Then he said "They didn’t HAVE two adjoining rooms available!" "Whaaaat?" I all but screamed. "You made a reservation for two adjoining rooms and you confirmed it!" He nodded in agreement. "I know! I ripped that desk clerk a new asshole, too…" Which is kind of funny, because Fred’s version of ripping someone a new asshole is to talk calmly yet sternly whilst making his point. The clerk offered to put us in two rooms next door to each other, but Fred refused and so she offered to send up a cot – free of charge – for the spud to sleep on.
I don’t know how Fred was able to keep himself from exclaiming "Oh, you’re giving us the COT free of charge? Well, let me do a friggin’ happy dance for that!", because that’s what I would have said (Okay, that’s a lie, but I would have thought it to myself RATHER LOUDLY). Upon walking through the doorway into our home for the night, my first thought was "There’s nowhere to PUT a cot!" This room was the tiniest hotel room I have ever seen in my life. There were two full-sized beds, a TV stand, a table, and two chairs crammed in so tightly that I had to pretty much walk sideways to get from one side of the room to the other.
The best part, though, was the bathroom. The bathroom, which had no fan. The bathroom, which had a ceiling half-covered with mold and mildew. The bathroom, which had a tub with several very large spots of mold and mildew. It was pretty fucking rank.
We had originally intended to have dinner in the hotel restaurant, but when we saw it was a crappy little half-assed buffet affair teeming with old people, we decided to order pizza (can I tell y’all that I’m getting fairly sick of pizza?), and took turns showering and getting ready to go.
We all got gussied up – that doesn’t happen very often – and I would have been a little more stylish if I had been wearing shoes other than my sneakers, but I only have one pair of non-sneaker shoes, and they hurt my feet because they’re cheap-ass WalMart shoes, and I was NOT going to do any walking in those, so I settled for my sneakers. It didn’t matter in the end, though, because the people attending the show ran the gamut from casual to cocktail wear, and no one gave my sneakers a second glance.
The show started at 8:00, and we left the hotel at 7:00. We went a bit out of our way – went left instead of straight, and ended up walking completely around the Sheraton, where we SHOULD have stayed, and would have, except they were full up when Fred was looking to make reservations – but were still at the civic center around 7:10. We waited for about 20 minutes before they opened the doors and let us get seated. The seats were comfortable, and we sat and chatted and looked through the programs, and then the show started.
I guess I’m just not a big Phantom fan, because I was a little bored. I’m not as into the story and music as Fred is. It was a good show in any case, and we were back at the hotel around 10:30 or so. We watched TV for a while, drank some water and ate some snack cakes the industrious Fred found for us, and then turned off the light and went to sleep.
Well, they went to sleep. I was awake until sometime after midnight, because my stomach was rebelling against the pizza I’d eaten, and also because like the dumbass I am I completely forgot my earplugs. The spud’s cot had a plastic cover that rustled whenever she turned over. And she turned over a lot. I made earplugs out of toilet paper, but they didn’t work too terribly well. I fell asleep finally, to be woken a little after 4:00 by Himself, the snoring machine. I got up and went to the bathroom, got back in bed, turned over, tried to sleep, turned over again, tried to sleep, and then was finally about to drift off to sleep again when he let out the loudest snore I’ve ever heard. I grabbed one of my extra pillows and threw it at him. He turned over and laughed, then stayed awake long enough for me to go back to sleep.
I slept fitfully for another few hours, and then we got up, took turns showering, and were out of the hotel before 9:00.
After stopping for breakfast at McDonald’s and gas (I should have said we stopped for breakfast and gas at McDonald’s, heh!), we headed for the zoo. We got a little lost, and Fred put his male gender membership in great jeopardy by stopping to ask for directions. We arrived at the zoo just after 9:00, and there was hardly anyone else there. We walked around and looked at the animals for 2 hours – me running out of film just before we got to the lions, tigers and bears (oh my!) – stopped in the gift shop, and then headed home.
You’ll have to wait for the zoo pics, ’cause I took the regular camera with me instead of the digital one, so I have to have them developed.
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11/20/2000