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today the glitterbomber is... |
2002-07-17 so. i am back on the right side of the mason-dixon line (or would that be the top side?) and home from our nation's capital. the conference, as i expected, was boring as hell, but DC is always fun. here are the highlights: day 1: i finished getting everything together, dumped kitty off at amy's, and was on the road by 10.30. it was a very pretty drive...misty and foggy. the gray clouds looked like a watercolor painting, like someone dragged a wet brush over them, streaking them. the sun, filtered though the clouds, cast a muted, pretty light over the green hills and trees. add all of that to the colorful wildflowers growing in the middle of the highway and you have a courtney who was in constant danger of swerving off of the road because she was too busy gaping at all of the loveliness. i made it in one piece to the hotel after getting a bit lost in DC. i did, however, get to see many embassies, including great britain and norway. my hotel was big n' swanky and almost intimidating, with its spa and jewelry store and gigantic chandeliers. i always feel out of place at establishments like that. for one, i am afraid someone will help me with something, and i'll have to tip him. i never know how much to tip the guys who take you to your room and help you with your baggage. i got away without having to tip anyone, thank god, and after i got settled, i walked down the street to the national zoo. as i was walking out of the lobby, a bellboy accosted me and started asking me about my tattoos. he was amusing, so i chatted with him for a bit and whenever i saw him for the next few days. i hadn't been to the zoo since our sixth grade class trip to DC, and since i was staying so close, i thought "what the hell." well, i came to the conclusion that our national zoo sucks. many of the exhibits are empty or closed, and the habitats for the existing animals are terrible. the zoo also seems to fill in empty space with prairie dogs. i think i saw an entire prairie's worth of prairie dogs. now, they are very cute and all, what with their digging and gnawing on wood and peeking out of their tunnels, but is it really necessary to have so many of them? i did get to see the pandas, the baby elephant, and the tigers, so that made up for all the prairie dogs. i finally left the zoo because i was starving. i had barely eaten all day. i stopped at a thai restaurant on the way back to the hotel. it was very funky and colorful inside. i snarfed down some yummy pad thai while watching the tour de france on the tv above the bar. back at the hotel, i noticed many large, gray flies on the walls of my floor. i don't know much about flies, but i think something was definitely wrong with these ones. they weren't moving. don't flies usually buzz around one's head in order to induce insanity? these guys didn't even move when i went to kill them with the key card to my room. i was half afraid i would see a swarm of them covering someone's door. fortunately (or unfortunately?), there was no excitement like that, so i settled down to watch a national geographic show about mongooses (mongeese?). hey, don't laugh. i don't have cable, so any tv is interesting tv for me sometimes. day 2: the next morning, i made my way down to register for the conference and get my rockin' dorky totebag and nametag. whoopee. i immediately became bored during the opening session. i tried to give a damn about health statistics, but it is simply impossible. luckily i have a very vivid imagination, so i was able to keep myself amused during all of the sessions. i met up with my boss after the opening session, and we sat in on another one before going to the exhibit room to get freebies like pens and magnets emblazoned with stuff about government health agencies. oh yeah, we got some useful work items, too. after collecting our goodies, we headed off to a lebanese restaurant for lunch. i love that so many restaurants in DC have outdoor seating. it makes for good people watching. more sessions after lunch. this conference was, basically, supposed to help people who use health statistics from the government. however, it seemed like, every time someone asked a question, the answer was "email us with that question. or call us. because we have no idea! la la la, let's talk about variance some more!" in the last session of the day, my boss asked the speaker about a problem we'd been having with some statistics. (we can't get the damn huge file to open in any program i have on my computer, and we only need a tiny piece of info anyway.) well, you guessed it, the speaker told katie to email him. meanwhile, many people in the audience were shooting us sympathetic looks and saying "good luck." one man even offered us his sympathy afterwards in the hallway. after a whole day of stastistical nerds chatting about variance and weighting data, i needed to get out of there. so i drove to georgetown to do some shopping (okay, just to go to urban outfitters) and dinner. poorer, i drove back to the hotel, getting--surprise!--lost on the way. i hate driving in DC. i always get lost. well, not lost exactly. i usually know what streets i need to be on. i'm just never know when i'll get to them. so i miss them and have to turn around somewhere. tonight's embassy sightings included bolivia and cameroon. i was nice to kick off my shoes for more tv (pleasantville). day 3: oops. this morning, i ovwerslept. i managed to get ready in 5 minutes (it's easy when there's no cat to distract me) to meet my boss for breakfast. now, you'd think that such a swanky hotel would have breakfast included. oh no. that is a minumum of ten dollars (and that's just for a coffee and bagel). so we found a little cafe nearby. the entire time i was in DC, i subsisted mostly on apples and nutri-grain bars that i'd brought with me. i knew food would be mad expensive, so i tried to spend as little as possible when i ate out (except when my boss was paying, hee hee). later that day, katie let me skip a session so i could visit the national gallery. i hopped the subway around lunchtime and spent a couple hours in the museum. there were some cool exhibits...ancient egyptian things, matisse cut-outs, and steiglitz photographs. mmm....i love me some art. i made i back to the hotel in time for the last session. katie wanted to leave it early. of course, i didn't object. she'd made reservations for us at a fancy restaurant across the street. fancy restaurants are another locale in which i feel weird. i'm confident of my table manners and my fork usage and all of that, but i'm still afraid of doing something wrong. for example, it's a habit of mine to let my shoes fall off when i'm sitting. it's a struggle to remember to keep them on at barefoot-inappropriate times. also, fancy restaurants serve weird foods. and i am picky. buffalo steak? ew! morel ravioli? nasty! i managed to find a yummy palak paneer that wasn't really indian-tasting but still good. a salad and strawberry shortcake rounded out my meal. my boss pronounced my dessert "sophisticated." it was the weirdest strawberry shortcake i'd ever had. it used goat cheese, truffles, and tarragon in it. it was pretty good, though, and not too sweet. when i got back to my room, i discovered that the front desk people were still trying to get a hold of me. it seems that the credit card i gave them for "incidentals" wasn't going through. i was going to ignore their calls because, frankly, i wasn't planning on having any incidentals. well, i guess they tried to put my whole bill (almost $800) on my card, and that was why it was declined. after i ignored a few of their calls, they sent a couple of henchmen up to my room to rough me up a bit. i was watching yet more tv (a biography of the manson family women) when i hear banging on my door and a sharp "front desk!" after they tried to let themselves in, i opened the door. (good thing i was still dressed and not in my rockin' old navy kittycat jammies) a tall, youngish guy with acne on his neck and a shorter, older asian man were standing there. they explained that they had a matter to clear up blah blah and when would be a good time to do that. "right now," i said. so neck acne boy went to the hall phone to "alert mohammed at the front desk." asian man lingered to make sure i went downstairs. i felt like a criminal as i waited in line at the front desk. asian man was eyeing me, and neck acne boy was conferring with the infamous mohammed. finally, it was my turn. i used my best grown-up, professional voice and explained straightaway to neck acne boy that i was unsure if he was aware that my boss' credit card was to be used for all charges blah blah and she had stated that when she made the arrangements blah blah and would you like to call her now and verify that? of course, katie just happened to be on the phone when neck acne boy (who by now was turning into skeptical boy) tried calling her. so i went back up to my room and awaited skeptical boy's call. not long after i got up there, he called me and asked me for katie's name again. i spelled it for him, and very soon after i hung up, he called back to say that everything was taken care of. so there. jerk. day 4: as we were walking to the cafe for breakfast, katie and i discussed the incident. i really thought it was funny, but i didn't enjoy being made to feel like a criminal when they were the ones who made the mistake. they also made mistakes on our bills. i got charged for using the stupid minibar in my room (i didn't), and katie got charged for using the health club. i'd never stay there again. (okay, i never could, anyway, because the rooms normally cost $350 a night.) i got to cut out of DC early because my boss decided that we'd had enough. that was fine with me because i'd really did have enough. i had an eneventful drive home, collected kitty, and here i am. ta-dah. *** quotes of the day: "i don't want to see the 'path to immortality.'" -girl in line for the egypt exhibit at the art museum "these pictures are scary." -woman in the egypt exhibit "i could eat a hot prairie dog." -man at the zoo, trying to be clever *** while on the road, i saw a "dumpasaurus" (its logo was a triceratops with a dump truck bed on its back) truck and a similar "bitchin' bucket." i also saw a sign that said "lanes narrow ahread. ponding when raining." ponding? *** np: kaito "air rider" |
