Such an eventful day for it only being two in the afternoon.

How many times do I have to wake up, roll over and see that my alarm is going off, but my phone is making zero noise?  Is it my smart phone ‘learning?’ I mean, I am definitely one of those people that hits the snooze button for an hour each morning, so maybe it just learned that behavior and started snoozing on its own.  Stupid smart phone.  Luckily I did wake up in time to catch my 8:00am flight out of Baltimore.

You know you’re a redneck moment of the day:

When I got my rental car in Indianapolis, the lovely lady asked me if I had driven a push to start car before.  I swear to you, I thought she meant pushing a standard transmission vehicle with a dead battery and not blinking an eye I said yes – while trying to figure out how I was going to push the car and pop the clutch on a flat surface by myself.   Oh…right, push to start – the technology that is quickly making the key ignition obsolete.  Yeah, yeah I can push a button with my foot on the brake.  (or a 67 Chevy with a dead battery and 20 bales on the flatbed)

After being totally pumped up for my first class flight I realized something.  You know how in coach suddenly they stopped giving you peanuts?  Guess where they went.  I guess $300 is a reasonable price for 2 feet of leg room and a bag of snack mix.  The unearned feeling of superiority however, is and will always remain, priceless.

In addition to learning how to snooze, my phone has also picked up on my love of independent thought, and is encouraging that behavior by refusing to connect to google maps.  I got my revenge, however, by sighting the La Quinta shuttle van pulling out of the airport in front of me.  I’ll show you independence, phone that controls my every move.   How was I supposed to know that shuttle drivers work such erratic shift and that guy was just going home for the day at 1:00pm?  After a lovely tour of Indianapolis and one incorrect La Quinta (seriously – 2 La Quinta’s 200 yards apart?  My little blue gps dot only accounts for a 300 meter range.) I arrived at the right place.   As I’m checking in I get to overhear this delightful conversation from the clerk:

‘No, sir – Colonel Tibadoux is not a resident here, this is the La Quinta Inn.’

The complexity of this joke is too much for me to handle at this point – apparently people have been calling for 6 months to speak to Colonel Tibabdoux of the La Quinta Inn.  Is this funny?  Maybe I need more sleep.

The clerk then hands me this:

(*edit:  now that I'm writing this I feel a bit silly as I realize there are, in fact, foolproof instructions chiseled on the key itself.)

And, having been born in a recent century I stare at it in wonder.  I recall reading something about the ancient days of computer programming with something called ‘punchcards’ and I wonder if that’s what I’m looking at.  I want to appear savvy and knowledgeable, however, so I don’t ask.  I get to my room, which is shockingly far from the front desk for how small the hotel looked from the outside.  How do they do that?  It seems like they build La Quintas in a different dimension, with twisting winding hallways and stairs that defy laws of physics – they can defy laws of physics but they can’t get it to stop smelling like 400 years of cheap cigarettes and bad decisions – that finally results in your glorious room door.  Long story short it took me several attempts to get my door open with this primitive tool – but I made it!  I didn’t even have to google punchcard key thingie (not that my phone would have worked anyway).

To top of my eventful day - I spoke to a couple of candidates for my new room mate, a highly desirable position in my opinion.

Let me just state for the record that this is a good way to not become my room mate:
1.  Be awaken by my phone call at 11am
2.  Inform me that 11am is way too early to do math
3.  Mention the fact that you are on disability for depression so you can't ever leave the house, or do third grade math before noon.
4.  Elaborate by saying that the reason you're depressed is because you don't have a job, and that you're depression prevents you from looking for a job.
5.  Ask me why I can't be home all day on Monday to show you the place - don't I have any consideration for someone who doesn't want to get home late?  What day will I be home all day?  NO DAY.

Adventures in craigslist - that may need to be an entirely different blog.