ode to all the ridiculous people

... and man have there been a lot today.

actually, the start of the day was alright... it's the past 4 hours that have me in an irritable mood.

event 1: at 6 tonight, my church had a meeting. we have a parsonage (a house owned by the church for a pastor to live in). our previous pastor had used the parsonage for nearly 30 years... back then, it was the thing to do to own a parsonage and offer it to your pastor instead of a housing allowance and this is what pastors wanted... now, the idea of a parsonage is a little more outdated and more and more pastors would prefer to choose their own place. out of the 12 pastors we considered for our church, the one we want to offer the job to was the only one who said he'd consider a parsonage, and then after visiting said that it didn't meet his family's needs and he'd prefer to have an option to get his own place. whether this is the pastor we get or not, we still have to discuss the parsonage as a church because by and large the pastors we're considering don't want it.

what irritated the heck out of me was when one of the voting age teenages got up during the meeting and commented "you keep saying our parsonage doesn't meet his needs, i think it's more that it doesn't meet his wants", and then a bunch of people applauded.... i was grateful when an adult got up shortly later and commented "you take it for granted that you can choose where to live and how to live with your money, if we're asked someone to come and minister to us, why should we take away his right for the same... frankly i don't know how pastor j (our previous pastor who recently retired) managed it with 5 kids in that house... don't get me wrong, it's served us well, but most of us would not be able to use the space well with our whole families... we can't be asking something of a potential pastor that we won't ask of ourselves"

people raised valid questions about the option we're considering: selling the current parsonage and then going in 60/40 or 70/30 with the money to help whoever comes as our next pastor to buy a new house... then it's still a parsonage, but kinda upgraded,... works out better in our budget... since it's still a parsonage, gives the pastor tax relief, etc., etc.... i agree that there's more research to be done first...

what irritates me is the sentiment a few people repeatedly voiced very strongly that somehow our particular 30-40 year old parsonage is intricately tied up in who the congregation is and if a potential pastor is too good to take our parsonage then we don't want him. that's a ridiculous comment. times have changed,... we need to be able to adapt accordingly and provide for whoever we get as a pastor... because that attitude is going to keep us from getting one... thankfully there were enough people who commented what i just said too, so it wasn't a unanimously stupid opinion.

i had planned on 30-45 minutes... the discussion went on for an hour and a half very heatedly, and we were still 15 people short of a quorum, so we couldn't even officially vote either... it was a draining and frustrating hour and a half.

..............

after that, i was going to have dinner with scott... which was totally cool. we had a good chat and all... but shortly after we ordered our food our server raced to the table to say "so, there's an emergency at home, i'm handing your orders over to someone else"... only he never got us another server and he never left... after dropping off our food and saying he'd get me a refill (which 20 minutes later still wasn't there and when i got up to get my own, scott flagged down a bus boy to do it for me), he hid in the kitchen for awhile. (the emergency was that his babysitter got in a car wreck, but it turned out that she was fine and his mom took care of things without him)... when scott and i had been sitting for 20 more minutes (40 after our food came) and no one had been to our table again, i finally got up and went to another server and said "so, no one's been to our table in 30 minutes... i want a box and the check 5 minutes ago.... this is extremely ridiculous"... within 30 seconds, our server appeared with the box and the check and it was taken care of...

scott was fairly impressed to see me snap at someone, commenting that he never would have expected to see that out of me.... he seriously gave me like a dozen high fives on the way out.

so (1) expecting people to discuss parsonage issues objectively instead of personifying the parsonage and getting all offended and worked up on its behalf is apparently too much to expect
and
(2) expecting good service for dinner when there's 3 servers and 4 tables of customers is apparently wishful thinking if you end up being the odd table out... because at 8:30 at night, who can be expected to wait on 2 tables efficiently?!!

people can be so frustratingly ridiculous.

oh... and this annoyed me too... i got an IM from a perfect stranger earlier who came across a website or something of mine and then IMed me with...
"hi! are you a nerd?"
"what's 1254 x 1365 x 63 x 87125 x 10375321095?"

people can be so irritatingly stupid too.

back to writing up a first draft of my syllabus for my oral quals... this is NOT fun.

later dudes.