Off to a weird start in Monroe, La.
October 31, 2008
11:55 p.m. edit - The lizard I saw crawling on my wall is without most of its tail now, but hopefully it will grow back in its normal habitat, the bushes, instead of in my room.
Let me give you a word of advice if you’re staying in Monroe, La., this weekend, or ever. DO NOT STAY AT THE HOLIDAY INN HOTEL AND SUITES. If you haven’t gotten here yet, find SOMEWHERE ELSE and take your money. Trust me. I’ve got to gut it out because I need some more points for a free mini-vacation at a Holiday Inn in Destin that’s quite nice in December.
I get here and they give me room keys for room 291. I go up there, swipe the keys, they don’t work. I open the door with the handle and it opens, but it’s locked at the top. It’s dark in the room, so I quickly think “oh poo, someone’s in there” and scurry back to the front desk.
Woman there, dressed in her Halloween costume, says she’s sure no one is in that room and arranges for maintenance to meet me there. As I’m walking away, a shirtless dude who looked like he had been awoke from a deep sleep. Wouldn’t you guess it, he was coming from 291. The idiots here thought he had checked out.
Woman: “Maintenance said there was nothing in the room, so we checked you out”
Dude: “The room’s full of stuff”
Thankfully, he got a good laugh out of it. That, or he was putting on a good front. Then, they give me the keys to my current room, which don’t work from the outside but works from the inside. It’s a smoking room, so it smells like an ash tray. No offense to those who smoke, but I don’t.
I change, go to the front desk to get a snack, tell a different woman to put it on my room charge. She asks for ID, which I don’t have, as if I’d just make up the last name Champlin. She interrupted some other guy trying to negotiate a cheap rate to tend to me, and he got a little pissy, so she just told me to go on.
The team is here, and I think they got here late last night. I ran into linebacker Bear Woods, who was icing his left foot. He’s hoping to play, but he’s got nagging pain down there that he’s probably going to have to play through the rest of the year.
Meanwhile, my prediction is TROY 31, ULM 20. I’ll post some links tomorrow, and when I get to the stadium, will check internet access and try to host a GAME CHAT. Not a live play-by-play update, but a GAME CHAT where we can talk about what’s going on.
BUT DO NOT STAY IN THIS HOTEL!
