More Ignorance...

But wait, are you ready for yet another fun adventure at the Embassy Suites?

So my hotel door is kind of screwed up. It looks like it's closed, but the latch doesn't connect all the way, so you get this sort of click like it's in, but in truth, it's not. And it reminds me of when I was in high school at a MUN Conference and our bathroom door was screwed up and when Lisa got a call from the "Security Council" at some obscene hour and she had to go to the floor, she had a hard time closing the door and all of us who were here roommates all offered the following advice, half-awake, half-asleep - and literally like this:

"Be firm."
"But gentle."
"It'll click when it's in."

Yeah, that was a bone to any FMers that actually read this thing. I doubt it.

But anyway, my hotel door is screwy. After Jess and Megan assisted me in attacking my blinds to make sure no one was in my room and that nothing was gone, I called the front desk where very peppy manager, Chris, answered. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Hi, two things - there's something wrong with my door."
Chris: "Oh really?"
Me: "Yeah, the handle sticks funny so that even when it looks closed, it's actually open."
Chris: (short laugh) "Do you want me to come upstairs now and try to break in?"

Pregnant pause

Me: "No."

Slight pause

Chris: "Well, sometimes that happens, Ms. Matundan. Thank you for bringing it to my attention."
Me: "That's great. Do you think maybe you should have someone look at it?"
Chris: "Thank you for bringing it to our attention. Anything else I can do for you this evening?"
Me: "I'll have a 7:45am wake-up call."
Chris: "At 7:45?"

Did I stutter?

Me: "Yeah, quarter of 8."
Chris: "Okay, 7:45am it is. Thank you Ms..."
Click-click booo....

I hung up on his ass. Seriously, I haven't seen hotel service like this since I was at South of the Border on my way to Florida circa 1987. And they didn't have any service! You know what I'm talking about. "Pedro put the spark in yo' ark." The ridiculously stereotypical character they created so that kids could be amused as they drove down to Florida after about 8 hours in the car.

That should tell you everything.

Meanwhile, back at work...

We decided to check out Lucky's, the bar on Grand Street that Jess was excited about going to. Something about Crab Rangoon and a good time. So we roll up to this biker bar. In the back of my head popped that Sesame Street song: "Which one of these is not like the other?"

We had walked into the quintessential dive/biker bar where there were ten bikes on the street, the sounds of Danzig and Toby Keith. Everytime someone would leave the bar, the smell of diesel punctuated the air. We got a pitcher for about $6 (hello, Chestertown), and sat and took in the atmosphere. There were kids who looked prepubescent making out at the bar and a guy who looked like Blue from Old School at the bar. Apparently, this was Crab Rangoon. He looked like a sturdy old fella, the type that you always see camped out at the bar, talking to no one in particular and staring at everything that moves.

Megan saw a rat-tail at the bar. But not just a rat tail hanging out, a rat tail pulled back.

Which reminds me, did anyone see the pictures of Britney's wedding? I swear I'm not obsessed with this, but did anyone notice that her father-in-law has a mullet?

Okay, back to the story.

So as I was waiting in line for the bathroom, I saw a lotto machine. So Megan gave me a quarter, we promised we'd split the winnings, and I bought an awesome game called "Tropical Island" or something like that. But instead of scratch-off, they had windows on the back of the card, like the kind of count-down-to-christmas cards you get where you open a little window on the piece of cardboard with a happy family winter/christmas scene. Of course we lost. After yelling "Curses!" and shaking our fists in the air, some guy who was clearly out of it came over to the table to do a bit of staring before wandering off. He must have been distracted by something shiny.

Yeah. Iowa.