Once more into the breach…

How you know you’ve been there for a while

You add the hotel to your list of Amazon addresses. (Confindential to Mrs Heathen: It’s work-related.)

In which time AND money are saved

Last week, the only way we actually made it to the airport was by (a) extending the car rental a week and (b) parking in hourly parking from Friday to Sunday, to the tune of sixty bucks. However, the car rental itself didn’t cost any more, as Sunday thru Friday turns out to trigger the weekly rate. By extending a week, my bill just doubled and the weekend came along for free, which got us thinking… so now we’ve extended the car through 20 April. This produces a significant cash savings for the client (on the order of 20% vs. week to week rentals) AND a significant time savings for us, since all car rental at BWI is a 15 to 20 minute bus ride from the terminal. Score! Monthly rates FTW!

In which words don’t mean what we think they should mean

Owing to our persistent patronage, we’re in a ‘suite’ at the Holiday Inn this week. However, the usual meaning of that word has been subverted; here, ‘suite’ appears to mean “slightly larger room with a minifridge and a microwave where the closet used to be, and a wardrobe instead of a closet” instead of “actual small suite with distinct kitchen/dining and sleeping areas,” as the word has meant in other extended-stay type hotels. We don’t care all that much, but we’re not sure it’s worth the extra five bucks a night. More on this later.

Another drawback to the pseudosuite

As it’s not on the first floor, entry from the side doors no longer produces a shorter route to the room.

And again

Floors 2 and 3 are limited to wireless Internet; the first floor has a wired ethernet option that has in weeks past drastically outperformed the wireless option.

So is there an actual advantage to the suite?

Well, we’ve got beer in the fridge, and it’s closer to the laundry room. So there’s that.

How this turns out to suck later

Said beer was rendered unusable due to some goatfucker setting the minifridge to maximum cold, which turned it into a miniFREEZER. Dammit. Good thing there’s a bar next door.

Things we need to procure

A decent fucking alarm clock. All the ones at the hotel suck ass; none of them have been able to pick up the local NPR station, e.g.

One nice thing about “regular” status

Yanka at the Outback will give you real silverware to go with your to-go, since they know you’ll bring it back.

What we watched while eating with Yanka’s flatware

51 minutes of The Conversation, a brilliant film we’ve had out from Netflix for more than a year. This is a particularly troubling number, since it’s less than the film’s length (113 minutes), but well past the halfway point. And, of course, we only stopped then because that’s when the DVD crapped out. Grrrr.