meridien odyssey

I spent most of last night packing my stuff up to move to a studio in my hotel. But I kept worrying about what would happen to Lance. He's just a kitten and even though there's plenty of food to eat around here, I was worried he would starve.

So, after work AH dropped me off at the residence part of the hotel. He insisted on coming in with me to make sure everything was okay. It wasn't. They had no reservation for me. AH tried to straighten things out for me, but everyone at meridien was moving at snail's pace (like this morning, when it took me 25 minutes to check out of my room - seriously, 25 minutes, mostly because the guy behind the front desk kept folding every printed piece of paper and putting it into an envelope - and somewhere, a tree screams).

They brought my luggage over to the residence compound (not exactly close to the hotel), and then showed me this room they were going to put me in. I was like um, I don't think so. It was tiny, horrible, and I didn't like the bed at all. The manager of the residence compound was a little aggravated with me, but I was like you are not seriously expecting me to move into a room for the next 5 months that is no where near as nice as my hotel room, are you? Apparently, he was, but I decided I was going back to the hotel.

The poor bell hop with my luggage on the trolley had to take it all the way back to the hotel (well, don't cry too hard for him, he loves me because I pick up stuff for him when I go to the co-op and I tip him well) so I could check back in. I got this guy that I really don't like. He argued with me about the room rate for 45 minutes. I was like dude, this is a [my company] negotiated rate. We are not at the bazaar. You can't change prices on me. But still, he kept trying to do all this crazy stuff to try to get me to pay more for my room, culminating with him telling me I would have to check in every day because he refused to make me a reservation for more than one day.

I was like fine, what ever dude, just give me my key. Even the bell hop kept going behind the desk to try to move things along. I got my key and went to my room. It was on the other side of the hotel from my original room. Everything in the room was backwards. I was not happy. But, I thought, at least I'll be close to Lance again.

Then I realized the roof system off of my balcony in my new room didn't connect to the roof system off the balcony of my old room. So there was no way to get to Lance. And, I had lost my ocean view. So I went back downstairs, and got the guy I like at the front desk. I told him I didn't mean to be difficult, but I really just wanted to go back to my old room. He started to make me a key and the guy I don't like got upset and was like you can't move her back to that room because of the rate her company negotiated.

Another long discussion ensued until I invoked the name of AH, at which point I was given two keys to my old room. The bell hop came up with me and moved all of my stuff, and when I tried to tip him he refused to take it. At this point I had about 10 keys and the bell hop tested each one to see which ones worked while I unpacked all of my stuff again.

Hopefully Lance didn't listen to me last night, and will be waiting for me on the roof. Even though I wasted a lot of time moving out of my room just to move back in, I'm glad to be back here.

When traveling, it's the little consistencies that mean a lot. The best part of the story is that I had a big box of cookies that I didn't eat, and, rather than throwing my cookies away, I hid them behind the safe in the closet and left clues in the mini bar as to their whereabouts. The maid inexplicably threw my clues away. The cookies could have been there forever. But, instead, I'm eating them.