I Have Returned

Well, we moved again. From the middle of July up until a couple of weekends ago, we've been constantly busy either getting the house ready to sell or slowly moving into the new one. So with life getting back to normal it's time to get back to the blog. But first, just a few random observations of rude and/or weird people:

If you're going to tell a lie, make sure your lie is plausible. Case in point: we were trying to order carpet for the new house and have it installed before we moved all of our furniture in. Carpet guy took measurements and said he'd send us a quote the next day. Three days later, we still hadn't heard from him. St. Pauli Girl finally called him.

"Oh I tried to call your husband," said the carpet guy. "There was no answer and his voice mailbox was full."

Hmmm, well, let's assume for a moment that I don't delete voicemails after I listen to them. The problem is I get maybe three phone calls a year. If I let them all roll to voicemail, it would take at least ten years to fill up the mailbox. And that's assuming a lot of evangelicals are calling me to leave voicemail sermons about saving my soul. Luckily, we found a different carpet installer who did 90% of the job and then just disappeared. But that's another story.

A few weeks ago, we were leaving the grocery store. I saw a woman empty her cart full of bags into the trunk of her car. Then she simply pushed the cart behind the car next to hers, and drove away.

I almost always return my shopping cart to a corral in the parking lot unless it's raining/snowing or it's ridiculously inconvenient. But if not, I would always make sure I don't block a parking spot and try to anchor it somehow so it doesn't roll away. I'm trying to think of what circumstances would cause me to just park it behind another car.

Hmmmm.... if the car had a bumper sticker that said "I Love ISIS".... if the car belonged to my arch-nemesis from grade school .... if the car had "Venemous Snakes on Board" sign in the back window... if the car was a giant jacked up pick-up truck blocking my view of traffic.... if the car was partially parked in my space. No, I would either do a lot worse or nothing at all in those situations. I think it's safe to say that if you park a shopping cart behind another car, you are just a jerk.

Last week, St. Pauli Girl and I were out of town and stopped in the hotel bar for a nightcap. As we entered, the waiter said, "And what brings you here?"

"Brandy," St. Pauli Girl said getting right to the point.

"Oh, and you're staying here?"

"Do you have brandy?" St. Pauli Girl asked. "Do you have E&J Brandy?"

"Um, let me check." The waiter stepped away.

"I think you two are on a different tangent," I said. "I think he meant what brings us into town?"

The waiter came back to our table. "Yes, we do have that brandy," he said as he started writing in his pad. "And sir, what would you like?"

"I'll have a brandy as well."

"Great. Spicy or non-spicy?"

For those few readers of this blog who are unfamiliar with alcohol, as far as I know, brandy does not come spicy. It's generally just served straight up from the bottle (unless you ask for something with it). But the young kids these days, who knows?

"Non," I answered with a straight face.

The waiter disappeared for several minutes in fact, much longer than it should take to pour a couple of brandies in a practically empty bar. Finally, the bartender came over to our table.

"Did you want your Bloody Mary spicy or non-spicy?" she asked St. Pauli Girl.

We finally got the drinks straightened out and relaxed for awhile. When we finished, the waiter came back.

"Would you like anything else?"

"No, I think we're all set," I said.

The waiter started laughing, practically cackling.

"We're ready for the check," I said to make myself clear.

"Yeah," he said and kept laughing as he walked away.

"Was that funny? Are we that drunk?" I asked St. Pauli Girl.

"No, but maybe he is."

Scenes from a Bar/Lobby

We recently had a quick weekend getaway a few hours from here. After checking into the hotel, we took the elevator to our floor where we were greeted by about 50 kids roaming the hallway. If you've ever tried a weekend getaway in the last 15 years, you've probably had a similar experience. Apparently, hotels have colluded with youth sports leagues to convince parents to spend money traveling to out of town football/basketball/hockey/kung fu/archery/chess/full contact crochet tournaments. And apparently, especially this weekend in particular, the front desk clerk is the babysitter.

Later that night, we came back from dinner to discover kids running around in football uniforms. This happened in late January when every league is done except for the NFL. But of course this is Texas. Anyhow, we went to our floor where kids were rolling their football helmets down the hallway in some sort of race. We decided to go to the hotel bar.

Now the bar of this hotel had what they call on HGTV, an open floor plan. In actuality, it was just a section of the lobby with some tables and chairs. In the morning, it's a breafast room, at night they open up a locked liquor cabinet behind the breakfast bar, and it's suddenly Moe's Tavern.

St. Pauli Girl sat at a table while I approached the bar where three women in their early 20's sat. One of them looked at me and said, “Hi, how's it going?” That caught me off guard because usually the next question coming from someone like that to me is, “and would you like to supersize that?” But then I recognized her as the front desk clerk who had checked me in earlier. I guessed she had just gotten off work and was having drinks with friends.

I got our drinks and went back to the table where St. Pauli Girl sat. Our adult bar time ended quickly as hordes of twelve year old football players ran screaming through the bar/lobby. We also noticed that there were no parents around. I could only guess that they had taken their coolers of beer to the hotel room and told the kids to go play in the bar.

A short time later, an older shaggy looking gentleman wandered through the bar and complained to the front desk clerk that the ATM she had recommended charged him three dollars. He then pulled out his cellphone and started yelling to someone who I'm guessing had to be named “Cooter.” He explained to Cooter that he was going honking tonking that night and that he had come to town to get a “kick-ass sound system installed in my truck. Now I'll be able to watch porn while I drive!”

I also noticed that the front desk clerk kept walking back and forth in front of us. Being college educated, I also realized this happened everytime the phone rang at the front desk. She was still working: checking people in, answering the phone and hanging out with friends in the bar! The genius hotel owner must have decided to only have telephones with cords so the clerk would never leave the front desk. He forgot about the part where $7.25 an hour, 20 year old front desk clerks just don't care.

We finally saw a parent come into the bar. We hoped she would round up all the kids and send them back to their rooms. No, she went to the bar and ordered coffee for all the kids. Then she went back to her room while the kids loaded sugar into their coffee. Our only hope at this point would have been a mass exorcism.

Then another kid dressed only in gym shorts came into the bar. I thought maybe he had come from the pool but I realized the hotel didn't have an indoor pool; he just thought that's the way to go out in public in January no less.

We decided not to have another drink. I said to St. Pauli Girl, “I didn't see a sign but I think the name of this bar is 'Pedophile's Dream.'”

Amazingly, we weren't kept awake all night by rowdy kids in the halls. But then again I guess that's because they were all down in the bar.

Great Moments in Hospitality

Today we present another episode of "Great Moments in Hospitality":

A few years ago, after working nearly non-stop at Good Eats for the first 18 months of its existence, St. Pauli Girl and I decided it was time for a break. We managed to slip away for a long weekend to a resort in the mountains of New Mexico in January. As picturesque as the mountains were, it helped that the resort included a casino.

On the second day of the trip, we decided to splurge on room service for breakfast. St. Pauli Girl had never done it before, and while I thought I had at some point or another, I think I was mostly remembering television shows. We filled out the special menu card and left it on the doorknob overnight.

As expected, the next morning at 10:00 a.m., we heard a knock on the door. The pleasant room service woman wheeled in a cart with covered dishes and small vase of flowers. I signed for it along with a nice gratuity on top of the service charge. We sat down and pulled off the plate covers to reveal our scrumptious breakfast. My “Ranch Hand Breakfast” featured most of the major food groups: fried potatoes, meat and coffee. St. Pauli Girl’s breakfast was lighter, much lighter.

“Didn’t you order anything?” I asked.

“The smoked salmon.”

“Oh yeah, that sounded good.” I looked all around the tray again, but there was no salmon. “I guess they forgot.”

I called room service.

Me: Yes, we ordered the smoked salmon but didn’t get any.

Room Service: Yes, we ran out. It’s supposed to be on the delivery truck later today.

Silence.

Me (looking down at the check): You billed us for it.

Room Service: We’ll bring some up as soon as the truck comes in.

Me: Which is when?

Room Service: About 4:00.

Me: We can go ice fishing, catch our own, smoke it and eat it before the truck gets here. Can we get something else?

Room Service: Um, of course, sure.

Me: Why didn’t you call and tell us before you came up here the first time?

Room Service: We didn’t want to wake you.

Me: We filled out a card that said ‘Please deliver at 10:00 a.m.’ I think it’s safe to say, a 9:45 or even a 9:30 call would have been okay.

Room Service: Well, we don’t know that. Some people get really upset when you wake them up.

Me: I see. So instead of trying to upset us with a phone call, you decided to deliver half of our food but bill us for all of it? And hope we don’t notice?

Room Service: The Ranch Hand breakfast is enough for two normal people.

Me: Normal? What’s that supposed to mean?

Room Service: Sir, do you want another entrée or not?

Me: Yeah, how about the Belgian waffle?

Room Service: Very good. Oh, and we won’t charge you either.

St. Pauli Girl encouraged me to eat my breakfast before it got cold while she sat and stared. It’s difficult to eat in front of starving people, but I managed to finish. Then her waffle finally arrived. I watched for awhile before deliberating how mad she might get if I turned on the television. Instead, I just walked around the room then stood and looked out the window. I noticed a small grey truck driving up the service entrance. It had a fish logo on the side.

“Hey,” I said, “I think the salmon just arrived. You want me to call room service?”

St. Pauli Girl sighed. “No, they’ll probably just throw a whole salmon on the plate, stick a Marlboro in its mouth and call it, ‘smoked.’”

Most Likely to Burn to Death

I vividly remember the grade school fire drills. Every class walked quietly in single file order from the buildings to our designated gathering area while Sister Mary Rambo stood with a stopwatch waiting for the last straggler to emerge from the pseudo burning building. The teachers would take roll in the parking lot and amazingly we never lost a single student in these disasters.

Then Sister Mary Rambo would lecture that it took 2 minutes to clear all of the buildings, and we need to improve it to 30 seconds. This would lead to an afternoon of fire drills until we mostly ran screaming from the buildings in no particular order, teachers stopped taking roll, and Sister Mary Rambo labled the drill a success, even though several first and second graders lay trampled somewhere inside the buildings.

At some point, either Sister Mary Rambo or a local fire chief lectured us on the dangers of burning buildings. We were encouraged to rely on our training when the alarm went off. It didn't matter if we didn't see a fire or smell smoke; the all-knowing alarm was not to be trifled with. Run, I mean, walk in single file order and ask questions later.

And so the drills went on, all the way through high school where we looked forward to the ten minutes of free time. In college, the dorm may well have had fire drills; I don't know. (I was probably in class!) Regardless, some dorm residents did an excellent job of keeping us drilled by setting off the alarm every Friday and Saturday night at about 3:00 a.m. So we would trudge down ten stories to the parking lot until we heard the all-clear signal. I think the only reason we even bothered was to see which guys/girls came out of rooms of the opposite sex.

Many times I longed to stay in bed, but I remember the lesson from that fire chief from years ago: just because you can't see or smell it... Finally, one day I was walking down the hall, and a friend said, "Man, can you believe those idiots last night?"

"What idiots?"

"The guys that set the fire. You know, the fire alarm."

"What?"

Apparently, I had managed to sleep through a fire alarm which was tripped by some idiot who set someone's door on fire. Yes, a real fire. I was shaken, yet immensely proud that I could sleep through a fire alarm. And so could my roommate! With him being unreliable, I resolved that I may burn to death in the dorm at some point. But that's better than burning to death in a sixth grade classroom. You know, college activities and all.

Fast forward to my professional life where answering the fire alarm depended on how bored you were. Management would eventually appoint floor fire marshals to ensure you left the building. But if you held your ground and told the fire marshal, "I'm way too busy for a fire! I'm working on the Underwood contract!" then management generally had your back if you'd rather work and burn to death.

Last week, I was in a hotel nodding off while watching my nightly dose of cartoons. The hotel had a nice atrium where you could spit from in front of your room to the lobby six floors below. Suddenly, a fire alarm goes off. I sigh and curse my bad luck at some kid yanking on the alarm. Except it doesn’t stop. After ten minutes, I decide I better investigate. I walk out into the hall and look at all the other guests standing in the hall looking around. This confirms my suspicion: a kid on a dare. When the alarm finally stops, I go back to bed.

Ten minutes later, the alarm goes off again. Well, the hotel system must be broken, I figure, and this should entitle me to a free night's lodging. And a room upgrade. But then I hear sirens. I wander back into the hall. Gazing into the lobby I see six firemen decked out in gear, carrying axes and oxygen tanks, storming the lobby. Okay, is this real? Now, I know I shouldn't take the elevator, but I'm four flights up! Is it worth going down the stairs? Sister Mary Rambo appears on my shoulder and screams at me: Yesssss! Then she slaps me with a ruler.

But the firemen slow down suddenly and don't appear to be in a hurry. A group of them go into the elevator. If they're using the elevator, that's a good sign. I decide to stand firm. I then see the firemen walking down the sixth floor hall and in a few minutes they suddenly appear on my floor. I’m not sure how to act. When I realize they see me, I move quickly toward the stairs like I’m evacuating. I wave at other guests and make comments like, "Let’s go! We gotta go!"

I salute a fireman as I brush by, stopping to ask, "Do we need to leave?"

"The alarm's going off."

"Yeah, I know," I say. "But no one else is leaving, and I don't see or smell anything."

"Neither do I. That's why I'm up here." He moves away from me.

"But shouldn't I assume the worst? I mean this place could just explode."

"Yeah, it could."

I run after him and tug on his coat. "Look, just say the word and I'm outta here. Single-file, quiet, ready for roll call in the parking lot."

"Hey, I'm fightin' a fire here," he says.

"So there is a fire?"

"I don 't know. Leave me alone and I'll find out."

"I love you guys," I say, trying to befriend him and show some appreciation for his heroism.

He raises his ax menacingly and glares at me before walking down the hall.

I found out later there was no fire, just some smoldering wiring in the elevator shaft (I used the stairs the rest of my stay there). Is there a lesson here? Yes. My third-grade self would have said, “Go! Move! Get out! Stay safe! You may not see or smell it, but it will kill you!”

But as for the cynical, adult me—well, I'll most likely burn to death.