Well now that we’re well into our short week after the holiday, I thought I should offer the final recap of my holiday weekend.
So my birthday turned out to be really awesome! I ended up waking up and going to Mass with my mom and sister, then they took me out to lunch. After lunch, my mom and sister offered to come back and help me clean up my apartment (which was in dire need of a good cleaning). We worked for two hours and got the downstairs very clean! It was so cool to have a sparkling clean place (for the last few weeks it’s been "decently clean" – neat enough for people to come over, but could be cleaner..).
At that point I met with Jackie and Emily to talk about our living options. The leases for both of our places are up at the end of this month and we need to figure out what we’re going to do. Jackie’s contract at the CDC is up in September, so it’s a bit hard for her to sign a lease, but we thought about pooling our resources and seeing what our options are. Well as it turns out, we’ve decided that we’re going to be looking into getting a house for the three of us for a few months, then when Jackie figures out what’s going on with her job, we may try to find a room mate at semester break. We have a few options available. So this week Emily and I will be going around Fort Collins looking for 3-4 bedroom houses. I’m really excited! Moving is going to suck a bit, but this should be a lot of fun. Emily and Jackie would make awesome room mates! We’ll see how things turn out!
After our little talk Jackie and Emily took me out to Coopersmith’s for my birthday, which was awesome! I’m grateful to the two of them! Then after that we had the poker party. It was funny because although we were technically going to start at 7:00 with an instructional period, no one showed up! I was a bit nervous for a while there, but then as it got closer to 8:30 (tournament time) people started trickling in – to the tune of 14 people in my apartment! Wow! That was awesome! 10 people played poker, we played Texas Hold’em, tournament-style. We started off with two tables, then combined tables in the course of the evening. As it turns out I was actually the first one out of my table, the second one out in the tournament , so happy birthday to me. 2 & 1/2 hours later, it came down to Christian and my sister Jessica, and my sister Jessica walked off with all of the money! It was actually pretty funny because she pretty much won and left a minute later (granted she was 15 minutes past curfew for her, but there was still something funny about that). $50 pay-out to her.. So how about that birthday present Cass?
The rest of the night was a blast. Some people took off, but many stuck around to play a friendly game of Cranium, ordered a pizza, then we watched Team America, had our discussion on global terrorism, then pretty much everyone went home at 5:30… At that point Julia and Joel stayed over: Joel made arrangements, and Julia stayed because she fell asleep on the couch half-way through the movie and wouldn’t wake up.. Joel and I capped off our evening by staying up until 6:30 playing Madden. What can I say? He freakin’ beat me 35-32 though.. Arggh..
So that was my incredibly fun birthday! Thanks to everyone for making it special! Thanks to Joel (picture on the right) and Julia for organizing it and bringing A TON of beer! Thanks to Bethany for bringing her poker chips Thanks to Em for bringing her stale pretzels and goldfish chips (just kiddin’ Em!), and thanks to everyone who came and had a blast!
I got pictures of the party posted though! Check them out!
Cell Phone Update
So for those of you who may not know, I stupidly left my cell phone in my shorts pocket from Friday night, and when I was trying to be productive and do my laundry Saturday morning, I left the cell phone there in my haste – so my phone got washed and dried. PERFECT! Surprisingly the phone still worked, but the ring tones and sounds were all jacked up and the display is completely shot… Working to replace my phone, in the meantime I tried to live with my broken phone, but it just wasn’t working out. Luckily I have my really old cell phone that still managed to work after I did a SIM card swap… Wow, not bad! So I do have a phone with a display once again. However this phone is big and I’m not liking the dial pad the way I used to (and yes Matt, I realize I’m using the same phone you have – no offense).
So I’m working on getting a new phone, but the process has been horrendous! I’m sick of cell phone companies!
1) Step 1 – I went to the Cingular (formerly AT&T Wireless) store, showed him a picture of the phone I wanted that I found on their web site. ($250 phone -$175 -$25 = $50 – all rebates instant) He said I couldn’t get the price I saw on-line (our company has a substantial discount policy with Cingular) because those were ON-LINE PRICES, and I’m in the store.. The best he could do is get the phone down to $149 with a $50 mail-in rebate (Argggh Mail-in Rebates), but he gave me a phone number I could call to get the number. Trouble is they’re only open Business Hours, M-F…
2) Step 2 – While I’m waiting for the place to open Tuesday morning, I go to the web site and try to order the phone. That’s where I got the original price quote. I had everything in the shopping cart and tried to check out when I got an error message "Because you’re a business partner replacing your phone you have to call our Business Center. You cannot order on-line." Crap… So much for trying…
3) Step 3 – Tuesday morning comes, time to finally order the phone! I call the center and give them my numbers and account info and finally I tell them what phone I like. They tell me "That’ll be $75"…. Wait, where’s my $25 instant rebate that goes along with that? They said that they can’t give it to me because it’s ON-LINE PRICING… Well I tried to go through the on-line pricing, but it told me to call you, I can’t order it on-line.. She basically told me I was SOL and there wasn’t anything more she could do…. Geez, thanks for nothing! What a freakin’ scam! I’m convinced the "on-line pricing" is made up pricing.. They probably give the real consumers the real pricing, but for us business consumers they tempt us with these fake prices, give us the run-around and then we finally end up paying about what the regular consumers pay.. Arggh…