The big “O” has returned to our house, and it’s a happy day.
We really hadn’t noticed that it had disappeared. Like so many other things, over time you get busy with the vagaries of life, then when you happen to think about it you realize that you’re too tired or preoccupied and would really rather just watch television instead.
When it did pop to the forefront of our minds, we were both guilty of sometimes thinking, “If we hurry, we can be done by the time the big commercial break is over and get back to “The Amazing Race” (or whatever nonsense happens to be on this evening).
Then one day this virile young thing came, first to visit, then to live with us. He was all over us from almost the minute we met, and he made it clear that he had needs and they were not to be ignored.
Achieving the big “O” several times a day was high on his priority list.
So we went along; it was kind of flattering, this little muscled stud wanted a couple of middle aged guys – sometimes separately but, more often, together – several times a day. The lad is almost insatiable at times, even demanding that we come home for lunch for a mid-day rendesvous.
Amazingly, though, our lives have started to pick up. We realized how much WE enjoyed the big “O”, and how much we’d missed it since it slipped out of our lives.
Sometimes, we went after it without the young addition to our family who is now ensconced in what used to be the guest room but is now as much his as anyone’s, since he’s become a part of the family.
Life is brightening up because of it. There’s a spring in each of our steps that had kind of slumped off there, and we greet the day ready to go at it with a quick bit of exertion before work most mornings.
No doubt about it. A new puppy definitely makes you appreciate the outdoors once again. A bit of fresh air and walks several times a day certainly helps deal with the doldrums of everyday life.
And it will put the big "O" - "Outdoors" - back into your life whether you want it or not.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Conventional Hotels
We’re travelling. Usually, that’s a good thing, but we’ve observed that there are times when it could be better.
Anyone who’s read my blogs knows that we’ve stayed in a lot of different types of hotels / guest houses / cruise ships / etc. Usually, they’re pretty good. I can only think of one time where we flat-out said, “Uh-huh. This ain’t going to work.” We walked across the street and checked into another facility. Usually, though, we’re pretty flexible on those things.
There is, however, a set of circumstances where you simply can’t change regardless of how unacceptable the facility is. The hotels understand this and essentially hold you hostage.
The event, of course, is the downtown convention.
You’re usually trapped because you have no car, American cities have sucky public transportation and there’s not another hotel room available for close to 20 miles. They’ve all been taken up by the people attending the convention.
This is the situation we found ourselves in while checked into the Hyatt in downtown Phoenix.
The brochures, either online or in the conference materials, made this place sound like Shangri-la downtown. “Hip, urban furnishings,” and “excellent amenities,” are phrases that stood out.
Let me say first that the staff have been extremely friendly and helpful. They are, after all, simply imposing the policies that administration has set down for them. The policies, however, reflect a Gestapo-like mentality that one usually only sees in airports.
After all, you are trapped. You have no choices. You will purchase from us, or do without.
Hence, a bottle of water in your room (which has no refrigerator, microwave, mini bar or anything else) is $5.95 a liter.
That’s in US dollars.
That’s about $22.49 a gallon, for those trying to make the conversion. This is unfortunate, because you’re going to need a lot of water, even in the “cool” season in Phoenix, which we’re supposed to be in here in mid-October.
That means it only got up to 97 yesterday. Now, normally, your choices are then to either lie by the pool or stay in the A/C. In this case, though, it’s tough because the A/C in the room isn’t going to make a lot of difference for your afternoon nap.
It will cool you to sub-arctic in the middle of the night, when that one thin blanket they’ve left in the room will become woefully inadequate, but at 3:00 in the afternoon – prime nap time – it’s not going to happen. Low 80’s is about the best you can hope for, especially if you’re on the west side of the building.
They offer suggestions, though, on the little placard that takes you through the bizarre temperature control that is hidden in the darkest corner of the room with no light and requires that you sequentially punch no less than 5 buttons in order to attempt to change the temperature.
Namely it says, keep the drapes closed.
This, when their advertising hype has broadcast that the Hyatt offers some of the most spectacular vistas in downtown Phoenix.
How the hell would you know what the view is like if the drapes are closed making it as dark as midnight in your room??
I guess you’re supposed to simply suck down another bottle of that $22.50 a gallon water and enjoy it. Note that this is more than the airport charges for their security-cleared bottled water. This presumably just comes off the truck at Sam’s and doesn’t require a background check.
The water, which you can choose to buy or not, is just one of the annoyances here. I don’t take points off for not caring for the décor, which they describe as “hip, modern and urban,” and which I would characterize more as “southwest garage sale”, but the building is absolutely dismal because of the lack of light. Everything is soft lit with 40 watt bulbs hidden by indirect lighting fixtures, so there are lots of shadowy nooks.
If it were an alley at dusk, you wouldn’t walk down it.
It’s kind of like living in a film noir, and you can’t help but feel somewhat depressed after having been subjected to it for a relatively short period of time. If mold grew in Arizona, it would grow in this hotel. The dankness here relates not to the dryness of the atmosphere, but rather to the induced state of mind that comes from being in the building.
Even that I can work through, though – after all, you can go outside and see what there is to see – which isn’t much in downtown Phoenix, but there’s a nifty little light rail line that lets you go either north or south all you want for $3.50 a day.
Of course, you have to guess what you’re going to find after you get on it, because the “concierge” (i.e. the head bellman) doesn’t have any maps to show you where a mall or shopping or anything is. The best I got was “get off here and wander around, you’ll probably find some stuff.”
Here’s a news flash – I don’t “wander around” when the outdoor temp is pushing 100. I get the hell wherever I’m going, suck up the air conditioning and then get the hell back to air conditioning again.
So you stay in and use the internet to do your work.
That’d be if you’re willing to pay $12.40 a day for internet, which goes on the blink roughly once an hour. It comes right back, but of course whatever you were working on is lost by then and you get to start over again.
If anyone were foolish enough to stay here for a month, that’d be $372.00.
Oh, and the kicker there – that’s not a “per room” charge for wireless. That’s PER DEVICE. You can’t change them out, so if you start on your laptop, you can’t then connect with your iPod lest you be charged again. Of course, the front desk says they contract that out and have no control over the charges. They also don’t bother to tell you that when you check in.
I’m all for making a profit, but c’mon, you don’t have to make it all on one person.
Unfortunately, the attitude seems to be that of a lot of downtown hotels that are located next to a convention center.
You’re trapped. You got to go to the conference, it’s $15.00 a day (or more) to park downtown anywhere nearby, plus with a car rental a lot of employers simply won’t pay the costs. They're used to catering to a captive market of people who have expense accounts and aren't especially concerned about the cost of something, and they are out to make the most of it. It is, in part, one of the reasons that our downtowns are dying.
Treating customers like this is a false economy. Yeah, the Hyatt has made a buttload of money on us this time around. But given that we’re in hotels roughly 20 times a year, it will come back to haunt them. I may not remember WHICH Hyatt was so sucky, but I will remember that one of them was, and I’ll be wary before we get booked in one again.
Fortunately, we’ve only got one more day.
Anyone who’s read my blogs knows that we’ve stayed in a lot of different types of hotels / guest houses / cruise ships / etc. Usually, they’re pretty good. I can only think of one time where we flat-out said, “Uh-huh. This ain’t going to work.” We walked across the street and checked into another facility. Usually, though, we’re pretty flexible on those things.
There is, however, a set of circumstances where you simply can’t change regardless of how unacceptable the facility is. The hotels understand this and essentially hold you hostage.
The event, of course, is the downtown convention.
You’re usually trapped because you have no car, American cities have sucky public transportation and there’s not another hotel room available for close to 20 miles. They’ve all been taken up by the people attending the convention.
This is the situation we found ourselves in while checked into the Hyatt in downtown Phoenix.
The brochures, either online or in the conference materials, made this place sound like Shangri-la downtown. “Hip, urban furnishings,” and “excellent amenities,” are phrases that stood out.
Let me say first that the staff have been extremely friendly and helpful. They are, after all, simply imposing the policies that administration has set down for them. The policies, however, reflect a Gestapo-like mentality that one usually only sees in airports.
After all, you are trapped. You have no choices. You will purchase from us, or do without.
Hence, a bottle of water in your room (which has no refrigerator, microwave, mini bar or anything else) is $5.95 a liter.
That’s in US dollars.
That’s about $22.49 a gallon, for those trying to make the conversion. This is unfortunate, because you’re going to need a lot of water, even in the “cool” season in Phoenix, which we’re supposed to be in here in mid-October.
That means it only got up to 97 yesterday. Now, normally, your choices are then to either lie by the pool or stay in the A/C. In this case, though, it’s tough because the A/C in the room isn’t going to make a lot of difference for your afternoon nap.
It will cool you to sub-arctic in the middle of the night, when that one thin blanket they’ve left in the room will become woefully inadequate, but at 3:00 in the afternoon – prime nap time – it’s not going to happen. Low 80’s is about the best you can hope for, especially if you’re on the west side of the building.
They offer suggestions, though, on the little placard that takes you through the bizarre temperature control that is hidden in the darkest corner of the room with no light and requires that you sequentially punch no less than 5 buttons in order to attempt to change the temperature.
Namely it says, keep the drapes closed.
This, when their advertising hype has broadcast that the Hyatt offers some of the most spectacular vistas in downtown Phoenix.
How the hell would you know what the view is like if the drapes are closed making it as dark as midnight in your room??
I guess you’re supposed to simply suck down another bottle of that $22.50 a gallon water and enjoy it. Note that this is more than the airport charges for their security-cleared bottled water. This presumably just comes off the truck at Sam’s and doesn’t require a background check.
The water, which you can choose to buy or not, is just one of the annoyances here. I don’t take points off for not caring for the décor, which they describe as “hip, modern and urban,” and which I would characterize more as “southwest garage sale”, but the building is absolutely dismal because of the lack of light. Everything is soft lit with 40 watt bulbs hidden by indirect lighting fixtures, so there are lots of shadowy nooks.
If it were an alley at dusk, you wouldn’t walk down it.
It’s kind of like living in a film noir, and you can’t help but feel somewhat depressed after having been subjected to it for a relatively short period of time. If mold grew in Arizona, it would grow in this hotel. The dankness here relates not to the dryness of the atmosphere, but rather to the induced state of mind that comes from being in the building.
Even that I can work through, though – after all, you can go outside and see what there is to see – which isn’t much in downtown Phoenix, but there’s a nifty little light rail line that lets you go either north or south all you want for $3.50 a day.
Of course, you have to guess what you’re going to find after you get on it, because the “concierge” (i.e. the head bellman) doesn’t have any maps to show you where a mall or shopping or anything is. The best I got was “get off here and wander around, you’ll probably find some stuff.”
Here’s a news flash – I don’t “wander around” when the outdoor temp is pushing 100. I get the hell wherever I’m going, suck up the air conditioning and then get the hell back to air conditioning again.
So you stay in and use the internet to do your work.
That’d be if you’re willing to pay $12.40 a day for internet, which goes on the blink roughly once an hour. It comes right back, but of course whatever you were working on is lost by then and you get to start over again.
If anyone were foolish enough to stay here for a month, that’d be $372.00.
Oh, and the kicker there – that’s not a “per room” charge for wireless. That’s PER DEVICE. You can’t change them out, so if you start on your laptop, you can’t then connect with your iPod lest you be charged again. Of course, the front desk says they contract that out and have no control over the charges. They also don’t bother to tell you that when you check in.
I’m all for making a profit, but c’mon, you don’t have to make it all on one person.
Unfortunately, the attitude seems to be that of a lot of downtown hotels that are located next to a convention center.
You’re trapped. You got to go to the conference, it’s $15.00 a day (or more) to park downtown anywhere nearby, plus with a car rental a lot of employers simply won’t pay the costs. They're used to catering to a captive market of people who have expense accounts and aren't especially concerned about the cost of something, and they are out to make the most of it. It is, in part, one of the reasons that our downtowns are dying.
Treating customers like this is a false economy. Yeah, the Hyatt has made a buttload of money on us this time around. But given that we’re in hotels roughly 20 times a year, it will come back to haunt them. I may not remember WHICH Hyatt was so sucky, but I will remember that one of them was, and I’ll be wary before we get booked in one again.
Fortunately, we’ve only got one more day.
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Location, Location, Location
I’ve found definitive proof that reincarnation exists.
At least for some people. I’m convinced that realtors are reincarnated as dogs.
How do I know this? Because apparently, as with all real estate, the defining characteristic of appropriateness is “Location, Location, Location”.
Even for potty.
It’s gotten colder this week. Enough so that it’s no longer pleasant to go out in the pre-dawn in gym shorts and a T-shirt or even a flannel robe while waiting for El Doggo Importante to conduct his morning ablutions.
So here’s how it happens.
Sometime, between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning – he is as much a morning lark as any of us – we hear a whimper from the crate that we euphemistically refer to as his “bed”. By the time it increases to the sporadic “yip”, the meaning is clear.
If we don’t go out RIGHT NOW he’s not going to be responsible for the consequences.
So I put on something warm and go out in the yard with our nifty new leash that has the flashlight built in.
This is necessary if that plastic bag is going to do any good in the pre-dawn darkness.
All that’s not so bad. After all, as I approach 50, I have to get up in the night, too. I can’t really blame the dog if he can’t hold it all night long. The difference is, my target is somewhat specific. I want to get to the bathroom and back into the bed as quickly as I can.
Not so for the pup. Any trip outdoors is an opportunity to explore the yard just to make sure that it hasn’t changed in the last 6 hours.
He’s an herb dog. It’s kinda like a drug dog, except he goes around the yard in a definable pattern sniffing the herbs growing in the flower beds – cilantro, oregano, basil – the big three that we know are gateway herbs to the hard stuff. You talk to them about responsible choices, but who knows if he’s listening.
Only after he’s made these rounds can he piddle on the ground.
Then, of course, we have to use ALL the leash to go around the entire yard sniffing at every stray leave or weed, checking out the view, the breeze, and who knows what else in that little fuzzy head until finally he can go potty.
He sniffs a spot. Nope. Not that one.
Then another. Nope. Not quite right.
How about over here? Nah, that’s not good, either.
It goes on for a seemingly interminable period of time until he finally picks a location which, for the life of me, I can’t tell from the dozen he checked out before that.
Then I either realize that I was too sleepy to bring a plastic bag or I put the flashlight to use.
After that, we go back into the house, but not to sleep. After all, if we’ve done our business, that means we get a cookie. We sit and look at the cookie jar on the counter, hoping to levitate the cookies down to puppy level since all the tall people in the room are lots more interested in making that dark stuff to drink instead of takin’ care of business like they ought to be.
Little dogs do not understand that brain cells do not work clearly until they’ve had coffee administered.
The dog food, of course, is right there, so everyone ought to get their breakfast. He’s not yet acquired the taste for coffee or he’d understand why that happens before the dog’s bowl is filled.
And we’re up to greet the day. Our schedules aren’t yet in sync. He wants to play while I’m drinking my coffee and reading the paper. By the time I’m awake, he’s ready for a nap.
On my recliner.
Or the couch.
And on very rare occasions, his bed.
If it’s in the right location.
At least for some people. I’m convinced that realtors are reincarnated as dogs.
How do I know this? Because apparently, as with all real estate, the defining characteristic of appropriateness is “Location, Location, Location”.
Even for potty.
It’s gotten colder this week. Enough so that it’s no longer pleasant to go out in the pre-dawn in gym shorts and a T-shirt or even a flannel robe while waiting for El Doggo Importante to conduct his morning ablutions.
So here’s how it happens.
Sometime, between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning – he is as much a morning lark as any of us – we hear a whimper from the crate that we euphemistically refer to as his “bed”. By the time it increases to the sporadic “yip”, the meaning is clear.
If we don’t go out RIGHT NOW he’s not going to be responsible for the consequences.
So I put on something warm and go out in the yard with our nifty new leash that has the flashlight built in.
This is necessary if that plastic bag is going to do any good in the pre-dawn darkness.
All that’s not so bad. After all, as I approach 50, I have to get up in the night, too. I can’t really blame the dog if he can’t hold it all night long. The difference is, my target is somewhat specific. I want to get to the bathroom and back into the bed as quickly as I can.
Not so for the pup. Any trip outdoors is an opportunity to explore the yard just to make sure that it hasn’t changed in the last 6 hours.
He’s an herb dog. It’s kinda like a drug dog, except he goes around the yard in a definable pattern sniffing the herbs growing in the flower beds – cilantro, oregano, basil – the big three that we know are gateway herbs to the hard stuff. You talk to them about responsible choices, but who knows if he’s listening.
Only after he’s made these rounds can he piddle on the ground.
Then, of course, we have to use ALL the leash to go around the entire yard sniffing at every stray leave or weed, checking out the view, the breeze, and who knows what else in that little fuzzy head until finally he can go potty.
He sniffs a spot. Nope. Not that one.
Then another. Nope. Not quite right.
How about over here? Nah, that’s not good, either.
It goes on for a seemingly interminable period of time until he finally picks a location which, for the life of me, I can’t tell from the dozen he checked out before that.
Then I either realize that I was too sleepy to bring a plastic bag or I put the flashlight to use.
After that, we go back into the house, but not to sleep. After all, if we’ve done our business, that means we get a cookie. We sit and look at the cookie jar on the counter, hoping to levitate the cookies down to puppy level since all the tall people in the room are lots more interested in making that dark stuff to drink instead of takin’ care of business like they ought to be.
Little dogs do not understand that brain cells do not work clearly until they’ve had coffee administered.
The dog food, of course, is right there, so everyone ought to get their breakfast. He’s not yet acquired the taste for coffee or he’d understand why that happens before the dog’s bowl is filled.
And we’re up to greet the day. Our schedules aren’t yet in sync. He wants to play while I’m drinking my coffee and reading the paper. By the time I’m awake, he’s ready for a nap.
On my recliner.
Or the couch.
And on very rare occasions, his bed.
If it’s in the right location.
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