2004-01-25 - 8:36 p.m.
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Yeah, that was easy (My trip to Missy Sippy)
I sit and write this in Mississippi.
Of course, byt the time you read this, I will have flown back to NY, through 6 hours of hell, sitting next to god knows who talking about god knows what.
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Actually, no one spoke to me because I sat next to no one on either of the two planes I took home. Despite lucking out like this, there was a baby a piece on each of the flights that incessantly cried and drove me insane. I love children. Not then though.
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On my way down, I sat next to ever fat person imaginable. The lady in front of me shifted in her seat constantly and each time, I swore the plane hopped. She also crushed my legs because the seat dropped drastically.
I've been running things pretty well in Missy Sippy. I went out of my way to make things as smooth as possible for our ailing Mississippi association and the way that they appear in our paper. It is my job to cover things here (pronounced hee-yuh apparnt'luh) and I've even made some people happy to be doing their job, going well above the call of duty, which only includes taking pictures and paying attention.
I'm pleased to see that life in other states is absolutely nothing like NY, because if the world was NY, I'd have shot myself long ago. Of course, that Southern hospitality I hear so much about seems to have missed me (maybe because I'm a Yankee, despite being a Mets fan) going so far as me having to carry my stuff from the front desk to my room. Even NY has bellboys who will do this, even if it is for the sake of a dollar or two. I'm not worried about this, seeing as I'm not that lazy that I need someone carrying my things, but I think Mississippi has the only hotels with no bell service. Either that or I'll have to watch where I stay from now on.
Here's a little hint for you if you travel: never put ice close to you. Thursday night, I got a bucket of ice and kept it filled with water by my bed so that if I was thirsty from the heat (read as every waking and unconscious second of the day) I could dip a cup in and drink ice cold water. Fast forward to 5 AM Friday morning and my TV controller takes a dive in my sleep. Apparently, I knocked it in there in one of my multiple nervous wakings...
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Let me tell you why.
I normally sleep like a small child when I sleep in hotels because I know I'm paying for it and the next day, someone will me making my bed. This hotel is a hotel for a casino and as such, they've adopted casino policies. Namely, they have no clocks in the room. This is to prevent you from knowing what time of day it is and therefore going "Oh my god, it's 4 AM and I'm broke. Time to go home." Instead, you have no sense of time, 3 AM might as well be 3 PM to you (due to lack of windows as well) and you find yourself selling teeth and clothing so that you can make numbers and BAR signs spin. This is fine practice for casinos because it will eventually make everyone poor and tired, too tired to realize they are poor and therefore, they'll move on to broke in a zombie-like trance. However, not knowing what time it is and furthermore being unable to wake yourself due to an inability to judge what time it is and therefore make a loud buzzing sound make you shoot up out of your bed is unnerving. It makes you highly edgy to think that the only thing that will kick you awake at the right time is a wake up call you asked for hours upon hours ago that, for all intents and purposes, may or may not come. It all depends upon come crazy woman behind the counter of a reception desk in a dump in Biloxi, MS. So I woke up somewhere close to 15 times, worried I'd missed everything and in the process, I cheezed out my remote control, which meant nothing but commercials, because god knows I'm not getting up from laying down while watching TV. It's also something interesting to note that I also dropped my cell phone in the drink as well. Sucks to be me...
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so don't even bother with the ice because you'll pay for it later.
So I've been to Mississippi and I can only say that I'm glad I remember it because I drank enough down here not to. When I left LaGuardia on Thursday, I had a ginger ale and a bloody mary. Later that day, at dinner, I had a ginger ale and in the casino I had a bloody mary. That's a ginger ale and bloody mary 2 time zones and 1500 miles apart in 24 hours. Actually, since I write this Friday night before gambling, even now my list is as follows:
- 6 Bloody Marys
- 5 Gin and Tonics (that number only went up as well)
- 1 shot of tequila (with an old woman)
- 2 1/2 beers (because the beer I had at the Budweiser Brewery restaurant was extra big)
- 1 diry olive martini (extra heavy)
- 1 shot of Johnny Walker Red (for the fuck of it)
Keep in mind that this is all within the past 48 hours and in that time, I've covered an entire state's annual convention for mortgage brokers, lost (as of writing this) $50, eaten in one of 25 Waffle Houses in the area, been to Tennesee and Mississippi airports, been on 6 hours of flights, slept on and off 5 hours, watched 3 James Bond movies, read half of Rosshalde by Herman Hesse (which I later finished) and wrote this along with the first 5 pages (and later, 15 others) of a short story.
So, you know I've been busy.
I've also been drunk while I did it.
Let me close here by saying that I've never imagined I'd be on the can in Mississippi, writing in a Staples notepad about mortgage conventions or gambling in casinos or 16 free drinks or cellphone-eating buckets of ice water or 70 degree weather in JAnuary.
But I like it.
BMC
What did you just say? - What's he gonna say next?
