That Was Neat

So, Reno is... well, it's Reno. To quote Elliot Gould in Ocean's 11 "You're out in the middle of the fuckin' desert!" and while the quote is about Las Vegas, well, the shoe fits.

The college was lovely though--Mate went on their hiking trail while I was in class and pronounced it good. ("Oh, wow-- that's awesome!" I said. "Are you kidding? It had Pokegyms. I wasn't doing it for my health!")

I enjoyed the presentations during the little writer's conference, and I'm pretty sure mine went okay. My big worry--always--is that I'll remember the stuff that you can't put in an outline that makes a course good, and since I came up with MOAR stuff as I was talking, I think it was a success. (Somehow I open my mouth and stuff comes out... it's weird.)  Anyway--I met a writer from Harlequin who lives in Sacramento--that's awesome, right?

The funny part--and it was sort of hilarious--was the hotel room.

See, originally the kids were supposed to come with us. Mate was going to run them around all day and then we'd find something to do with the family in Reno and go home Sunday morning.  ZoomBoy got sick on Friday-- he was tired and just icky and had a fever of 101.  Chicken was going to spend the night with the dogs anyway so she came and watched ZoomBoy and Squish and Mate and I went up.

Now see, when the kids were supposed to come up, I got a cheap hotel. I just didn't know HOW cheap. I mean, I'd just had a nice experience with a Best Western that took dogs, and I didn't want to get the super nice room for just an extended day trip.  I thought, "How bad can a Motel 6 be?"

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG... DON'T ANSWER THAT!!!

Now I know.

I mean, wasn't dirty or gross or anything like that. But the floor was cheap laminate and the bed was incredibly uncomfortable and the shower...

The shower was hilarious.

It was a corner unit, designed with the head hooked up on the ceiling, so it could shoot water at the corner, while you dragged a curtain over a semi-circular rail to protect you.

Except I finished my shower and walked into a... well, a lake. It was half-an-inch deep all over the bathroom.

"Oh my God! Mate! Water everywhere!"

Mate came in to look. "What did you do?"

"I swear-ta-dog, nothing! I mean, I closed the curtain and everything."

So Mate got in, and as soon as he turned the shower on--NOT standing in the cubicle--we saw the problem.

A three foot arc or water shooting out of the back of the showered, over the curtain and against the bathroom wall.

We laughed uproariously, because neither of us had gotten a lick of sleep on the highly uncomfortable bed, and both of us decided that we were too old for this shit.  We checked out right then and came home after dinner--it's a two hour drive, we wanted to sleep in our own damned bed.

But the seminar itself was nice, and we ate dinner with a friend (*waves frantically to Jason whom I adore*) and the drive home was pretty. I mean, you pass Truckee and Nyack and all the places that were sort of stand-ins for Colton and Dogwatch and the other places up Northeast in Amy Lane, right?

And we really did learn something important.

We're too old for shitty hotels.

Next time I book us a room, I'm taking the expensive room on the chin and enjoying the fuck out of it, even if I'm not getting a conference rate. Dude. Why not?

What's to lose but a decent night's sleep, right?