hotel rooms

[Amy Z]

Neil wrote:

<various hilarious NYC hotel adventures snipped> 

I love this list!  All this laughing must be good for my health.  It's 
definitely good for my soul.

Can't do much to help you, I'm afraid.  I grew up near enough to NYC 
to go there on many outings, but still, it's a foreign country in and 
of itself.  I can't even comprehend trying to find a decent, 
affordable hotel room there.  (I think the "Cher" means "tres 
expensive.")  Sounds like one advantage of that room might be that 
they keep a large directory of call girls in every night table, next 
to the Gideon Bible.  Perhaps your, ah, =neighbor= is listed.

Your experience reminds me of the "Minnesota Woods"-themed room I 
stayed in once in Rochester, Minnesota (which is =not= itself in the 
woods).  It was your usual motel room with wallpaper that was a 
life-size mural of enormous trees.  I paid extra for this lovely 
decor, but counted myself lucky to have any room at all, because 
unbeknownst to me before I got there, it was the weekend of a huge 
antique fair, and every antique hunter in the midwest was in Rochester 
that night.  

In my one NYC hotel experience, I was sharing a room with 4 other 
people; we were all in town for a private-schools conference in 
desperate hope of getting jobs, since the school we worked at had just 
announced that it was folding.  Two in each bed and one on the floor. 
 In the middle of the night, the fire alarm went off, followed closely 
by an even louder voice with the most outrageous NY accent you ever 
heard declaring, "There is no cause for alahm.  We are investigating 
the source [pronounced sauce] of the alahm."  The fire alarm stayed 
off, but the voice returned several times over the next couple of 
hours to inform us, each time, that there was no cause for alahm and 
they were investigating the sauce of the alahm.  We got no sleep, but 
it was worth it.  To this day I can reduce my husband (who was one of 
the people in the room, though not, at that time, my husband) to 
helpless giggles by announcing "There is no cause for alahm."

Your room does sound quite bulletproof, what with all the sheet metal. 
 This can be useful.

I hope your presentation went well.

Amy Z