Thursday, July 31, 2003

I'm very tired. I just woke up from yesterday's busy day. I have bruises on body parts I didn't even know I had. It feels so good though. I love being sore, I love the way your muscles tense up, and I love how good it feels to stretch it all out. I know I'm a lazy guy, but if I just had a few more oppurtunities like yesterday, I would be the most active person out there.

I basically went straight from jet skiing to helping Buck pack up for Boston. I am literally just now getting back. It was fun though, emotions and adrenaline were high. During the course of the wedding I befriended most of the immediate family, so whenever I'm over his house the grandparents and aunts and everyone are telling me how great I am. The coolest thing was when I would take boxes out to the truck and Buck's grandparents and mother would have a different comment for me every time.

We made it to Lauren's at about 12:30 AM and packed the truck up more until I was taken home about a half hour ago. Before I said I'd post something cool for them when the left. I've thought about it, but honestly nothing I do can explain how important these two people have been to me. I love them both very much, and I will miss them an insane amount.

  Wednesday, July 30, 2003

Last night:

Willby: Rory, I have an opputunity for you.
Me: Oppurtunity!?! You're speaking my language Willby. I'm intrigued. What's going on; does it involve girls?
Willby: Yes!
Me: Joni get this! Willby says he has an oppurtunity for me and involves going out with women.
Joni: Are they going to pay you? Otherwise, I don't see why it's an oppurtunity.

Willby wanted me to go jet skiing with some broads. I went, more for the adventure and less for skanks: they were skanks by the way. It was really fun though, and the girls were somewhat more tolerable then I imagined.

  Sunday, July 27, 2003

Today I found myself in situation where I had four Mormon children braid my hair. I leave the rest of this story up to your imagination.

  Saturday, July 26, 2003

I've gone into town the last two days so that my brother Rob and his wife could make use of their vacation. Thursday we went on a riverboat tour, and Friday we went to the Carnegie Science Center. Pittsburgh does have a lot of cool things to do, I've just never had the oppurtunity to really find out what they are. By 'oppurtunity' I mean somebody to explore with. I always dreamed of living in the city: going to ball games, and becoming a little more involved with some of the cultural aspects of living in town, but I'm never going to do those things if I don't have anyone to share it with. I feel like leaving and going where my friends are. We're getting a little introspective though, let's just say that I'll see you soon.

  Tuesday, July 22, 2003

I just saw a commercial on the ABC Family Channel for a show called "Tying the Knot: The Wedding of Melissa Joan Hart." There goes my most extensive childhood fantasy. Goodbye sexual imagination, I won't be needing you again for a while.

  Saturday, July 19, 2003

Today was the Sant family reunion. The story of the Sant family reunion is that my dad's father had six sisters, all of which married but were originally Sants. So the reunion consists of these seven families all from my grandpa's dad who was the original Sant at the top of this family. My sister Jen came up for the event and my brother Rob flew over from California with his wife Laura. I get to see them for the week, so that's cool, but each year though less and less people show up at the reunion and I had a thought that this may be the last one.

There is also a seven year rotation, with each family running the deal. When it's my family's turn, that responsibility falls to my dad and my aunt Laverne. Although I love both of them, neither of them really exemplify leadership: this has fueled my suspicion that this might be the last one. Right at the end, they ask for consensus as to what we want to do with the reunion, and it is decided, albeit not really by majority or by any other democratic means, that we would have a reunion every three years. Three years! I could have three or four illigitamate children by that point: which would be appropriate for my family as there was probably about twenty bastards running around the place today. Regardless, that's a long time.

I was actually really dissappointed. Unlike previous reunions I actually talked to a lot of the distant cousins that I really don't see ever. Eric and I hung out a lot. He's a pretty cool thirteen year-old and a great-grandchild of one of the original seven siblings: that's one generation lower then me. Plus, just within the true Sant family, it's been hard to stay in contact, and the reunion is one of the few oppurtunities I get to see my immediate cousins. We even whipped out the chess board to have some friendly competitions between families. I was observing a match between my brother Rob and Eric's dad, when someone noticed that it smelled like bleach for some reason. I replied in true roriness:

It's me, I'm actually 40% bleach... In fact, I am Bleach Man... I make everything white!

I stopped once I realized that I had created the most racist super hero ever. I guess it's actually cool that in years past we have had black children at my family reunion. They were adopted.

  Friday, July 18, 2003

It was a bad day for a baseball game. Ever since Randall Simon smacked the sausage in Milwaukee over the head, I've had a hankering for a ballgame, but at the time, the Buccos were in the midst of a week long road trip, followed by the All-Star break, so I had to wait until last night.

Willby, Machen, and I left with enough time to eat in town and go to the game. We parked in a garage a little further away to avoid the after game congestion in the closer garages. Sign at the entrance reads, "Garage closes at 11:30 PM. All cars left over night will not be available until 5:00 AM the next day." I guess that screws extra innings.

We make it over to the park just at the start of the game. Keep in mind that the only reason today was special was because I wanted to give Simon his standing ovation when he came up to bat for the first time. So I have at least til the bottom of the first inning, if not the second, to get into the park. When I first found out about the whole sausage incedent, I said that it was probably the best thing to happen to the Pirates in a decade. Actually, when I first heard about it I laughed my arse off, but then after that I said something along those lines.

Evidently, half the fans that showed up that day thought the same thing, or maybe there is some other explanation for the rare, weekday, 30,000+ crowd. It was beach towel night so it could have been that, but if that were the case you'd think they would have some left for us by the time we got our tickets and got into the park. By the way, that time was during the bottom of the second inning. Like I said, large attendance at this game and the ticket lines were longer then I had ever seen. We got in line right after the game had started and before we moved, someone notified us that the game was already 5 to 0. Shame old Pirates I guess.

We decided to stick with the game plan and buy our tickets. Discovering that they were sold out of the three cheapest sections, most importantly the close to the field bleacher seats, so we had to buy grandstand tickets. There are no real bad seats at PNC Park, but when you are used to being so close, those third deckers seem real high. As we walked up Machen asked me if my nose was bleeding yet; I told him that I was getting the bends. That joke got the attention of some annoying lady who I heard ask her husband if he had heard what that kid [me] had said. We got into our seats just in time to see Randall Simon get out; SUCK! Then the second inning ended; DOUBLE SUCK! That's gay because once the third inning starts, tickets are half price.

Everything got a little better once the Pirates started to make a game out of it. If there is one thing the residents of Pittsburgh know how to do, it's waving around a towel, and when the game got cool, those fans were up and twirling. Although I attempted it, waving around my Promotional Item Rain Check did not have the same effect.

The only other really notable event of the evening was when some stupid, slightly attractive, hussie started talking to her friend in front of us and just stood there for a few minutes to talk, only sitting down after she noticed the twenty grown men trying to see around her. The random guy behind me leaned over to say to me, very sarcastically mind you, "Duh! I'll just stand here and talk all day." I told the man that I was actually listening to her until she said that she was almost eighteen, after that it was back to baseball for me. Willby seemed to like that joke.

On the way home we stopped to get some milkshakes at McDonalds. Milkshakes now come with spoons instead of straws, and I'm sure the switch is intended solely to complicate the driving process. I'm finishing this milkshake now actually, it's good though.

  Wednesday, July 16, 2003

5000 hits!!! I'm an internet all-star. I'm happy today cause I got to see Ken, my old freshman RA. Ken was cool cause he listened to my women troubles at 3 in the morning. It became less frequent though when he stopped having women problems of his own. Now three years later he started having them again, and we have talked more frequently. Although, I hear now that he's in the green when it comes to women again. Good for him, and it gives me hope, not that I'm looking.

Started checking up on the three weeks of blog entries I've been missing out on since working on the wedding. I also got a bug to click on blogrolls. I started looking at blogs of people who I barely knew, but it turns out I stumbled upon some friends. Ed seems to have gone public, and might I add, high quality. I also figured out who's been looking at my site from Ohio State. Turns out it's good old Scott Minufo (Mollan). I figured this out when I stumpled onto his blog from Jenn's after hitting Aymond's. I love it when people start up thier own website because I feel that it helps to spread thier own uniqueness to the world. However, I insist that if he is going to link to Kool Keacher, then he should add a link to Shady Rory, and tell the not so interesting story of how those names came about.

  Monday, July 14, 2003

So I've now been alone for about fifteen hours. It sucks. I require constant attention. Check that, I require the belief that at least one person has me in thier thoughts. Comments from some of the non-commenting friends could help, but don't push something that doesn't come naturally. Anyway, I should cover some of the stuff I planned for the wedding as I promised earlier.

I spent every day of the week before the wedding practicing my toast and going over ideas with the Nigro's. We decided the first version was a little too much about me. The day before I switched to a story approach. When it came time to giving the toast, they dump it on you really quick, so I didn't have time to realize I was going to do it soon. This is a good thing, because I about lost it about twenty minutes before the actual wedding, and people didn't think I would last through the ceremony. So anyway, I do the toast and it went really well, and then people started telling me I did a good job. Buck said that it had just the right amount of roriness. Someone mentioned to me that Buck was trembling and a tear came to his eye... mission accomplished.

I delegated the responsibility of decorating the car to Josh and Carmine who were two of the five other groomsmen. Let me first mention that at the rehearsal dinner the night before we presented Buck with a gift from his groomsmen to benefit him throughout his marriage, everybody enjoyed the Good Housekeeping magazine we got Lauren, but then we also gave him an engraved pocket watch. Anyway, back to the car; all the guys helped out putting soap, bells, condoms and silly string on it. When we got back into the reception I noticed we forgot the ring bearer Kenny. Kenny's a cool kid and I could write a page on just him, but his sister Nikki rejected me both times I asked her to dance (she was a flower girl). Anyway, I took Kenny back out there and he threw toilet paper on the car while I hurled nut rolls on the roof.

When the couple finally left the reception, Lauren's niece Victoria (who was another flower girl) was quoted as saying, "Goodbye Lauren for tonight, don't forget to wear clean underwear tomorrow." That got quite a few laughs. I then announced to everyone, that awaiting them on thier arrival to the hotel are blown up pictures of thier parents hanging very high above thier bed. This was done by a large coordination effort with Buck's aunt Debbie, who is also Kenny's mom. She made the hotel reservations and did the check in early that afternoon. Steve then took the pictures to the hotel and used a chair and an ironing board to put them as high as he could on the wall. Just a couple inches too low I heard later.

All of these were good ideas and a lot of who I am went into them, but I wanted one last thing that came from as far down into my heart as I could reach. When I was in ninth grade I had a huge crush on Lauren and I would draw her these little cartoonish characters, much like this drawing of Jenna. I did it because it's the only talent I have, and so when I wanted something that I really cared about I decided to make one for them. It wasn't finished in time though, but they know I'm doing it.

That covers most of my influence into the wedding, and now my world is all twisted, I'll shy away from the mental analysis though. This was story time.

  Saturday, July 12, 2003

So I just got back from the main event, The Wedding of Lauren and Buck. I have a strange feeling that a bunch of people are post partying, but I need to get some sleep anyway. I have a couple more things that I want to do for thier marriage. I've been thinking of an appropriate gesture to post about the wedding. Kind of like the same for Sonia and Ryan's, but I need something really special. They will be back for their honeymoon in about a week and then the will leave for Boston, permanently. Emotions will be high then, so tune back, I'll have something nice.

  Wednesday, July 09, 2003

The Foo Fighters concert was awesome. My heart is still beating to the tune of "Everlong." I got into it too: we were real close and I was singing as loud as I could. I now have that cool scratchy voice, but I'm also hearing a continous test of the emergency broadcast system in both of my ears. I'll probably be up all night because of that.

In a related story, (only related because I realized this while asking a girl to the concert) I'm never going to FIND the girl of my dreams, so I'm gonna stop looking, which I guess I've been doing for the last year anyway. When the time is right, the girl of my dreams will find me. So I'm going to make a very ambitious statement and say that from now on I will do nothing to pursue being with a woman. We'll see how that works.