River Ranch sucks! (And other things)

[There's another new post below this one. Two in one day. Word.]

Guess what I got today?! Tickets to see The Rolling Stones and Dave Matthews Band in concert!! Dave is opening for the Stones in El Paso on October 20th. My parents have seen the Stones about a million times because each time they do a farewell tour my parents go to it in case it actually is their last tour (I swear they've been on their farewell tour since 1992). They'd never taken us kids with them, though, I guess mostly because the majority of these concerts happened when we were too young to care. But I've realized within the past few years that I not only like the Rolling Stones, I sort of love them (who knew?!) and Chels likes them a lot, too, so when she saw on the El Paso Times website that they were going to be playing in El Paso she told me and then we ganged up on my parents and demanded they use the Uncle Keith connection to get us tickets. Because have I mentioned here that Keith Richards is my pastor's brother-in-law? I told that to a guy in England and he called me a "lying Yank", but I swear this is the truth. The pastor of my church back home is Patti Hansen's older brother and therefore Keith Richards' brother-in-law. And ever since we found that out my family has privately referred to him as "Uncle Keith" just because there's something really hilarious about imagining Keith Richards at a family reunion with my fairly straight-laced pastor and his wife and their three kids. But that actually does happen, apparently.
Anyway, I'm pretty sure Dad didn't actually use the Uncle Keith connection to get tickets. But he did pull some sort of strings somehow and got the tickets today even though they don't actually go on sale until Saturday and now me, my family, and about a dozen of my parents' closest friends are going to the concert in October!
A dozen of my parents' closest friends are going, too, because my parents have conveniently decided to throw their joint 5oth birthday party on the Wednesday before the concert. My parents are both turning 50 in October and so they're going to close down dad's bar for the night and throw themselves a big party. Initial rumors included mention of a live band and karaoke, but who knows what will actually end up happening. I do know for certain that there will be lots and lots and lots of free-flowing alcohol, though. This is my parents we're talking about, and they don't call my family the Crunk Duncs for nothing. When my parents decide to party, they party, to say the least.
Anyway, I'm pretty jazzed about all this. The only problem is that I'll have to be in El Paso Wednesday through Saturday morning. I'll have to miss my Thursday class for sure and possibly my Wednesday class, I'll have to take three days off from my dramaturgical duties less than three weeks before the show is about to start which is probably not a wise idea, and I'll have to get someone else to keep an eye on everything in the box office while I'm gone since there's a show going on that week. But you know what? I'm going to make this work. I've never once skipped a night class or skipped working a performance. And I know about this two months in advance. Surely if I tell all affected parties two months in advance we can work something out. I'm just trying to decide if I should tell the truth or if, "It's my parents' fiftieth birthday and I have Stones tickets" isn't a good enough excuse and I should pretend I have to go to a wedding or something like that instead.

In other news, only six more episodes to go and I'll be all caught up with The Sopranos. Well, as caught up as I can be, anyway, since they haven't released the first half of the sixth season on DVD yet. And I guess at this point since I've watched all the other seasons I'd be okay with reading myself through plot synopses of the first half of the sixth season before the final episodes air. Although I'm hoping HBO will do what they did with Sex and the City and release the first half of the season as its own DVD set around the holidays so I can catch up before they finish it all up. So yes, that's one summer project I'm actually going to complete. As for the worthwhile projects, like my own personal writing projects and my initial thesis research...well, talk to me about that some other time.

Next on my agenda is watching the first two seasons of Lost. I guess the last thing I really need is another television show to care about, but I think my sister will kill me if she has to go another season sending me text messages every Wednesday that say, "Why does nobody I know watch Lost?! I HAVE to talk about this with somebody!" Plus the only things I really desperately feel the need to watch every week are Grey's Anatomy and Project Runway. Desperate Housewives is entertaining but I don't love it enough to obsess about seeing it, my HBO shows won't start up again until the spring, and The O.C. went so far downhill last season that I don't particularly care about it anymore. So I guess I can add one more show.

Finally, how is this for annoying? I got a phone call from the apartment complex I lived in A YEAR AGO-like, literally a year ago, we moved out July 31st of last year-telling me that Katy and I still have a "small outstanding balance" and we need to pay it immediately before they have to send our account to a collections agency. Turns out said balance is $44 so it's not that big a deal and I just put a check in the mail to them because I want to stop dealing with the idiots entirely but, seriously, a year?! An entire year went by before someone could be bothered to tell me we still owed them money from our move-out charges? And don't even get me started on the damn move out charges in the first place. They completely fucked us over on several levels and if I get into it all again right now I'll get so angry I might give myself a stroke. But let's just say it was a lovely apartment complex until we moved out and got screwed, and ever since then I've been writing bad things about them on every Rate Your Apartment Complex thing I can and complaining about them to anyone that is searching for apartments in the area. I just can't believe it. I was incredibly bitchy to the woman I talked to, but do you blame me?! Amongst other things, I told her "Don't you dare threaten to call a collection agency on me when this is the first time I have ever heard of this charge and YOU had AN ENTIRE GODDAMN YEAR to tell me about it. And you're lucky it's only a forty dollar charge and I just don't care enough about forty bucks to fight you about paying it. I hope you realize how ridiculous this is." And she spluttered and babbled and I just cut her off and said, "No, really. It is ridiculous. It is absolutely ridiculous that you are so unorganized over there that it took you an entire year to realize the checks my roommate and I sent you didn't add up to the correct amount, and it's even more ridiculous that you are still insisting I pay you such a pathetically small amount of money when we already paid you almost a thousand dollars last year when we moved out and you've been just fine without that extra forty bucks for AN ENTIRE YEAR." Then she tried to insist that maybe I'd just never gotten the notice about the forty four dollars because she didn't have the correct forwarding information for me, but I just said, "Well, that's funny because, you see, I got the initial bill you sent at my new address, and we paid that. Plus you obviously have my phone number since you're on the phone with me RIGHT NOW. So no, that's not a valid excuse."

Is there any way to lodge a legitimate complaint about this? The thing is, I don't know if what they've done is actually wrong or if it's perfectly legal but just fucking annoying. I don't care about paying them the money, but I'd love to do more than just say "River Ranch sucks! Don't be fooled!" all over the internet.