People are evil and mean

I went to a wedding yesterday. Well, not really, I went to a reception yesterday. I tried to go to the wedding but I left very late from my house, battled the 101 and the 405 both of which were dead set against me, and never even found the street that the church was supposed to be on. So there I was sitting in the parking lot of a Ralphs in Santa Clarita at 4:00 on a Sunday afternoon for wedding that started at 2 searching through my handy dandy Thomas Guide for directions to the reception hall which happened to be in Granada Hills which is halfway back to my house.

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to the unlucky series of events that I like to refer to as My Life. Now, I know, I did bring all these things upon myself, so I can't really call it bad luck, it's more like bad planning on my part. It was my fault that I didn't leave in time for the wedding. It was also my own fault for not realizing that I since I was going to be late for the ceremony anyways I should just take my time at home and leave in a timely manner for the reception that is only half as far as the wedding. But realizing these things before hand requires reason, logic, and thinking, things I haven't participated in since my second year of college. So instead of throwing rice or rose petals and following the caravan to reception, I was trying to figure out how to get from one obscure part of LA county to another in the parking lot of every Southern Californians favorite supermarket. For the record I would just like to say that Santa Clarita is in the middle of a desert land with very expensive gas prices and long, long roads that lead you to Magic Mountain and that the reception hall, once I found it, was actually on top of the Hills of Granada Hills.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Back in the parking lot I, realizing that it was too late even to see the church cleaning staff taking down the last of the flowers off the pews but still too early for the reception which was set to start at 6, I decided it would be a good idea to go into Ralphs and do what I do best, buy cheap food. It was a good thing too I totally still needed to get Ryan and Ann a wedding card. First aisle of the day that I actually got to walk down was the liquor aisle. I thought it would be nice to give them a bottle of champagne on top of the card, but after seeing that the good champagne was out of my price range I kept on walking to where the big cans of beer were an picked me up a 25 ouncer of Fosters ($2.49). The card I ended up getting them had a little holder for money and I figured money was better than alcohol when you just spent a small salary on a wedding anyway. And after snatching up a bag of sour cream and onion rice cakes my shopping was done and I headed on over to the reception hall.

When I arrived I was an hour and a half early. I decided that it was as good time as any to start drinking my beer. I bought it just in case there wasn't an open bar, but seeing as how I had all this time to kill I cracked it open. I called up Lizzy to tell her about my day so far and that's how the hour passed. I was scared to actually go into the reception. I didn't bring anyone with me so I wouldn't have a buffer if I didn't find people I knew. Once I was inside the night got better though. I found people from the groom's family and I eventually met up with my friend Melanie (the groom's sister). I drank and ate and was merry. I spent time with a bunch of old family friends and even got to see the bride and groom eat it when they first walked in. Ryan and Ann were trying to be all cute doing a silly dance. There was a bit of miscommunication and Ryan tripped over himself and tackled Ann in the process. Priceless and they got it on tape. At the end of the night I even picked me up the sweet center piece, a tall cylindrical vase filled with water and dark purple orchids. It was a

It wasn't until today that I found out people are evil and mean. I got a call from Ryan to tell me that I needed to stop the payment on my check. Apparently someone had gone into the gift envelope box and snatched a whole bunch of the cards (money and all). It really sucks that I have to end the story like that, but that's what happened. I guess the moral of this blog is to always give alcohol as a gift because it reduces the risk of check fraud.