cheap?

"long-winded complaint in which K is still cheap but for once not wrong."

friday night against my better judgment i attended a joint birthday celebration for K and some of his friends.

fast-forward to today, when K mentions that shane (one of the friends i really like) called him sunday to give him a talking-to. shane asks K if he dropped $ fri nite because they came up $20 short for the table. K said no, he was under the impression that since the party was a BIRTHDAY celebration not thrown by the birthday people, that they were paid for. i found this a reasonable assumption. i myself had assumed that when G was divvying up the bill and said $20 for everyone, that he had distributed the guests of honor's share in there. anyway, shane says, uh, well, most times the invitees at least offer to pay, and of course their money is refused. shane ends up telling K that the entire posse thinks K is, in general, cheap.

here is why i find shane's little scolding to be teeming with shit:

fine, K is cheap, i will not dispute that nor defend him from those allegations. no way. BUT. first of all, it was his damn birthday. WHO invites someone out for their birthday and then asks them to pay for their dinner? K did not organize this dinner. Spacey did. second, if shane really felt like "kev could have at least offered," he would not have brought it up with him. if he truly was just irritated by what he perceived as a lack of etiquette on kevin's part, and all along intended for the rest of the party to pay for his dinner, he would NOT have said, "we came up $20 short."

bottom line is, who really needs the etiquette lesson here? i think it's Spacey and shane. tell me if you think i'm out of line, but i seriously have never invited someone out for their birthday or any kind of celebration and been offended when they didn't offer to pay. second, since they obviously have no problem being tacky bastards, why didn't they just ask him then? they obviously had noticed who had not thrown in. (if they had just been guessing, they would have guessed it was me.) and third, i don't think people with $60K+ incomes should be grousing about this shit. there were 10 of us at that table (OK not all with $60K+ incomes), 20 something others spread out on other tables. like it was really such a burden on them all. i did not complain that i had to pay even though K had invited me (and last minute, too), and i did not complain that i ate like three bites of food because his friends make me lose my appetite, yet had to pay as much as CB #2's bottomless pit husband did. if i had complained, i would have had more cause to complain than shane or Spacey.

grrr. people. grrr.

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Sunday, April 10, 2005

testing - one week down, two to go. mondays are dark, if you will, to allow for recovery from the weekend. (mondays are statistically high-absentee days.) i caught one of my kids telling a chronic absentee: "you don't have to come monday, there's no test." RAAR. i was on that pair like ... (if i had a good analogy i'd use it.) i don't like kids to feel like they have to censor their thoughts, especially when they're not even talking to me, but i HAD to be scary on that one. have i taught them NOTHING? now i will never say this out loud (because in this state you'd be shot) but for corn's sake i would rather have them be absent for the three weeks of testing and come for the rest of the year when i actually teach them useful things.