Is this a nightclub or an aircraft ?

There are many unwritten rules in life. We know about them, they exist
but they are never written down.
There are some things that you should just be aware of.

"Look both ways before you cross the street" is one such rule. It has
appeared in writing at times, but not so much as a warning, but instead
as a posthumous statement, usually by a close relative when they were
asked by the authorities questions like "Did you offer him any advice ?"

Like most things we tend to encounter in the day to day, they happen so
often there is no point in writing them down. It is also worth noting
that the same rules are broken in the same ways by the same people.

Like red-eye etiquite.

If you are, as I have been on too many occasions, stuck on a plane for
more than 5 hours in the middle of the night; the thing you most want to
do is sleep.

So the the most important thing that you MUST do is shut the fuck up and
let the people around you sleep.

You should not, and this brings us back to the reason such unwritten
rules exist, transgress these boundaries and do something unthinkable like
spend all night talking very loudly to the attractive woman next to you in
the hopes of getting a second date. ( We will ignore for the moment that
the first one is under duress )

I have been victim to this twice and it is always the same.

A guy ( it is always the males that instigate this ) finds himself
sitting next to the most attractive women he has ever met, this week. He
realises that he has only the duration of this flight to impress her and get a
phone number.

He thus weighs up his options, reaches for the unwritten rule book,
promptly throws it out the metaphorical window, and forges any attempt
at sleep in deference to trying to 'Pick up the hot chick in seat 16D'

As a result those of us within earshot ( i.e. most of the plane ) have to
suffer through the night as he tries his to sound intelligent and
interested in the face of a woman who is, mostly, just being polite.

It never works, he never gets her address and in the mean time the rest
if us can't sleep.

Earplugs, a business class upgrade and a pillow over the head were still
not enough.

More than once I considered getting up and telling the poor sap that
there was "no hope, you aren't getting in her pants". But fear of
situations like 'Making a Scene' and 'We had to find an Air Marshall'
made me change my mind

In the end I just had to ride it out and wait for that final point in the
evening where the poor victim ( her ) decided enough was enough and she (
and the rest of us ) also needed sleep.

So, should you ever think that a seat by the exit aisle has lots of leg
room and is worth fighting for, I would like to point out that this seat
is also right by the toilets and will usually result in 'jenny' the
dancer meeting 'frank' the idiot and you end up learning far too much
about why a dancer needs to do her stretches and why a horny male thinks
this is interesting.

Take a seat in the back of the bus. It is quieter there.

And so it begins.

Despite my prolific attempt to garner an audience six months ago, I
was rapidly overcome by a bad case of writers block.

For a while I put it down to just being too busy. Then I foolishly read
some article ( probably a blog ) that put forward the point that people
who wrote blogs were just on a catharsis trip and using it as some form
of therapy.

So I stopped for fear of being labeled a self indulgent looney.

Then I got all caught up in the facts that my rants were "too long" but
brevity didn't give me the literary freedom that I required.

But recently I realised that it is because that just not a lot of
interesting crap happens in late summer. Fall, autumn, beltane or whatever
you want call this time of year. It is a quiet time where we all just get
shit done and don't bitch about it.

Of course, I'm realising all this in hindsight. Silly season is kicking
in and I'm in the middle of it

Tonight, I'm doing my best to stay one step ahead of a bartender who plans
to keep me liquored up, while outside the rain has stopped, the
temperature has dropped and the forecast is for snow. ( Sounds like a
line from a country and western song)

Tomorrow is the day before thanksgiving and I have to fly ( sounds like
the chorus ). So I've had to deal all day with people saying things like

"Hope you get out before the blizzard comes"

Fokkers

This is going to suck. I know it is. Tomorrow I well get up to three feet
of snow, dig myself out of the hotel and spend all day in a departure
lounge next some loser from Michigan who has had a personality bypass
and a screaming case of halitosis. He will try to keep me entertained
with stories of his hockey days while I make every possible phone call I
can in the hopes of getting the fuck out of dodge

Then, just as the sky clears and our ground-hold is lifted, I will be
unable to get the phone number of the supermodel who has being trying to
get my attention all afternoon because my PDA has tanked and my phone is
sans battery.

Been there, done that, still have the scars.

But at least I'm prepared. Start low, finish high.

You may now ransack my room.

In case you hadn't noticed I tend to travel a bit, a lot actually.

It tends to make me a tad high maintenance about my hotel room. This is
understandable since I could be on the one place for more than a week but
I get particular about a few things: too close to the elevator, too noisy.
Too far, too far to walk. is the bathroom big enough? Are there enough
towels ? etc etc.

So I expect things to be in a certain order, and I don't expect my
hotel to fight me or cause me stress. Unfortunately I also don't take
much luggage, and I'm very neat. This has, on occasion, led the hotel to
believe that I've actually checked out.

Mostly this is amusing, you get the odd phone call "Sir, would you mind
paying your bill", or your key no longer works. But last night, things
got a little out of hand.

I came back to my room and discovered that all my stuff was gone. My key
still worked, but there was no evidence that I'd ever been there.

Somewhat panicked and angry I called reception and they did their best
to track down the problem. In the mean time I did a quick inventory and
realised I was missing a few shirts and all my toiletries. You'd be
surprised how annoying this is.

They called back a few minutes later with the bad news

"Housekeeping thought you had left and threw all your stuff out"

Gone, no lost property, no note, just straight into the dumpster.

As my eyes clouded over and I was filled with visions of lurching around
town trying to find a toothbrush and a clean shirt, I spent a few minutes
at being a very irate customer

"... you don't quite get it, that was an expensive, badger fur shaving
brush your minions just absconded with, you can't just get those at the
corner pharmacy..."

And the hotel decided that it was in their best interests to replace my
items. ( and pay cash for the receipts )

But they left me with the actual exercise of getting the stuff. So about
an hour later I had surprisingly found substitutes for almost everything
and was somewhat back on track, but late for dinner.

This morning, on the way out, I left my newspaper on the bed as an 'experiment'

When I came back tonight, it was gone.

And yes, from now on, the shaving brush stays at home.