As we all know: I travel for work. I'm traveling right now. It's been a while since I've blogged and I feel that I have so much to tell you you're going to have to cope with snippets. Sorry! I'll get back to forming those paragraph things one day.
The world's most annoying woman. I wasn't able to sleep the night before my flight due to some form of insomnia where all I was capable of doing was worrying. LOVELY. But it was okay because Philly to San Francisco is a 5.5 hour flight and I can usually sleep on planes without a problem. I got on the plane and I noticed the voice of the woman behind me. OH. MY. GOD. It was painful. Her regular voice was Lisa Simpson's whiny voice -- and I could hear her over my iPod. She talked for all five and a half hours. At one point her traveling companion said that she thought she was going to nod off for a few and I savored the thought of sweet relief but no, about two minutes into it she woke the woman up because she thought of something else to tell her. I was not amused.
You may be wondering what she was talking about for so long. Apparently her sister's son's new wife, Rachel, is awful. She's a bad person. She's not friendly. She criticizes everyone and everything. Apparently before they got married she wasn't even introduced to his family. Annoying Woman felt this was because her sister was ashamed of how awful New Wife was. This conversation lasted for five and a half hours. I have no problem being annoyed at family members and talking about them. In fact, this may be one of my greatest skills. But I'm funny when I mock my family. I have to be. This woman was not funny. At all. I cannot tell you how many times I wanted to turn around, put my hand on her knee and say, "Listen, I think I understand what's going on here. The problem? IT IS YOU." But I didn't. I also wanted to turn around and yell, "I don't care if Rachel eats kittens for breakfast I AM ON HER SIDE."
Lack of sleep does not suit me well.
The world's ugliest hotel. I walked into the lobby of my hotel, a place I have stayed before, and was speechless. It was... different. After my flight with the world's most annoying woman, a severe lack of sleep and raging hunger, you might imagine that I wasn't pleased that I couldn't check into the hotel when I arrived. I decided to stop at the office for a bit (oh yeah, the hotel internet was down too). I started asking people if they had seen the lobby of The Hotel and most (since they are local) had not, but they had heard about it. "I just heard it was BAD," a coworker said, "but no one can actually articulate why."
I ran into a coworker who was staying there as well and asked what she thought. She said she didn't even know how to describe it. I agreed, "There's a lot going on, and none of it works together." That was the best description we've been able to find. My boss asked me this morning if I had posted the pictures yet. Clearly I have to show you.

This is the chandelier/mobile from the lobby. You may be wondering if you're hallucinating that your college exams are taunting you, but have no fear, this is just a mobile made of blue books. And doodles. And fug.

In this picture you see the mobile, which is obviously meant to be the focal point. You see the couch. Unfortunately the color is WAY off because in real life it's more of a teal patent leather than a blue leather. Those books on your right? Those are chairs. On the top left you see the wing-back chair and a half. If you look closely between the chairs, at the seat level you'll see something kind of green and shiny. That would be the grossly undersized size table. The side tables were made from green glass urns turned upside down.

This would be the solid glass bong replica lamp.
You don't need to see more. It was just BAD.
Tori Spelling. I am so very happy that Tori Spelling's book sTORItelling has hit #1 on the best seller list. It's possible that I may need a life.
The Beach.
I went this morning.

I went this afternoon.

Jet lag. When I travel west I try to keep my sleeping times relatively close to what they would be back east. This works well for me. It also means that I am really fading right now but I have one important thing to tell you:
Mom's bad week. I got a text from my mom very early this morning that she won't be able to run the NYC marathon. She has a femoral neck fracture - roughly translated as she cracked her hip - and is not allowed to run for three months. This is devastating. She won't have to have surgery or anything, she just can't do anything high impact until the crack heals. She's extremely lucky it was caught now. Oh yeah, and her identity was stolen as well. Both things are totally fixable, both things were caught before major damage was done, but both things are stressful and just plain sucky.
My time has been kind of eaten up by work stuff this week (it's a staff retreat so yes, today work stuff included a very drunken game of pictionary involving 61 people and I think my toe was broken in the process) but STILL, busy. I haven't been able to chat with her as much as I like to try and lift her spirits. Could you guys help me out? Say something nice for my mom or or say something shopping related. I know she would be forever thrilled.