Where's Jimmy Hoffa?

My uncle is having a retirement party next week and there will be 650 people in attendance. I’m not a fan of weddings (actually I find them dreadful with the exception of two out of about 15 I’ve been in or was a guest), but this fiasco seems a thousand times worse than a wedding - if that’s even possible. He’s some big union president – pipefitters, sprinklerfitters, and whatever else needs fitting, so it’ll mostly be union people – possibly Jimmy Hoffa, too. I’m not quite sure where to start with what I find the strangest about this party, but here’s a short list:

- $75 per person for dinner (or $1,000 for a table)
- You can place an “ad” for some program the “retirement committee” is putting together for $750 per page as a memento for my uncle to take home and stick in a drawer.
- The bio that he wrote, which he asked my dad to edit, which took my dad 7 hours to do with two alternate versions and the corrected version of the really bad version, was uber bad.
- The bad version of the bio includes the following sentence: “The neighborhood [where he grew up] was an ethnic melting pot. All nationalities were accounted for there, hence, he [my uncle] learned the skill of getting along with people of every ethnicity.” I won’t even get started on the term ethnicity, or the fact that my uncle is racist, but I’m perplexed that there is a “skill” required to get along with people of “every ethnicity.” What the crap is that? Holy cow!

I’m sure there will be more to report next week.

School started this week and I already have a migraine. Is this possible so soon in the semester? Once again, I had a freakishly garish outfit on this morning as I dashed out the door for an 8:30 meeting. I think the original concept I had in my mind may have been okay, but the execution completely fell apart in some type of overly draped cape, palazzo pants, scarves (yes, plural) and wedge ankle boots. I looked like some fat gypsy transient whore. It scared me (and I’m sure it scared people in the meeting). As a matter of fact, I was so uncomfortable and frightened in this ensemble (I won’t even discuss the bad hair and accessories), that I ran home after the meeting to change and ran back to work. That’s a sick mind.

D noticed the other day that ass-crack, something that was rampant and disruptive in the library’s reference area the last few years, is strangely absent this year. I don’t know what to make of this. I must have missed some sudden trend. I wonder what took its place? I notice less skin showing, so there must be something, but what could it be? I wonder if trends are now focusing more on iPods, cell phones, etc., and not clothing, body odor, cleavage, dreads, piercing, or ass crack. I’m going to have to investigate. I’ll make this one of my goals for 2006.