Running my tongue along my teeth...

Today I won a victory for oral hygeine - I had my permanant bottom retainer removed. Now if I could only get the layer of buildup to disappear, I would be fine.

I've had the retainer since the end of my sophomore year in high school (roughly exactly 8 years ago), and it has been one of my greatest personal aggravations (aside from my body-image issues and sometimes questionable mental health). I would ALWAYS end up with food caught in it and spend the rest of the day trying to use my tongue to get it out. My old dentist in Columbus laughed at me and thought I was being silly, but the amount of buildup on the lower half of my front teeth more than justifies what I had been arguing all along - that the retainer had ceased to do me any good and needed to be removed.

Moving away from my mouth....

I really do enjoy programs where you accumulate points and then can trade them in over time for gift certificates and real-world things. My two primary cards (debit and credit) do this, and I'm finally at a point to cash in. Almost literally. My credit card is getting me two $25 gift certificates to Barnes and Noble, while my debit card is close to getting me two $50 gift certificates to probably anywhere I want. I'm thinking I should get one for Blockbuster, since I am a video-aholic. I think the key is to just be patient and let the numbers keep adding up.

My housewarming party (at least the slip 'n slide) made it to YouTube, and I posted the video on my Facebook page.

And one of my dearest friends graduated (again) from A&M this weekend! Now she's a Master of Science. We headed out to Hurricane Harry's (the first time I've ever been there other than a Blue October concert aeons ago) and met up with a group of her friends and aquaintences from around town. I had an awesome pair of shoes that, regrettably, were not at all suitable for dancing (the bottoms were rough so I couldn't spin). After crossing a dance floor and figuring out that the shoes wouldn't work, I declined dancing for most of the night until finally I was coaxed out. And then one of my heels broke, but not in the middle of dancing.

At graduation I got to hang out with her fam while they called the horribly long procession of names. I didn't think I knew anyone else until I ran across the name "Mattingly". Turns out the youngest was graduating that day and had just crossed the stage. I got a little excited, but realized that among the thousands of people in the stands, no way could I tell if her family (particularly her older brother, whom I went to high school with) was in attendance. I still scanned the crowd, and for some reason picked them out of the masses, a couple sections east of where we were. It was a little odd that I found them at all. I didn't get a chance to say hi - her older brother ducked out shortly after his sister made it back to her seat - but they weren't the reason I was there and he was probably quite busy with his two ankle-biters.

Then this weekend I went to Hallettsville to go to a wedding with my BM. It was an interesting experience - the wedding had 16 members in the bridal party (grooms and maids) alone! Somewhere around 500 people came to the wedding and about 1000 or so came to the reception. There was a whiskey bar, free beer, and free margarita machine/pina colada machine drinks until dinnertime, which ended up being kind of a good idea and kind of a bad one. I didn't know a single person at the wedding with the exception of my BM. Probably not the greatest way to go.

I did meet some of his oldest friends, who proceeded to get drunk in fine form and do some very ridiculous things. One in particular I had a difficult time with since he had just broken up with his girlfriend (and was "devastated") because "she pulled the 'love' card" after they'd been dating for only 5 months and he was moving to another city for school. [This is a major issue mainly because my BM might be moving away to another city for school next summer, and although circumstances are always different I don't like the idea that his friends would support the possibility of him making such a ridiculous type of decision.] The guy partook heavily of the whiskey bar and kept commenting how he wanted to have sex with someone that night ("devastated"?), even unto joking that he would "take out" my BM so he could do something with me. Not cool. I despise being treated like an object and there is no excuse for acting that way towards any girl. Even if it is just drunken behavior that can be kept in check in sobriety, I am going to have a very hard time being anything but revulsed in future interactions with that guy.

On a happier note, my BM kept me on my feet for most of the night with dancing. Proper dancing, too. Two steps, waltzes, polkas...we did it all and even some line-dancing to boot! The last dance of the night was (appropriately) to the song "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison. The dancing was initially nowhere near as coordinated as I would like it to have been (I kept sliding on spilt beer and adding extra turns and at one point whacked my BM in the face), but we kept at it and were actually hitting a really good groove at the end of the night.

Oh, and his family seems to like me (quelle suprise). That's always a good sign.