What Day Am I On?

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Let me educate you about thunderstorms. Remember last week when I said I vaguely remember hearing thunder when I was falling asleep? WELL!!! Sometime around 2 am I heard a thunder clap that was directly over my bed--and I'm on the 2nd floor of a 3 story hotel! (They don't do things very big here) That will wake you up!

In CA we see the lightning and then we count -- one one thousand, two one thousand -- to see how close the storm is. There's no counting here! The lightning flashes are so close together I thought for a minute that there was a flickering sign somewhere over my window (ok, remember I just woke up out of a hopefully sound sleep). The flashes are continuous, some are just brighter than others. And the thunder? I used to think those CD's with thunder storms were fake because the thunder just keeps rolling on and on and on. Nope. Turns out they taped them here! It was one lo-o-o-o-ng continuous roll of thunder. Now I see why there were thunderstorm watches on the news last night.

I was speaking to the young man at Starbucks (I've got 4 gift cards, okay) and he said he almost headed for the basement. Basement? People go to the basement during thunderstorms? Oh, yes! he said. huh I'm at a hotel, I said. Wow. That's too bad. I guess no basement for you. (Oh, yeah? Well I'm from CA buddy. We ride earthquakes and there are NO basements!)

I'm happy to report that the folks here are not obsessed with food. It's all guys (Hal, Rusty, Wade and Doug .. who wasn't there) and they pretty much don't do food. I sat with Rusty all day and even though he smokes, it was 10:45 before he went out for his first cigarette. I don't know if he even had a second one. They pretty much left me on my own for lunch (they're guys). I went to Target to pick up some bowls and spoons for my raisin bran and grabbed a Pizza Hut mini pizza (inside Target!)

After lunch Rusty took me on a tour of the building. It's 2 full floors so not as spread out as Austin. Not nearly as bright either. Poor lighting or the ceiling is too high, but whatever it is it isn't as bright as Austin. Perfection would be the Austin service center in the Kansas location! He let me do some "adds" to the system -- well, one of the systems. I've already forgotten 1/2 of what Peggy showed me and didn't catch the other half anyway. They all keep patting me on the head and saying, it will be fine!

Dinner is a broccoli/bacon salad from the Target deli (and it was full of onions! YUK I've been scraping them off for 5 minutes) and carrot sticks with cottage cheese. This is so much better.

Oh! Let me tell you about breakfast this morning. Dry, crumbly biscuits. Eggs that could not possibly be real. Perfectly round (I know they could cook them in one of those 'frames') with a yolk that honestly looked like it was painted on. It was too round, and hard cooked. Looked phony. Perfectly round slices of ham (?). Fruit compote that looked really good, but when I bit into it was still partially frozen. I don't like frozen fruit. I should have had the instant oatmeal, but I wonder now if the water is hot enough. I'll see what they're serving tomorrow, but I may just stick with my raisin bran (I need the fiber anyway -- I know, TMI)

When he left, Rusty said there's not much to do in Olathe, but I assured him I'm not a sight-seeing kinda gal. It just dawned on me that this hotel does not have one of those "things to do in Olathe" books that you find in every hotel room. LOL I guess there really is nothing to do here. There's a big multi-plex theater just one parking lot away from me. I could take in a movie one night. I'll have to check it out tomorrow ... see if it's even open yet!

Well, kiddos, that's it for this missive. I have a feeling the rest of this week is going to be pretty dry. If I can't be creative enough to make stuff up, I'll have to wait for the next leg of this journey to write. Do NOT be praying for something to happen!! You know who you are.

TTFN