The Treo line is well worth checking out…full keyboard, huge
screen, perfect for the uses that Cing is looking for. With an
unlimited data plan, it also works well for web browsing, email,
downloading and reading e-books, and you can even use it to watch TV
or listen to music. It’s a bit larger than your standard flip-phone,
but it does a lot. Currently, Sprint offers the 700p for $500. Better
offers can be found online as well.

Tom

Dear Tom,

Thanks — my friends seem to like their Treos.More recommendations after this; if I got it more than once, it’s asterisked.

Sanyo SCP-3100
Samsung A900*
Samsung A960 (try Best Buy)
Sanyo 6600 (a.k.a. the Katana)*
LG225
Samsung VM-A680
Sanyo MM-8300
Sanyo PM-8200
LG Fusic*

models to avoid
LG’s Sprint phones
Sanyo flip phones

Or check www.phonescoop.com for user reviews and side-by-side comparisons; obviously your mileage will vary here.

Dear Sars,

Today is the day I am celebrating my 21st birthday party.As soon as I found
out my work schedule, I contacted a few friends to invite them out with me.We
are meeting up at my friend’s apartment and then hopping public transportation to
go to some bars.I just got a call from my friend X asking where we are meeting, and
she asked me who else was going.I rattled off the names of my five nearest
and dearest, and then she added, “And Y and Z” — her boyfriend and her best
friend.

I know Z because we used to work together, and while I have never gone drinking
with her, I feel like she will be a magnified version of herself when sober: an
attention-seeker.The boyfriend, Y, I have never met, because I met X last
semester while studying abroad in Paris.All I know about Y is that he was
constantly calling her and creating drama.

Anyway, I told X I didn’t know she had invited people, and that I don’t really
like to meet people when I am drunk.She told me that was the best time to
meet people.I didn’t know what to say, so she asked me if it was all right she
invited people.I didn’t know what to say — I didn’t want to tell her to leave
them at home because she might get offended or feel awkward and then refuse to
come out.

And so, Sars, my questions to you are —
1. Is it wrong to only want people I like at my party?
2. How do I better communicate that I don’t want people bringing extra guests?
3. Am I violating some sort of unwritten rule that says that once we are in
college we have bring our boyfriends with us everywhere?In the adult world,
is it understood that SOs are a package deal from now on?They aren’t engaged,
and I am leaving my boyfriend at home.Or is it assumed that nights at the bar
mean “bring whoever you want”?

I don’t know if I am coming off as someone who needs to be the center of
attention. but yeah, for one night, I thought that would be okay.

Sign me,
It’s My Party and I Will Drink With Who I Want To

Dear Party,

1. No.2. Send written invitations or an Evite in which you state explicitly that plus-ones are not kosher.3. Not really, but people’s assumptions that their SOs, regardless of the length of their standing, are included is an ongoing problem once you reach adulthood; better to decide now how much of an issue you will want to make of this generally.

The way to go in this particular instance, I think, is to tell X that it’s your birthday, and you’d love to see Y and Z some other time — but not this time, and you’re sorry if that makes things awkward for X, but you hope that next time she’ll check with you before assuming that she can invite whomever she likes to someone else’s party.I mean, it’s a bar; you can’t bar them from coming, and it might just be easier to let them come, and make a mental note for next time that people have to be told, no crashers.

As a more general rule, you have to decide what’s more important to you in the situation — sticking to the attendees you had in mind, or avoiding drama by letting it go this one time.Reading even a week’s worth of Vine letters will tell you that people are notoriously bad at understanding what an invitation is actually telling them, and anyone planning any kind of event has to account for that, unfortunately…but you always have people who don’t get it, and every time, you have to decide: hold the line, or let it go.

In this case, I would hold the line.You already explained to X that you’re not comfortable with Y and Z coming; she tried to make you feel guilty/talk you out of that, which is rude; if she gets pissy when you stick to your guns, well, that’s on her.

Hi Sars,

I have a question for a situation that has me both stumped and too angry to know if I’m being rational or not.

I’ve been married for three months, and my in-laws recently hosted a dinner party for the local friends and relatives who couldn’t make it to our out-of-state wedding. It was casual; they put up a banquet tent in the backyard and had a buffet. I invited a select few friends and co-workers. My husband, who is far more outgoing than I, invited all of his co-workers regardless of how well he knows them or how well socialized they are, and since he works in bicycle retail, there is a high proportion of young guys who don’t stay in jobs long moonlighting as mechanics, or former bike messengers with too many tattoos to get a job anywhere else, at the store.

(I have nothing against tattoos. In the event, all the heavily-tattooed and -pierced guests behaved impeccably. This is just to give an idea of the demographic.)

Four guests of my husband’s, guys in their mid-thirties — old enough to know better, you’d think, if you were a foolish idealist like me — behaved appallingly. They were drunk to the point of nearly falling down by the time dinner was served, and then decided to get stoned. So they walked behind a bush and smoked up. Every guest smelled the pot; the police station is half a block away and I’m amazed we didn’t have squad cars in the driveway within minutes. I caught one of these guys urinating in the backyard later, presumably because he couldn’t negotiate the stairs up the deck into the house. No effort was made to disguise their inebriation, and they staggered around the lawn being wincingly loud and stupid long after everyone else had left. They treated a dinner party hosted by a sixty-year-old couple, at which many of the guests were that age or older, like a college kegger.

So. Never have anything to do with these people again, and apologize profusely to his parents for having invited them. Done and done. However, two of these four neanderthals gave us cards with checks inside, as wedding presents.

I do not want to cash these checks; if I cash the checks, I have to write thank-you notes to the givers, and if I write thank-you notes I have to thank them for coming to the party, and if I thank them for coming to the party I feel I am condoning their behavior at said party. You see the bind? I say “I” because my husband has left this decision up to me, as he doesn’t care and I feel very strongly, albeit indecisively, about it. (It’s $150 total, which is a complicated in-between amount: not enough to ignore my disgust over, but enough that we could do something nice with it.)

Should I cash the checks, write terse thank-you notes not referencing the party, and figure I’m at least cutting into their weed budget? Should I cash the checks without sending a thank-you note (although I was raised to believe that this is so unbelievably impolite that I don’t know if I could honestly do it)? If I decide not to cash them, should I just tear them up, or send them back? I can’t disassociate the gift from the giver, and really don’t know what to do. I feel dirty and angry about accepting money from people who made what should have been a nice evening a social nightmare, but I don’t know if answering rudeness with rudeness (if returning their check would be that rude) is the answer.

Thanks,
Never expected someone could remember to bring a card and a present AND their stash to a party

Dear Stash,

Cash the checks; write terse, bland thank-you notes thanking them for thinking of you; end of story.

You can’t cash the checks without thanking them; you can’t answer boorishness with boorishness, first of all, and second of all, the etiquette for the gifts is, in my opinion, separate from the etiquette for their offenses at the party.They did think of you and give you a token of that, and that should be responded to correctly.

They also treated your in-laws’ hospitality carelessly and immaturely, and that should be responded to correctly — you, or preferably your husband, should let these guys know that their behavior offended you, and why.

If a friend of mine got me a nice bottle of wine for my birthday and then got drunk on it and acted a fool, I’d still thank her for the wine with a note — but then we’d be having a phone call about how that wasn’t cool, and she’ll be paying for a bookshelf to replace the one she broke trying to sit on it.

I see what you’re saying, but I think it’s two separate acts that require two separate responses — and in any case, trying to teach these dudes a lesson in this manner won’t work.If they think it’s okay to toke up at an event like this, they won’t be chastened by uncashed checks, certainly, or even make the connection between one and the other.

[9/28/06]

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