So granted it was my fault, but still....

Ok, so here's the deal.... Friday night, I go into one of my usual haunts to enjoy the fine company of my friends and a few alcoholic beverages. As the new social chair of the department, I had turned this into a department outing and was expecting phone calls from people asking where we were. Therefore, I placed my phone on the table to ensure that no call would be missed. After a few beer beverages, and a shot of Mexico's finest tequila, I was ready to pay my bill and head home for a night of relaxed sleeping.

The next morning, I woke up and realized that I did not have my phone. So I call the restaurant from my apartment phone and they say after about 30 seconds of looking, "No, it's not here, but leave us a contact number and we will let you know if we find it." But I'm not buying that, so I go there myself and ask the manager to look for it, and he says "No, it's not here, but leave us your number and we'll let you know if we find it."

So I go home, call Cingular, and generally waste most of the afternoon trying to decide whether to cancel it, deactivate it, etc. Since it's the weekend, whatever I decided to do can't be reversed until Monday so I had to make sure that I made the correct decision. So after all this, my friend calls around 8pm and and says, "Guess what, the restaurant just called me and said they had your phone." Ok. What the hell?!?

So they got my contact number twice, and instead of using that, they open up my phone and call the last number that tried to contact me? Let's not forget that this is the very same place where hours earlier, an entire management staff had never even seen my phone before. Where did it magically come from? I know it's my fault for leaving it there, but part of me wanted to suggest that maybe they get a better plan for handling things like this instead of ruining my day with their ineptitude for handling missing items. Sheesh. Well at least I still have my phone and all 75 phone numbers that were stored in it. You better believe that I'm gonna be making up a written list of those numbers before I pseudo-lose my phone again. It's amazing in the advent of the cell phone, how few numbers I actually know by heart these days.

I live the life of Paris Hilton

Just get me a T-Mobile sidekick and an annoying purse dog called Tinkerbell and we might be mistaken for twins, oh yeah, except minus the rolling around in the sand and filming music videos.. that's just not my style.

I for one will be semi-relieved when work starts on Tuesday followed by classes 2 weeks later. This summer has been highly unproductive in the way of real work, but I have upped my tolerance level for liquor, pimped out my MySpace profile several times, and generally managed to spend obscene amounts of hours on the computer. I am certain that this is how Paris lives her life.


I mean take a look at this picture. Carefree, full of life... I'm like the spitting image.

Moving on, I was struck at this moment by the large impact that MySpace has made in my life. I am in contact with practically everyone I have EVER met in my entire life. I mean, one click and we're in contact with the aid of a message box. What more could a full-time socialite like me need?

All of my friends are moving to Iraq, no joke. I mean like a good 1/5 of my list is over there right now serving our country in some capacity. Lee was in the PX (which is basically their version of Wal-Mart on the base) and he ran into a girl that was in our year at Vandy and in ROTC with him. She had just driven up to his post on a convoy. Then I was checking MySpace and another one of our friends is an air ranger at a nearby post. There is a very good possibility when Lee is leading convoys to that post, his friend is flying above him providing cover. A third friend is the #2 man for military intelligence in another nearby country. Lee pointed out on the phone yesterday that all three of them very nearly got kicked out of ROTC for drinking one night on a weekend field mission. It was like a big game back then.... we were all college kids, and I know they had no idea that one day ALL of them would be over in a real war at the same time. But if you want my opinion, these guys are amazing at what they do and had they been any other three in ROTC they probably would have been kicked out. But their commander recognized who the top four in the class would be by the time they graduated for leadership and skill (yup, you guessed it, the girl in the PX was one of them) and now they are over there (with no alcohol) and I feel strangely secure knowing this. Their competence level was always amazing to me back then and it's only gotten better over the years.

So that's my life.... thinking about bombs in Iraq or Sri Lanka, and living the life of a Hilton. Only one more weekend till I get back to the grind.
Peace out :)