Friday, February 6, 2009

On My Own: Part Five (Tiny Update)

My conversation with the bartender:

Me: What's that pretty pink drink?

Bartender: A BlissTini.

Me: Um... fine.

What I really wanted to say: What the fuck is a BlissTini?

Seriously? How the hell is THAT supposed to help?? It's a made up drink for this conference alone... sheesh.

But it tasted like juice so I downed it too fast and now I have a BlissTini induced headache.

But not before some lady backed into me and spilled half of it down my pants.

(Thankfully, it spilled on a BlissTini colored swirl on my shirt and my pants are black... so I didn't have to smack her.)

And I'll never know what was in it... it was probably just off-brand Hawaiian Punch.

(I wonder if I can go steal another one...)

On My Own: Part Four (A Little Less Drama)

Odd things about this hotel:

1) The guide says 24 Hour Room Service. But when I call the front desk at 12:24 PM I am told that I have to go downstairs because Room Service is not, well, in service. Which was fine, except that they had (maybe) 3 people working the restaurant right when 250 (hungry) female bloggers showed up. Thankfully someone took pity on me and let me sit with them.

2) The only vegetarian thing on the menu was grilled cheese. (Not that I'm complaining... grilled cheese is practically its own food group in our house...) Even the salads had meat, and I was not about to start arguing with one of the two waiters about it, because odds are that if I ordered a salad it would still come out with bacon. The grilled cheese, though, was on the kid's menu (what's up with that? Grilled cheese is totally an acceptable item for an adult) so they charged me an extra two dollars as I am, in fact, over the age of twelve. I was so desperate for food that I didn't fight that either. (Side note: interesting that I had to order off of the kid's menu as I am the youngest one here... besides the babies... there are LOTS of babies... but they don't have to order off of the kid's menu as they're still on the boob...)

3) They have a "Spiritual Menu" in my room. I can call down and ask for any book of faith that I choose. Including the Book of Mormon, The Koran, Tao Te Ching (?), and The Torah (I wonder if it's a big one like from Bar Mitzvahs and if a Rabbi has to bring it up... I'm a bad Jew.) I think I'll go for the collection of books on Scientology... that should help calm my nerves.

4) I already told you about Desmond George McFishy. I was afraid that he would die if housekeeping didn't come soon because they feed him... I think. Thankfully my room is clean, so I'm hoping the fact that he's stationary on the bottom of the bowl means that he's full of yummy fishy food... and not slowly dying. (If this fish dies I am SO going to give them a bad review on Expedia.) (Do fish like cherry sours?)

5) There is a really snazzy ice bucket in the room (candy apple red... goes very well with bag of cherry sours), but the plastic liner that goes into the bucket is not the correct size, so when I filled it the ice went everywhere but into the plastic bag. Now, I assume that the plastic bag is in there as some sort of sanitary device... like maybe there is a history of people peeing in these buckets, or using them are receptacles for their dirty needles, and the plastic liner is there to protect me from hepatitis... so, needless to say, I fear that I am chewing on unsanitary ice. (I have to chew on the ice to get the taste of cherry sours out of my mouth...)

6) They have a little card on the bed that talks about how the hotel is trying to "be green". The card is there to give you a choice between wanting new sheets and towels (bad) and wanting to conserve by saving your sheets and towels. One side says "yes - conserve", the other side "no - do not conserve". So if you want to get clean towels... you feel like a douche for saying "don't conserve".

So the conference is going pretty well. I made the mistake of going to an intro session about Social Media because I had NO idea what Social Media was... yeah, it's Twitter and Facebook. And as I Twitter more than I talk to people, I sort of think I have that down. Since I was far too lazy to gather up all of my stuff and move over to the other panel (and I didn't want to be rude...), I just tried to get the most out of it.

I did learn some new things, and I'm meeting people and have a bunch of new people to follow, which is good.

All in all, much better than my mental breakdown yesterday... and it probably only has a teensy little bit to do with the fact that I took some anti-anxiety medication.

Yay for abusing prescription drugs!

(No... abuse would be a pill with a margarita chaser... and stupid room service wouldn't bring me one... 24 hours my ass.)