Lessons learned

Today has been a LONG day. I was up at 7:30 for an Ink Slingers meeting. After the meeting, I ran home, packed, cleaned the bedroom, picked up a prescription, and drove four hours to Denton, TX. I have to meet for three days for one of my grad school classes. I am exhausted and have to be up at the butt crack of dawn tomorrow morning (this morning) for my first class.

Here's what I learned today:

1. Comfort Inn and Comfort Suites are not the same thing, but the information operator can't differentiate. Imagine my surprise when I called the operator, she connected me to my hotel, I got directions, parked, grabbed a couple of bags, waited for ten minutes in the lobby with three screaming kids running rampant (not my kids...), handed the receptionist my rewards card, and then she handed it back to me (shaking her head) and told me I did not have a reservation. She told me I was staying at the Comfort Suites. When I asked where it was she said, "You will have to call them and ask them as I am very busy." There was nobody else behind me in line. Thirty minutes later I found my hotel. Grr...

2. Even though a hotel claims it is "non-smoking", if some of the rooms have been smoked in within the last 20 years, then they still reek. My room smells like the bottom of an ashtray. But it's non-smoking, so I guess that makes it all better.

3. Hotel rooms are either bordering on Arctic temperatures or are reminiscent of the fiery pits of Dante's Inferno. There is no in-between, Spring-like temperature. It's winter in Russia in my room right now. I prefer that to a summer in Phoenix. Just sayin'.