Friday, November 28, 2008

Chicago TARDIS 2008 - Day Two

Day two found me texting my roommate at 6:30am wondering what room he was in so I could finally crash. I was starting to drift asleep in the lobby and I didn't want to be that person, especially since I kind of looked like a bum. But before that I had some lovely eggs benedict and hash browns in one of the hotel restaurants. I kind of wandered in sad and pathetic asking if they were open. I was in luck as they had just opened. If someone can find me a more picture perfect eggs benedict than what I had here I'll be impressed.

I made it the room and ended up catching a couple hours of sleep. More would've been nice but at the same time I was afraid I'd screw up my sleep pattern. Very quickly I decide I'll just go the Gallifrey route of being up for an insanely long period of time. The showers at the hotel rock! Double shower head and a nice fluffy robe. Free in room Starbucks let me be the coffee whore/hypocrite that I am. Eventually I wandered back downstairs where people were finally showing up. Immediately I was invited to a party friday night celebrating the Third Doctor. There will be free booze.

Speaking of booze the hotel bars closed at 8pm since it was the holidays. This meant that there would be a bunch of Englishmen very sad and very sober at this state of affairs. Damn us and our celebrating the shipment of Puritans getting ready to steal land from the Indians. And I like beer as well if you hadn't noticed. After a lovely conversation with Paul Cornell that Dan and I had it was decided that the impending booze crisis had to averted. Someone else was also pointing out to the hotel staff that the lack of booze was sad while I was getting a hotel shuttle to drive me to a liquor store. We found probably the only one open in our neck of the woods and provisions were procured.

Sidenote: The Westin is VERY nice. Not that I've stayed at tons of hotels, but this might be the first where by the end of the day I knew half the staff's names. Everyone went out of their way to wish us a Happy Thanksgiving, tell us their names, and let us know they were gonna spoils us rotten if we let them. It's amazing what a little bit of a personal touch and communication can do. Wish more companies realized that.

When our other roommate, John, got in we hung out in the lobby some more before going to get the traditional holiday meal of White Castle. Actually Dan has never had White Castle so we figured Thanksgiving was a good as time as any to remedy that situation. We piled back into the hotel shuttle to go to White Castle. We were not the only people with belly bombers on our minds as the place was packed. We quickly learned the reason for this as the place was only staff with four people: The manager, some kid named Dan, some senior citizen who was sporting a name badge with the words "Trainee", and a guy hidden in the back who didn't go anywhere near the grease. The manager was assembling burgers like there was no tomorrow all the while screaming at White Castle Dan to get the fries down in a high pitched voice that our Dan did to perfection. White Castle Dan was getting screamed at about the fries but he was too busy helping Grandma on the register who couldn't grok that you'd press the onion ring button when someone ordered onion rings. Literally every order involved her calling Shouty Manager or White Castle Dan to help with the register. Someone needs to explain to me why you would even put a trainee on a register for a holiday? We were howling as we were waiting for our food and Dan was doing a very loud impression of Shouty Manager. 50 years later we got our food. John apparently did something wrong as he didn't get an apology for waiting while Dan and I did.

Back in the lobby and we settled down to our Thanksgiving meal. The magical bucket of booze made its first appearance along with a rather jaunty Pilgrim hat I was sporting. Or leprachaun hat/Patrick Troughton hat as later declared by Paul Cornell and Simon Guerrier accordingly. I apparently missed the hat going on Simon's head as I had gone to refill the magicical bucket of booze. I hear there might be photos. The rest of the evening was spent chatting with Paul, Simon and Tara who I later learned shared an intense love of 80's American cartoons and might have a friend in common with me.

The magical bucket of booze is still full. Think of it as the TARDIS of booze.



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2 comments:

3rd Bob said...

You've got a booze TARDIS and haven't broken it out for meetings?

Then again, you're in an emergency situation. Meetings are usually pretty well covered.

Redo said...

It's not quite a TARDIS of booze since I have to keep refilling it myself. It's magical for the others who partake of the bucket because anytime you look at it it's full.