Yesterday I stumbled across this article from the NY Times about the coming surge in economic activity and population in the once great, fourth largest city in America: St. Louis.
Because I think everything is about me, I take this article as a personal affront to my strong feelings about that dump of a city.
So, I missed my flight, scrambled like hell to build a booth in 2 hours when I got to St. Louis, had my two camera memory sticks stolen, thought I lost my cell phone, had my return flight to NY cancelled on me (and then rebooked), the plane going to NY was "broken" so I had to wait 3 hours in the airport for them to "find a new one," and St. Louis gave me a cold, which made me stay home from work today.
All in all, a fairly crumby trip. Was it worth all this effort? Hell no. In three 8-hour days manning the company booth, we sold 51 books. Not even enough to cover my food and airfare for 5 days in St. Louis.
Cough cough. Sigh.
On the bright side: I ate lobster, delicious Brazilian and Vietnamese food, and I saw a robot play a trumpet. YouTube link is tk.
It's no secret that this trip to St. Louis hasn't been kind to me, so I decided to collect. Since I can't expense my two stolen memory sticks (and all the other shit that's happened), I got paid back in ridiculously extravagant food.
Saturday night, we went to a super fancy Italian restaurant called Kemoll's and I ordered:
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Happy tummy!
...is a restaurant called Yemanji Brasil where my dinner consisted of:
It's been a long hard two days and this dinner came close to making the misery go away. However, I still want my memory sticks back you mysterious thieving fuck!
('course I just had to end that gloriously delicious post with a taste of bitterness)
Have you seen my memory stick? It's a bit smaller than a stick of Wrigley's chewing gum and it's full of pictures and video from a recent Decemberists concert and of HB's adorable niece. Oh, and it's a 2GB memory stick that can hold around 800ish photos and was a gift from the HB. Yeah, well, I ask only because I know that I HAVEN'T SEEN IT LATELY.
Well, I guess I should just chalk this up to the growing list of shit that I've lost on this trip. Not that I lost it because I never take it out of my camera. It was stolen. That and the 512MB card I had in my camera case. Though, these were kind robbers, so they let me keep my outdated camera and the 32MB chump change memory stick that came with my camera.
If I had my memory stick, I would have been able to record an awesome Toyota robot playing a trumpet today and take pictures of my absolutely amazing Brazilian dinner.
Fuck St. Louis.
Ho hum, ho hum. I'm glad my job doesn't make me travel more than I already do because I don't generally enjoy it. Don't get me wrong, I love to travel. I just don't really like traveling for business because it gets terribly lonely.
Ahem: I'm lonely, people. Please come visit and keep me company with stories (hysterical, pathetic, angry, or otherwise) and the like.
I was dying of thirst, so I ventured out of my room tonight in search of the vending machine. After hearing the ice machine grumble and make all kinds of completely unnatural noises (and the vending machine was sold out of practically everything), I started wildly pressing every button on the machine to get my drink--any drink--as quickly as possible so I could run screaming (in my head) back to my room like the scaredy cat I am.
Why is it that the vending machine and the ice machine are always out of the ways in this teeny corner of the hall that is most terrifying place in the entire hotel? Wtf? All I could think was redrum. Great, now I'll never fall asleep.
(whimper)
You may be wondering, where in the world is Blue? 'Cause she certainly hasn't been around the Forest lately.
Seriously, my bad. Between the photographer hunt and the AWESOME DECEMBERISTS concert last weekend (more details and YouTube links soon) and having whole stretches of days with the HB, I've had very little time to come 'round these parts.
Of course, now I'm stuck in the ass-end of the United States (aka St. Louis), so I guess you can consider this my punishment for not being a good blogger.
[Insert name of large company here] sent me here for the National Science Teacher's Association conference so I can basically stand in a booth for 8 hours, shake hands, smile, sell books, and be an overall chipper reflection of our fabulous company. Sigh.
The only problem is that there ain't shit to do in St. Louis. Luckily I have 3 episodes of Prison Break, 2 episodes of 24, 2 episodes of Lost and discs 4 and 5 of season 3 of The Wire. Now I have plenty to do.
By the way, should I mention that I arrived at the airport at 7:15 this morning (for my 8:30 flight) only to discover that my father and I had a miscommunication and my suitcase was NOT IN THE TRUNK OF THE CAR!!!??? Should I also mention that despite driving like a bat out of hell back home to get my suitcase and back to the airport that I didn't make my flight? Does it also need to be said that I had to be in St. Louis before noon and the next flight was leaving NY at 1:30pm? OH, and I thought I lost my cellphone, but apparently I left it at home. Without this blessed internet connection, you might as well just consider me completely not in this universe anymore.
Yeah, my day completely stunk, I'm exhausted and smell about as bad as my day, I have no interest in taking a shower because that would require me to NOT be horizontal right now, and my room service pepperoni pizza tastes like ass. fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck. Grrrr!
Oh, did I mention that I'm stuck in this hell hole until Sunday?
