :) Dead wrong! He gets mad. "How can you say you aren't intested, you haven't even seen me for 8 years. Why don't you give me a chance?" On and on.... "Look!" I said, "I could have lied and told you I was dating someone just to end the conversation, but I tried to be honest and you are getting mad. I'm sorry, I'm not interested, and I really have to go to work now." Oh, but it doesn't end there, no he's not done. "Oh really, where do you work?" NOPE! I'm so not telling him, I DO NOT need him coming into my work. "In Layton, gg, bye!" Log out!

Needless to say, I made sure my messenger would never do that to me again, it's perminently in the off position.

But again, our story does not end there. A couple weeks later, he leaves me a message on my wall and asks where I work again, I chose not to answer. Then, a couple of weeeks ago the poor sap leaves me a message on my wall again. It was harmless enough, "Hi how are you doing?" So I suck up my doubts and all my witchy tendencies, and I comment back, "I'm good thanks." BUT I'm wise enough to know better than to return the inquiry, "How are you?", because that will only lead to bad things. WELL, it turns out, it doesn't take much provoking. "We should hang out sometimes." Hang out: code for , I'm too scared to say date, and I want to make it look like It's casual, so I say 'hang out' to lure you in. But I was not lured... I debated deleting his comment or ignoring it, and I decided ignoring was less mean, so I ignored and never responded to it.

Oh but that little rascal, Milton, does not give up, no, he sure doesn't, and that is why I'm here ranting to you today.

I really need to start listening to my instincts more. I ignore the thoughts and what I thought COULD happen, DOES happen. Last night I went to see the movie "The Proposal" with a bunch of my friends. It was a cute and funny movie, and I really liked it. It had that little "Aw!" factor that made you swoon at the leading man. So when I got home last night, I checked email and FB, and I wrote (against my better judgement based on Milton's possible actions);

"Audrey Spencer thinks that The Proposal is so funny and so cute! Almost makes her wish she was in love... then she remembers that in the real world, that would require dating, and then she remembers she HATES dating, and could be okay with being single forever if it meant not having to date. :)"

I thought, well, that's obvious enough to make one think, "She shot me down, once, maybe twice now, perhaps that, if for no other reason, would be a good reason not to ask her out again."

Wouldn't you think? I think so. But maybe I'm the slow one here.

So, once again, I was... that's right, WRONG!

I get an email message on FB this morning from him; "Want to date me?"

NO! NO, NO, NO!! Why is this so hard!? I'm trying to be nice, I'm trying to be honest, I can't make myself clear to him! I really don't want to resort to meanness, and I think that deleting him as a friend qualifies for meanness, but I'm not seeing any other options.

I don't know what to do next, BUT lesson to be learned here, just lie. We all will lie someday, it might as well be for a worthy cause like sparing someones feelings.... and your own sanity.

And if one person tells me to just go out with him, you will be counted as an enemy, forthwith and forever. It's even more clear now than when I first said no, that no was the right answer. He won't give up without a date, he'd be a scourge with a date. YIKES!

Clarification

For anyone confused, I did make three posts yesterday. I'm just sorry they are always so long, I've just got a lot to say, and I want you to get the full experience of what happened. :)

My Poor Little Puppy!

So when I took a break from writing the last blog, I went to let my dog out. We have been letting them out in the front... for a long story, but I let her out front, and I could see the across the street neighbors were outside, but there was a truck parked in front of our house, so I could only see some of what was going on over there. Lilly walked to the edge of the driveway, and then she turned to face across the street, and I saw her kind of jump and and then she started barking and I heard the neighbors yell, and before I knew it, there was a dog running up our driveway toward Lilly. I called her to me so she could run in the front door, but instead she ran to tward the back with the other dog right on top of her, litterally, this dog could have taken a bite out of her at any time.

I leaped off the front porch and ran after them around the side of the house, the neighbor was right behind me. I got to the back and the other dog saw me and went around the other side of the car to get away from me. I found Lilly at the end of a trail of urine at the top of the back stairs barking her head off, and Junior was running up to defend her. The neighbor appologized, took his dog home, and locked it in the house.

I took Lilly in, and the poor thing couldn't stop jumping at everything she saw and heard. The poor things tail was wet from her own filth. I washed the poor girl up, and she was back to normal, but I felt so bad for my baby. I don't think the dog planned to hurt her, but he sure scared her.

Heading Back to Venice!

Sorry, I have no pictures, but I think the story will entertain you pleanty.

So we gabbed a couple of taxi cabs, and at Jenny's direction, we headed to the airport. Jenny had been the one telling us all about the flight info, so we never bothered to question her. She had told us that the airport was only 15 minuted away. Jenny, Melissa, Heather, and I all had hopped in the same cab.

We were holding onto dear life as our cab driver flew through Rome, squeezing into tight spaces and cutting people off, and reading a novel at red lights.... when suddenly I had a bad feeling, and it wasn't that our cab driver was going to kill us, no, it was that we were not going the right way.

I seemed the drive was taking more than 15 minutes, and our cabby was driving like a mad man. I questioned Jenny about her certainty about where we were going, and she didn't seem so sure herself anymore. I luckly had not put my bag in the trunk, so I dug inside and found our flight information. There are 2 airports in Rome, the one we were heading to, and the one we were supposed to be heading to... CRAP! AGAIN!

Panicing I tried to get the cab drivers attention. We had to be at the airport 20 minutes before our flight, and we had less than an hour to be to make it. The cab driving was on his phone and kept waving me off as I tried to show him our flight information, so I handed the paper up to Melissa in the front seat and asked her to make him stop. Finally he looked at the paper, and about had a cow! He started to yell, "You told me Fermagio!" "I know!" I said through gritted teeth, "It's our mistake, but we need to be at that airport, ASAP!"

As the cab driver got us turned around (justbefore we got to the wrong airport) and called everyone he knew to comlain to the in Italian about the 4 dumb American girls who told him the wrong airport (we understood bits and pieces) we hurried to find a working phone to text the girls in the other cab to make sure they knew we had been going to the wrong airport. Luckly, Jenny had a text from Carlee from 10 minutes earlier that said "Wrong airport!" Now we knew they were on course, all we could do was listen to our ranting cab driver and pray hard that we would make it on time.

TO BE CONTINUED...

J/K don't panic.

So to our dismay, we hit a mad patch of traffic as we head back the other way. The four of us were quiet as the dead, as merely exchanged glances of anxiety and raised eyebrows over our overly upset cab driver, and his GPS he had pulled from the glove box.

The final count down was on as our cab took a sudden right off the freeway onto fairly deserted exit. Heather began to feel frustrated and wanted to question the driver, but I told her we should stay quiet and try to trust him. As I said a silent prayer and clentched my teeth, I keep my eye glued to the clock on my phone for the finaly 2 minutes till they won't let us check in.

With Only seconds to spare, the cab squeals to a halt in front of the tiny airport and we shove sufficiant funds into the drivers hands, grab our bags and run inside. Once inside we follow signs to Ryanair, but there is no one around to help. Finally we grab someone walking by and he happily rushes us to the counter at the other end of the otherwise vacant half of the building. Jenny and I had check in online before we left home, so they let us right in, Heather had checked in, but had not printed her boarding pass, and Melissa hadn't checked in at all... so the 2 of them were told they could not go through, and th next flight would be tomorrow.

Not wanting to miss the flight and have to buy more tickets ourselves, Jenny and I were forced to abondon our friends and run to the gate to meet the rest of our group. After explaining what happened to the rest of the girls, a man next to us began trying to help by telling us to tell them to go to the train station, and they could be back to Venice tonight, since we needed to be on our cruise ship early the next day. As all the chatter was going on, I just kept watching the doorway and hoping to see them walk through. Five minutes later, my hopes were meet with excitment as I turned and saw the 2 missing friends walk through the door. Rome Belssing #4! Seconds later the line began to move as the plane was filled and we left for Venice.

It turned out that Jenny was confused, because her parents were also going to be on our cruise (by coinsidence) and she had book their flight for them just before we left home, and they had flown to the other Rome airport in a layover. Melissa and Heather had made it through with the help of a less stingy employee of the airport. The first had refused to help due to their lateness, but they found another lady that happily assisted in checking them in, and then security let them cut line to get to the gate in time.

Shortly after the plane took off we hit a great deal of turbulance, and I tunred to Carlee and asked, "Wouldn't it be ironic if the plane crashed? 2 of us ould have almost been saved." She laughed nervously, but I think she knew I had a point. We landed in Venice and hour later, and all was well.

My First Niece

Off the topic real quick...

I'm an Aunt again! My sister and her husband just adopted their first child, Gracie. She is super cute and meows when she cries. :) Congrats Blake and Amanda.