A Snowed-in Sunday

My trip and meeting went quite well. No stress, thanks to Lexapro. It's good to medicate your type A. : ) Or at least your inner Martha. Seriously, I was much better at being on the ball, without losing sleep over it. A very, VERY good combination for me.

We got word that there was a serious storm forecast for our area (not where the meeting was, but where my home is), so we kept a close eye on it, and decided to bail out a few hours early. Not good for staff to do, but there were no members around either, they all went home too. We beat the ice storm home-- the trees were icing up just as we pulled onto our road. We couldn't have timed it more perfectly.

I couldn't have left that hotel room quick enough. It was HORRIBLE! I think I have only stayed in a hotel that bad one time in my life, and I knew I was staying in a hole that previous time. It was sort of a "nostalgic" trip to my hometown, and I knew the property had gone downhill. It was also cheap, though the meeting hotel this week was not cheap, relatively speaking.

If you have been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that my job requires some travel, but I had traveled internationally with one of my accounts prior to 2006. At the end of 2005 I requested to be taken off that account and put onto some local accounts. I only travel within the state (or just outside of it) since that time. The client who just had the meeting is lead by a staff member that I also used to work with on that international account. He and I have traveled all over the world together, literally. Off the top of my head, we've been to Bermuda, Miami, New York, and London. There were a few others, but they escape me now. Anyway, we were discussing that we both had suites on the 19th floor of the Trump Sonesta Hotel right on Miami Beach a few years ago. I am not kidding when I say that had the suites had 4 bedrooms, they would have dwarfed my house. I had a huge living room, a full-size kitchen with a garbage disposal, stainless appliances, granite countertops-- the works. My bathroom was palacial, complete with a bidet (a luxury that I absolutely adore, not to provide TMI). We joked that it was quite a contrast to the dump we stayed in this week-- he said his room had a big chunk out of the wall, mine had a lampshade that was all melted and cracked. There was no closet, just a cheap (probably screw-together-Sauder furniture) wardrobe in the corner. It was barely big enough for my suitcase to sit in the bottom of it. My boss is tall, and he had to duck through the really low hallways. There were circular lamps down the halls between each of the rooms, but at some point they decided to cut the amount of lamps in half, so they removed every other one. In place of each lamp there was a flat outlet cover, but you could still see the holes behind the cover where the lamps were supposed to go, and a nasty brown ring on the wallpaper. My room had a view of the parking lot. The heating and cooling didn't work in my room, so I just left it off the entire time and slept in sweatpants and a sweatshirt.


View from the Trump Hotel Room



Bathroom in the Trump Hotel


The Exact Suite I Had


The same Austin Powers decor, but a million times cleaner than in real life. (and the lampshades look new)

Last night we had about 8 inches of snow, on top of 1/4" of ice. Power lines were down, telephones were out, etc. It is a nasty mess all over our state. We had some tree limbs and branches down, but we did not have any power outages. Only the internet was down for a few hours. Can't really complain about that.

We are alive, well, warm, full, and together. What more could we ask for? Oh, and as a bonus, I just had an email that school is delayed by 2 hours. I love snow days! :)