Tonight I’m having dinner with Lauren, her younger sister Lisa, and her parents. Lauren was on the phone to her folks last night, and they’d apparently found my blog yesterday; they were actually quoting bits of it to her over the phone. I’m not sure whether that’s a good thing or not, but I guess it’ll certainly provide plenty of conversation (and I said conversation, not interrogation).
Incidentally, the title of this post is due to the fact that Lauren’s mother seemingly said that the blog title looked more like “the Mattress” than “the Mattness”. Now I can’t look at the title without seeing “mattress”; Mrs. Dempster certainly has a point.
This is one of those situations that can either be a car-crash or can go really well. On the plus side they’re both Computing teachers at high school level, and her father went to the same high school as I did (the esteemed HSG). On the down side, well, they were making note of how I said the other day that I’d wished Lauren a happy birthday “for perhaps the twelfth time since midnight”. Hmm.
It should be an interesting evening in any case, and I’ll blog about any particularly amusing and/or excruciating parts, so you can all have a good laugh. And by the way, I’ve already had the film Meet the Parents mentioned to me several times, so don’t bother doing that. Thanks.
If anyone has any last-minute advice, feel free to post a comment. Otherwise I’ll just fall back on my usual tactic or lapsing into nonsense French at awkward moments, or desperately imploring my mobile phone to “beam me up”. That ought to do it.
Oh come on. How could anybody not take to this fine fellow?
Normally I’d tell someone to “Just be themselves”, but to be honest if you did that you’re screwed.
Nah, only joking. Just steer clear of the usual CompSci line of banter (people’s mothers, how “PHP’s fastest”, how good Muffy looks in one of those sweaters, how Chrissy J is a ledge, how to kill people using just an AK and a packet of skittles) and you’ll be fine.
Oh, and flirt outrageously with her mother. And sister. And possibly her father, if you can stomach it.
Brilliant photo Derek :D
Don’t worry, be happy Matt :)
You could write a perl script to deliver an SMS to your mobile and schedule it using cron.
Sorry to disappoint you gents, but naturally dinner went just fine. Lauren’s parents and her sister Lisa are all great and really easy to get along with, and things never got awkward in the least. The topic of this blog did come up briefly, but nothing specific was mentioned (except the “mattress” thing). I’m looking forward to seeing them all again before long, if that’s not too presumptuous.
Cheers to Steve for the kryptonite suggestion last night via txt, by the way – very funny stuff.