The voices in my head have spoken.
Those of you who have been hibernating, or trapped under four tons of sound-proofing foam, may have missed it, but the entire northeast was pounded this week by a massive snow storms, totalling over two feet. Sarah's 4'11" friend Jodi stepped outside to try and clear off her car and some space, sank waste deep into a drift, and had to have her boyfriend Todd rescue her. The entire state of Delaware basically shut down. (Because of the snow, not because of Jodi, I think.)
You may remember that I spent all of last week in Texas, visiting relatives. Well, as it turns out, pilots don't like to try and land on a runway that's covered in two feet of snow. Why, I don't know. I thought pilots were badasses, always up for a dangerous challenge. Turns out they're big ol' wussies, I guess.
So we got to the airport on Sunday, got through check-in and security (oddly enough, they won't let me get on the plane with my pocket tool, but made no complaint about the deadly gasses stored in my colon) and waited for a bit, only to find out they'd cancelled the flight. Damn, I thought. Oh well, we'll get a hotel room and catch an early flight tomorrow. Sarah's mother confirmed we were booked on an 8 am flight Monday morning.
We called a Holiday Inn Select, which sent a van to fetch us. Ah, the Holiday Inn Select. Haven for the stranded, home of vast clouds of indoor chlorine gas. The ubiquitous chlorine smell was due to the indoor pool and hot tub, part of a massive indoor open room called the Holidome, containing games, a billiards table, some indoor putting greens. There is also a bar, which at the time of our arrival was unfortunately closed, and a restaurant, also closing up after lunch.
Personally, I like a hot tub. I wanted to relax my aching muscles (airport seats are somewhat less comfortable than the trunk of a 911 Carrera), calm my rubbed nerves, maybe cut a few underwater farts. This hot tub was quite large, enough room for several people to stretch out and cook. Apparently, however, some folks take the idea of "cooking" too far; when I looked down from our room's balcony, there were approximately 15 large, sweaty, hairy men in it. An Aboriginal town could feast for days on one of these specimens' thighs. All of them were drinking beer and gorging on some kind of snack, ranging from a family-size bag of Doritos to a plate of what appeared to be linguini. The water had a faint brown sheen, rather like an oil slick. The only way I was getting near that tub was if one of the men ate me.
The room itself smelled faintly of some kind of cheese-flavored cleaning product.
Next morning, we awoke slightly before 5 am and caught a shuttle to the airport, where the flight was pushed back to 8:30 because the Philadelphia Airport still had not opened. (News reports confirmed the snow was continuing unabated. Luckily for us, the state was still shut down and we would not have to worry about work.) Eventually, the flight was pushed back to 10 o'clock, and then they cancelled all flights for the remainder of the day.
At this point, I began openly twitching and hearing voices. My wife asked if I was okay, and I remember replying, "Mr. Castro says we're never going home. Ever!" Sarah tells me I then tried to steal an airport chair, and one of the gate employees shot me with a tranquilizer dart.
We selected a different hotel, relatively near to the previous one; a Country Suites. We stayed in one while we were in Waco, and liked it. The one in Waco had a free high-speed internet connection, and the one in Dallas purportedly did as well.
The employee at the desk was moderately helpful, if you're willing to forgive the fact that she was surly, uninformative, and deaf. I went back down to complain that the phone and internet connections in our room were faulty, and she diagnosed the phone problem, and told me to just use the internet connection in the "Business Center" downstairs. I returned to the room, got the phones to work, and took the faceplate off to inspect the ethernet wiring. I discovered that the installer had only bother to attach four wires of the eight required, which left me speechless. I still can't imagine how that could happen, or how no one had complained enough for it to be fixed. Just thinking about it has me twitching again.
Sarah and I decided the easiest solution to our problems (and the only thing that could keep my eyelids from twitching) was to find a bar. We went back to the one in the Holiday Inn, it was actually the only thing in that hotel that wasn't horribly, horribly sketchy. Having not had anything substantial in weeks (Sarah's family is very religious, and most of them do not drink, excepting of course her kickass aunt and uncle in Mason), I was looking forward to a good blitz. We weren't booked until 5pm Tuesday; the only reason to be up before 9 was a free continental breakfast. The highlights of Monday evening: