So...here I am in a hotel room with no Internet connectionafter a shuttle ride to the local Target, here I am in a hotel room with a wireless Internet connection. I wrongly assumed that if I brought my laptop that I'd be able to plug into the high-speed connection. Unfortunately, the hotel only provides a wireless connection. My circa 1999 prehistoric laptop doesn't have a wireless card; there are See 'n Say's more technologically innovative than this thing. I bought an wireless adapter identical to the one I have on my computer at home and bing bada boom here we are.
The hotel check-in was a nightmare. I had specifically requested a single room several weeks ago and was told I'd have to pay something like $78.01/night (instead of the $0 that double-room occupants pay). I swallowed hard and said "Fine." I really didn't want to have to deal with the anxiety of sharing a room with a stranger. I called the person at the corporation state office to confirm and she told me that I was all set.
Lies! Not only did they book me into a double room with the roommate accessory, but they had no record that I had requested it at all. Gee, THANKS lady. I'm glad I know now to ask at least two separate people for confirmation. Anyway, after much ado, here I am in a double room occupied only by myself. The bright side is that I only had to pay for half the room cost. Originally I was told that if I wanted my own room I'd have to pay for it out of pocket (which didn't make 100% good sense to me), but I was going to suck it up. Now that I'm here, I know that the corporation is supposed to stay for my stay and I pay for the empty bed in the room with me. Either way, the hotel makes more money because they have one person in a double room.
I can see cliques starting to form already. So many of these people are KIDS! Like, just graduated from college and think that the world is they're oyster types. Here I am all stoic and reserved and old feeling, and they're all talking in exclamation points: "Yay! That's so cool! So are you from here? Awesome!" I feel like these people need to sit in room filled with Ritalin gas.
I did find myself drawn into a group of real grown-ups, one of which had to pause during our Target excursion to thank God for the fact that she could have adult conversation for a change instead of with her kids.
So far we've had one group session where we went around the room doing those embarrasing exercises that require you to find five people born in your birth month, etc. - forced mingling. Usually I'd be perfectly content to be a wallflower, but I'm completely comfortable with the fact that I don't know a damn person here, so if I embarrass myself, it's not like I have to see them on Monday.
More from the front tomorrow.
Posted by Tiffany at July 25, 2006 10:22 PM | TrackBack