Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

I made my hotel reservations for this Tucson trip on cheaprooms.com, after vetting out several locations to ensure that high-speed internet was available.  It’s “the season” here in the desert, so nothing’s REAL cheap, but this was pretty reasonably priced, and I like to present the impression of frugality to my clients.  So I check in, unpack my laptop and…no wireless signal available.  Turns out they have a wireless router in the lobby.  So I’m stuck with dialup, which is useable, even at 24k, but not what I expected.  Every now and then it helps to be reminded that coach class and dialup internet are survivable, maybe even sufficient, and serve to build character.

But, tell me how a hotel that can’t get broadband cabled to your room gets the bright idea that you need a phoneset hanging on the wall next to the toilet?

OK, my New Year’s hangover wasn’t THAT bad (to keep me from posting for over a week).  I just had a really intense week of work last week, one of those where you really don’t feel that any waking minute is your own, it’s owed to some commitment.  I’m an accounting software consultant, and at this time of year many of my clients are performing year-end procedures and getting set for the new year’s transactions, and there are often issues.

However, my mom is on me to start posting again (Hi, Mom!), so I’d better get my act together.

I’m in Tucson for 3 days, just flew in last night.  I changed planes in Phoenix, and as my Phoenix - Tucson plane taxied out for take-off, the flight attendant deadpanned, “In the unlikely event of a water landing between Phoenix and Tucson, your seat cushion will serve as a flotation device.”

I think a lot of University of Arizona students were returning to school.  While waiting to pick up my luggage, I was standing near three kids, a man and two women, and it became apparent that they were discussing the strangest or most precarious places they’d had sex.  One woman said it was while her mother was sleeping in the adjacent bedroom;  the man said in a movie theatre, with witnesses, and that actually two couples did it at the same time;  the most startling, for me, was the other woman’s story about doing it in a moving car - she steered while her partner worked the gas pedal. 

Anyway, that has to serve as my entertainment so far this trip.

I’m the height (or depth) of sloth today.  Slept ’til 11, and since then have been sitting on the couch, in my jammies, bowl games on TV and laptop in my lap.  Annoyed a bit, actually, at the effort required to flick my eyeballs down to see my laptop screen through reading glasses, then up to catch the action on the TV.

Currently watching the Rose Bowl, this year an abomination ‘afore the Lord as Texas has supplanted a worthy (at least until they got rolled by Texas Tech a couple days ago) Cal team in what should ALWAYS be a contest between the Pac10 and Big 10.  I’m sure White House operatives were instrumental in getting Texas the bid.  I’ll bet Karl Rove has voted in the Coaches’ Poll the last 4 weeks, inching Texas up the BCS rankings with a whispering campaign that the Berkeley folks support requiring a third locker room at all NCAA games just for gay players.  Of which there are none, of course.  What am I thinking?.

It’s actually quality time with my mother in law, as my wife hides out in another room or even does some housework to avoid watching football.  My MIL has trouble tracking sitcoms and other shows sometimes (in her defense, producers have sped up the pace of dialogue), but she likes watching football after a lifetime of watching with my father in law, and every now & then sees something familiar (”Is Joe Paterno still coaching?  How old is he, anyway?”  Ans: not much younger than she.)  

Although it feels like speaking a foreign language, I find myself cheering for Michigan in Big Ten solidarity.  I’ll gargle with something antiseptic after.