Adventures in a Filthy City

I have taken today and yesterday off from work. I have an ear infection or rather a head cold that has moved from my sinus into my ear canals, and since I am home and it is finals week and for once I don't have any exams to take I am not overly swamped with other tasks, I thought I would give a little update of the goings on in the household and tell an "interesting" story.

First the story. Carol and I took a little overnight trip to New Orleans last month. I had done some research that was accepted into APA and GSA for paper/poster presentations. I didn't go to APA (San Francisco) because I couldn't afford it, but I was first author in GSA so I decided I had better go. It was in New Orleans, so Carol and I dropped the kids off at Zeb and Leah's and headed out. It is only 8 hours away in good traffic. We did not have good traffic. I was scheduled to present my paper at 4:30 on Saturday the 20th of Nov. We left that morning at 6. So you would think we would get there with plenty of time. Unfortunately we hit traffic in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and New Orleans. So I got to the conference center at 4:00 on the dot. I had just enough time to register, go into the conference room, set up, and sit down for 2 minutes before I had to present. The presentation went fairly well, other than some random guy being all up in arms about my measure not measuring spirituality and measuring neo american calvinism, to which I say, that may be the case but that was not what are study was examining. Jerk, pay attention. Anyway, while that was going on, Carol checked us into the Hotel. After the presentation, I went and got Carol and we walked around with a few of my colleagues from school and my advisor trying to find a place for dinner. Carol and I were set on getting some good seafood seeing as we were on the gulf coast. They ended up going to some weird bar that only had catfish. Not exactly what we wanted to so we walked back towards the conference center and had some cajun food. I liked it, Carol wasn't hugely impressed. (I will say I thought it would be much spicier.) After that we went back to the hotel. We were sleeping soundly until about 1:40 a.m. when some drunkard mistaking our room for his, tried to come into our room. I hadn't thought much of it, but Carol woke up and so I got out of bed to see what was going on. I had initially thought he was just sticking his card key in the door and trying to turn the handle, oh no, he had opened the door and the only thing keeping him out was the internal latch that allows the door to open 2 inches. When I came close to the door I saw his chubby nasty fingers trying to unlatch the door.

I said "excuse me" and

he responded "OPEN UP! OPEN UP!"

"UMMM NO"

"Your killing me" he mumbled

I took a peak through the door at this point to see a man in his late 40's to 50's, white hair and goatee, skin of someone who smokes a pack a day, nasty gray sweatshirt on, and jeans that he had clearly pissed in not more than 5 minutes ago. That's great. After that interaction he left, and I closed the door. Needless to say Carol and I had a bit of a time getting to sleep after that. So, 30 minutes later when we heard his voice again, we both popped out of bed. He was apparently in the room across the hall and he had a companion who was demanding he open up the safe.

So in the morning we loaded our things had some heated words with the manager who promised to call after "investigating" and still hasn't and left that hole on the face of the earth behind us. I had brought my pistol with me and the guy was clearly drunk and overweight so I figured there weren't very many ways it could have gone well for him, never the less, I have no intention of returning.

As for the rest of what has been happening, nothing super exciting. Life has moved on, the kids have been sick, and better and sick again, and now better. Thanksgiving was at our house and was delicious and amazing. Other than that everything is moving forward. Hope you all enjoy your holiday season and merry christmas.