My Ten Year Reunion

So...

I have been looking forward to this day since, oh I don't know, graduation?

It is finally here! My ten year class reunion. The E-invite arrives and I RSVP. They are having two different functions, one at noon so you can bring the rug rats and show off the family and one in the evening sans kiddos for everyone to get blasted.

Not having kids and looking at a 4 hour drive from Dallas To Katy (west of Houston) I don't bother going to the noon time get together.

Now here is where things start to go downhill. I pull into Houston at 6 PM with hubby in tow and check into our hotel. It is pretty crappy, but I kind of expected that. It is a $40 Motel 6, but hey I am short on money right now. The event starts at 8 so after getting ready we head out.

Now on the invite this function is being held at a sports bar. This is disappointing as in I always imagined a hotel ball room or something a bit fancier, but whatever. The invitation says $20 per person gets you in with free buffet dinner, a free drink ticket and live band. Ok first of all if I am paying $20 bucks don't tell me I am getting a free meal and free drink! I just paid for it with the $20!! But no, I walk in hoping for the best, and fork over $40 for me and hubby.

I should have turned around gotten my money back and sat outside on the porch. It is immediately obvious that the bar has not been closed to anyone else. There are people way to old to be in my class drinking and carousing. The live band is a class mate of ours that seems to have not played an instrument or sang since high school. This means they play extra loud so that you are too deaf to catch mistakes or to talk to any old acquaintances, because why would you want to do that? It's not like I haven't seen any of these people in years and have nothing to converse about.

Neither my husband nor I drink alcohol so the drink tickets are used on iced tea that turns out to be powder mix iced tea...yech!

And that brings us to the buffet dinner. Now we were actually planning on this being dinner and didn't really have enough money to go elsewhere. I knew it was a sports bar, but I was thinking some different salads, a variety of buffalo wings, steak strips and things like that. You know the type of food they serve at sports bars? NOPE!

The buffets table is, I kid you not, a 2X3 foot card table and on it are two warming trays. In one are frozen french fries that have been cooked to long, a bowl of tortilla chips, a bucket of mystery meat eggrolls that have been butchered into 3 pieces each to make it look like there are more than there really are. The other tray has that fake melted nacho cheese, a bin of mystery meat chili that is swamped in grease, a bucket with dirty water that a couple of mystery meat hotdogs are sticking out of and a plastic bag with a couple of mashed hotdog buns.

Seriously?!

I don't eat beef and my husband can't eat certain parts of animals that are usually found in mystery meat items (organs, intestines, etc.). So our dinner consisted of cheesey fries.

I was so pi$$ed off! I still am, if you couldn't tell. I spent $250 dollars in gas and hotel and entry fees to have cheese fries and a crappy iced tea!?
Only one of the people I really wanted to see showed up so it's not like I got to see a bunch of long lost friends to make up for this. To make matters worse a couple hours after I got there we went outside on the porch to get away from the smoke and noise so we could talk. There were people who were just showing up, but they didn't have to pay to get in! Whoever was supposed to manning the door had wandered off!

I am incensed. I know for a fact that our class broke the record in money earned from fund-raisers and such during our four years. We spent some on prom and gave some to the school as a gift of an electronic billboard, but a huge chunk was set aside for our reunion. The afternoon event had catered BBQ that I am sure did not cost a fortune and then a tour of the school which was free. So what the hell happened?!

I want to know where all that money went and to what the $20 per person was for as it obviously did not go to renting out the bar, the entertainment or the food. I have a feeling that someone is driving our reunion money around town.

I have not been this utterly disappointed in a VERY long time.

This got long, I know. I am curious as to how any one elses reunion went? Also if anyone knows where I would start about finding out what happened to the money I would dearly like to know.

Thank you!