Saturday, May 07, 2005

Road chow the NWA way

Most places I stay have coffeemakers. I don't drink much of the stuff, so mostly I put them away so I don't break the urn.

Then it dawned on me - all it is is a little water heater. It turns out to work pretty well with instant oatmeal. Dump in the right amount of water, empty the little envelope(s) into the bowl, put it under the spout, check your email and there it is. Next up - ramen noodles.

Road follies

I'll agree that motel maids need not know a whole lot of English, but they really ought to know what it means when I put up a "do not disturb" sign. STAY OUT!

There are many reasons why you might put one up. In my case I just had left my laptop and some other stuff out that had some identity theft potential unlocked and in plain view. Being in a hurry and not wanting to deal with it, I just stuck the DND sign in the slot (they can't miss it). I had a big mess of trash to take out, but I figured I could deal with that myself later.

I got back that night and the bed had been made. No catastrophe, but it did mean that the maids had been in there. Likewise something had been unplugged for some reason and other things were not as I had left them. I made a mental note to tell the manager.

Then I remembered I needed to fill out one of those !@#$ rebate things for Best Buy. They all require some sort of relic from the packaging, so I had torn the relevant part loose from the box and pitched the rest. The last time I remember seeing it it was on the floor next to the bed along with the receipt and other crapola they demand before they ransom your money months later. (Just how often do they actually pay out the rebates, anyway?)

Well guess what? Apparently the staff had pitched it. It was a $30 rebate so I looked everywhere for it to no avail. The receipt had been placed next to the bed, and I'd had it all together for safekeeping.

Could it be in the trash? Why? Surely they would have carried it out, right? Hey, it's $30 and it's *my* trash - let's look. Hope swells as I see that in fact they have not carried out the trash as I would have expected them to do, but no - the tokens

Ha! - it wasn't there.

Well, at least I could take out the trash, right? Sure, after I put everything into a new bag after the original one ripped. Grrr. Where is that manager!?

Friday, May 06, 2005

Why the birds quit singing...

Yes, I've been scarce lately. I did a stretch of 6 beds in 7 days, during which I moved from MD to IL and back again. So now I'm in Baltimore instead of DC, my fourth industry, fourth location (soon to be fifth) and fifth job since starting this blog a bit over 3 years ago.

To go where no man has gone before...

Could it be that Trekkies are especially likely to be pedophiles?