Where To Find The Word of Jeff Work Online

Thank you to all of you who have "Liked" The Word of Jeff Facebook Page.  I just thought I'd take this opportunity to welcome those who have connected recently and provide a list of where else you can find my work online.


The Word of Jeff blog - My writing blog (those posts, like this one, are automatically posted to the Facebook Page)

The Verbal Vagabond - My travel blog

Postcards From Maggie Valley - My Maggie Valley, NC photography blog

The Masked Blogger - My comic book industry blog

My articles on Suite101 - I'm formerly a feature writer and currently a contributing writer to Suite101


If you haven't already, I invite you to visit these other sites and again, thank you for liking The Word of Jeff Facebook Page.

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Goby

This is a nifty little search engine site that my brother sent to me. The reason he sent it is that he knows I travel a lot and Goby is a search engine "that's all about finding fun ways to spend your free time, from a weekend to a week off."

You can search what you'd like to do, where you'd like to do it and when you'd like to do it. Since I'm in Atlanta I searched for book events in Atlanta this weekend and Goby returned 28 book or book-related events taking place in Atlanta this weekend. Now, if I were only off this weekend!

Give it a try and see what you think. If you like it you can thank my brother. Thanks bro!

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Hyundai? No Way!!

Here's a car I will NEVER buy and, if I have any say in the matter, will never accept from a rental car company again when traveling.

I don't know what it is about the design of this Hyundai Accent (which is similar in overall size to other compact cars I have rented when traveling for my employer) doors and seats, but I have to fold my 6'4" frame like a pretzel to get into the driver's seat. That's aggravating enough because yoga is not my thing and as I get older I'm not as flexible as I used to be in my gymnastic days. But today was the icing on the cake when, in attempting to bend my body into a weird enough shape to squeeze into the car, my hip case for my iPhone snapped off at the clip, rendering the case unusable.

So again I say; Hyundai? No Way!!

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Flying To D.C.

Back on the road...well "in the air" actually, today as I'll be flying to D.C. and then a shuttle bus ride out into the country for a week of advanced training at the isolated "school."

When I was there 18 months ago, the facility had no Internet connection in the dorm rooms or classrooms and cell phone signals were almost non-existent unless you walked to the outer edges of the compound. I've not heard that any of that has changed, so I've already scheduled blog posts for each day that I'll be away. I cannot leave the facility during the week I'm there, so I'll have no opportunity to find a wi-fi signal in a coffee or sandwich shop.

As usual (and if I can find a cellphone signal to use my iPhone) the best way to keep up with me in real time will be through Twitter.

At least it won't be icy cold and snowing like it was when I was there in January of 2008.

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Leaving Kentucky - Playing The Odds

Today I fly out of Lexington, Kentucky for home. I only get to be home for 2 nights though, then I fly out Sunday for a week in a suburb of Washington, D.C. and I may be going somewhere else after that if things work out.

With as much traveling as I do in planes and rental cars, I guess it is inevitable that I sometimes find myself thinking about the odds of me dying in a plane crash or car wreck. That has been especially true during the past few days with the recent plane crashes and the weird Southwest Airlines hole-in-the-plane event that reminded me of the Twilight Zone episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet" with a young William Shatner.

These thoughts usually come to me when I am in a plane that is taking off or landing (the two most dangerous times during a flight), but sometimes I look out the window at 30,000 feet and think it is a long way down (though it would only take 12 minutes or so to hit the ground from that altitude, falling at a rate of 32 feet per second) and sometimes when I am driving long distances on deserted back roads in the middle of night (or even in the middle of the day) I imagine several different scenarios that would all, in the end, find me dead on that road, hopefully not in an extremely painful way.

I don't think I'm being morbid, it's just an acknowledgment that, while I'm not a gambler at heart, I am constantly playing the odds when it comes to travel and my longevity.

On the other hand, I could drop dead from an aneurysm or heart attack in my hotel room, so it really does no good to dwell on the subject of when it might happen, does it?

But here is a little piece I wrote about a year ago during a flight. I've edited it a tiny bit over the past couple of days and added an important piece of physics information that I had to research, but the majority of it is over a year old and the words originated from 30,000 feet in the sky.

Cheers!

I'm sitting in my usual exit row window seat, watching the clouds below and around the plane as it pushes through the air at 30,000 feet. Sometimes, when there are breaks within the cloud bank below us, I can see the ground underneath our vehicle in the sky. It is so far below us that I only glimpse a dull splotch of green if is land and blue if it is water. It's very peaceful up here as the aircraft maintains a steady speed of 500 mph some 6 miles above the world.

But should the plane suddenly lose power, or worse, break apart from some structural stress, natural or man-made, I ask myself; how long would it take to fall to the ground? If I were to suddenly find myself sucked out of the exit row door I know I would lose consciousness very quickly due to the lack of oxygen, but I've also read that there is every chance I would regain consciousness as I fell into a more oxygen-rich part of the atmosphere. Of course the bad part of that news is that I would also be closer to the ground and, if I were not completely disoriented, would realize that the earth was quickly rushing up to meet me, or more accurately that I was falling faster and faster to the meet the earth.



In most scenarios of this type the odds are that I would still be strapped into my seat that was ripped from the floor it used to be bolted to, falling, spinning, tumbling head over heels watching first the sky appear and then the ground and then the sky again in a wildly changing kaleidoscope. Something like an old-style ViewMaster gone crazy, flipping back and forth between two images. I've also read that falling from a height of 30,000 feet at 32 feet per second, it would take me 12 minutes or so to hit the ground. But having no idea how long I was unconscious I likewise have no idea how much time I have left until impact.

I imagine that, if I had my full faculties at this point, that I would most likely be frightened to the point of death at this realization, either through a heart attack or my conscious mind just shutting down at the inevitability of certain, painful death. On the other hand, if I didn't die of fright, I wonder if I would hit the ground with such force that I would never have time to even register the agonizing pain of the moment of impact before I would be dead. I have a feeling that the anticipation would be much more painful that the actual impact.

But for now, safe in my usual exit row window seat, I stretch out my legs, turn on my mp3 player and put such thoughts out of my mind.

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Buffalo Trace

Last Friday, after leaving Daniel Boone's grave site, I drove over to Buffalo Trace Distillery, one of the stops on Kentucky's Bourbon Trail. My unfamiliarity with the name Buffalo Trace was explained right at the beginning of the tour when Don, the tour guide, revealed that the distillery was bought some years ago and renamed, but that they originally produced (and still do) Ancient Age bourbon, which I did recall from my younger days.



And if, like me, you were wondering where the name "Buffalo Trace" came from, there is an interesting explanation. Located on what was once an ancient buffalo path on the banks of the Kentucky River, the distillery's namesake is a tribute to the buffalo that created paths followed by America's early pioneers. The Sazerac Company, a New Orleans, Louisiana-based producer and importer purchased the distillery in 1992 and decided to take the distillery back to its roots with the renaming. In Louisiana, they call a path a "trace" so, to honor the old buffalo path it was built on, the distillery was christened "Buffalo Trace."

Pretty cool.

The tour was interesting and the tour guide was very informative and personable. While it is true that all bourbon is whiskey but not all whiskey is bourbon, the fermenting and distilling process is much the same in general for all whiskeys. When Cindy and I and her parents were in Scotland 3 years ago we toured several Scotch distilleries and while on the Buffalo Trace tour I remembered a lot of the same information from the Scotland tours.

One of the important differences is that bourbon distilleries use their aging barrels one single time. What do they do with all those used barrels? They ship them to Scotland for them to use with their Scotch, to Mexico for them to use in making some dark Tequilas, to the Caribbean for their Rum and to Canada for their Canadian whiskey.

The one thing I wish was that they would have given us a tour of the actual distillery. We saw the storage area and the bottling area, but not the distillery itself. Again, though they are all basically the same principle and I saw several of them in Scotland, it would have been interesting to see how they do it specifically for bourbon. That lack almost made me think about going to one of the other distilleries on the trail, but it was getting late in the day and I had other things to do.



Of course the end of the tour is what everyone goes for; the samples. I tried one of their sour mash products known as "White Dog" that could have easily been called white lightning! Despite the very tiny amount in the cup, my throat burned for 20 minutes after downing it. I don't see how anyone could really drink that stuff straight or drink much of it unless they had a very high tolerance.

It was a fun tour; very interesting and enlightening. If you get the chance, I recommend you take a tour of one of the distilleries on The Bourbon Trail.

Pictures from the tour are up on my Flickr page.

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Upcoming Schedule

I found out I'll be leaving Kentucky on Friday, July 17th. I'll get to spend Friday and Saturday night at home with Cindy before flying out Sunday to Baltimore Washington International aiport for a week of training at the super secret location I was at back in January of 2008.

At this point, I'm returning home to Orlando from there on Friday, July 24th and, as far as I know right now, there are no plans to send me anywhere. But as always, that could change at any time.

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Cindy's Atlanta Weekend Visit Part I

Cindy came to visit me in Atlanta last Friday, arriving around 6pm at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. (She has her own horror story to tell of her flight on Spirit Airlines, but I can sum it up in two words, "Never again!") We took the MARTA train back down to the Dunwoody Station near my hotel and had dinner at The Cheesecake Factory located on the outside of The Perimeter Mall. The food was absolutely delicious and there was so much we could only eat half of it. The other half we had boxed up and took it back to the mini-refrigerate in my hotel room.

Saturday morning we enjoyed the hot breakfast buffet of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, breakfast potatoes, french toast and fruit that the hotel provides for free to Diamond VIP members, then headed over to Target to buy some new shirts for yours truly. Chromatic coordination is so much easier when I have Cindy there to help me make color choices, lol. Then it was back to the hotel to wait for a 10am delivery of some loan/construction papers that were being overnighted to us so we could sign the papers, have them notarized and overnighted back to the bank in North Carolina.

That's when the notary nightmare began.

Our person at the bank in NC had said, "Just go to any of our branches on Saturday morning and they'll notarize the papers for you." Famous last words. When we entered the local branch near the hotel we were told that their only person who is a notary was, "...not working because Saturday is not a business day." My thinking is if you're open for business it's a business day, but apparently that is not their thinking. Similar visits to The UPS Store and Fed-Ex Kinko's yielded similar responses which had us sensing a trend.

We returned to the hotel room to warm up our leftovers and do an Internet search for notaries in the area. Not much luck other than finding a mobile notary who advertised 24/7 service...for a hefty fee. We decided to hold off on that until the last minute while we checked with the hotel (no), local check-cashing services (no) and calling some co-workers in the area to ask if they knew anyone who might be a notary (left messages).

Then we decided to take a nap since we knew we'd be up late that night going to The Jersey Boys performance at The Fox Theatre in Atlanta.

To be continued...

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Shaken, Not Stirred

That's how I felt during the latter portion of my flight on AirTran this afternoon from Orlando to Atlanta. During the last 15-20 minutes of the flight, which was the approach to Hartsfield-Jackson, I think they let the co-pilot or maybe even the Lead Flight Attendant, fly the plane.

I say that because we went from a very smooth flight to something akin to a bad carnival ride. We dipped, fell, rose, shook, sped up and slowed down during the final approach so much that the lady next to me was holding onto the back of the seat in front of her. I think she was afraid the seatbelt would not withstand the crazy gyrations we were experiencing.

The pilot never announced that we were having any wind, weather or equipment problems, so I can only surmise that someone was doing some on the job training with a plane full of passengers.

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Georgia On My Mind...Again

A few hours ago I got the call I had been expecting telling me to report to Atlanta where they're setting up an office for this deployment. I'm flying out from Orlando Monday afternoon around 2pm and arriving in Atlanta just in time to drive through rush hour traffic from the airport to my hotel.

I had thought I might be going back to Valdosta, so I had left my suitcases packed from my last trip up there 10 days ago as if I would be driving back there, but with the office being situated in Atlanta I will have to fly and that means re-packing to bring the weight down so it doesn't cost as much as the plane ticket in luggage surcharges.

The last time I was in Atlanta was June of 2007. I was only there for 3 1/2 weeks for some training, but I did get to see my first live MLB game, as well as touring a nice art museum and taking the CNN behind the scenes tour on my off time. I probably won't have much of that for the first few weeks of this deployment, but perhaps later on I will get a chance to tour the Coca-Cola Museum, something I didn't get to do when I was there almost 2 years ago.

I'll be getting to work with some old friends and some new folks that I've been wanting to work with, so I'm looking forward to this assignment with a little more anticipation (though I love ALL my deployments) than usual.

As usual, I'll be Twittering as much as I can, so that will be a good place to keep up with where I'm at and what I'm doing.

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United Airlines To Charge Overweight People For 2 Seats

Airlines make the seats smaller (17" to 18" wide) and closer together so they can cram more of them into the aircraft and thus have more paying customers on any given flight, THEN say if you can't fit into one of our ridiculously small seats, we'll charge you for two. Oh, and we're only doing this because of the high number (almost 800) of complaints we've received from other passengers.

Hmmmmm, strangely enough they haven't bothered to respond to the THOUSANDS of complaints they have received about extra baggage charges, snack charges, scheduling changes, flight cancellations and generally poor service across the board. They've only responded to the complaints that they can turn into a revenue stream for the airline. Hmmmmm.

Now, I fly quite a bit. I myself am a large person (6'4" and 260 pounds), but I'm always careful to not intrude on a seat mate's space because I know I don't like my space being intruded into. My travel agent knows that my preference is to sit in an exit row window seat, if for no other reason than it gives me a bit more leg room, and they always try to book such a seat for me when possible. On any given flight I'd rather be mashed up against the window than hanging out into the aisle to be pummeled by flight attendants, people walking the aisles and drink carts

I HAVE sat next to people, both large and not, who "flow" into my seat space. Yes, it's aggravating. But even more aggravating are the loud talkers, the screaming kids, the people who don't control their kids, the people who kick the back of my seat, the people who recline their seat back into my space, the people who bring their surfboards, skis and golf clubs on board as carry-on luggage and the flight attendants who will do nothing about any of the above. Can we charge all of them extra as well?

I thought not.

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Hello, Valdosta!

Monday night at 6:50pm I got a call from my employer directing me to rent a car and be in Valdosta, Georgia this morning (Tuesday) at 8:30am.

What followed was a whirlwind of activity culminating in 3 hours of sleep and an early morning drive up Florida's Turnpike and I-75 to the "Azalea City" and most of the rest of the day driving around the city with damage assessment teams in the morning and with congressional VIP's and City officials in the afternoon.

The olfactory highlight of the day was a tour of the wastewater treatment plant that city workers and volunteers heroically and successfully (for the most part) managed to save from flood waters over a 4 day period last week. Their unselfish work averted even more serious problems that would have arisen for at least half of the city population. Kudos to all.

The saddest part of the day was touring homes and neighborhoods that were flooded, some with the water reaching the eaves of the houses and consequently damaging not only the physical structure but the lives of those within.


NOTE: This is a cellphone photo and thus not the best quality, but I was trying to be unobtrusive and considerate of those who had suffered through this flood.

Thankfully, throughout all this, no one was injured and no lives have been lost. But the impact will be felt for a long time.

I am tired so it is off to bed. I have an early morning drive to Thomasville for an 8am meeting and it will take an hour to get there, according to GoogleMaps.

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Winter Waterfalls

Here in Central Kentucky there are quite a few of the roads that were cut right through small mountains of rock, like you see in the photo below. These are not tunnels through the mountain, but more like they were just sliced through the entire mass of rock.



As a result, you can see some very beautiful designs in the rock, both in color and arrangement, that can be downright distracting to a Floridian like myself who is not used to such a thing.

However, even more mesmerizing to see are the frozen waterfalls that form in the cold temperatures on the exposed rock facings up here when rain falls or snow melts.





Even more interesting is the fact that these frozen pieces of nature's art are not formed by water running off the top of the rock, but from water seeping through the cracks of the rock strata itself.





They are really quite beautiful to see as you're driving along the roads that cut through these small mountains of natural formed rock.





I just wanted to try and share these gorgeous winter waterfalls with you. I hope you enjoy.

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Guest Of The Day

After I finished up my meeting in Elizabethtown last Wednesday, I had to drive another 2 hours down to Hopkinsville to spend the night and prepare for a meeting the next afternoon.

I ended up booking a room at the Fairfield Inn due in part to the fact that it was one of the few places I could find a room and in part to add to my Marriott Rewards point count. After driving to the Elizabethtown meeting in the rain, attending the meeting and then driving to Hopkinsville, well...by the time I pulled up in front of the Fairfield Inn I was somewhat tired and knew I had a few hours of work to do on the laptop once I checked in, so I was probably beginning to shows signs of some tiredness.

So you might be able to imagine how I was surprised and buoyed to walk into the lobby and see this sign by the front desk.



Now, in all the traveling I've done over the past 18 months and all the hotels I've stayed in, I've never been (or even seen signs about, for that matter) Guest of the Day, so that was definitely unexpected. But when I got to my room, there was a further surprise.



And here is what was inside the bag.



Now, unfortunately, out of those three items I can only have one and you can imagine which one it is, but still it was a nice touch and put a smile on my face at the end of a long day.

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Cold Kentucky Rain

I was driving from Frankfort to Elizabethtown last Wednesday for a meeting. It was cold and it was raining. So, of course, the radio station I was listening to played this song:

Seven lonely days
And a dozen towns ago
I reached out one night
And you were gone
Don't know why you'd run,
What you're running to or from
All I know is I want to bring you home

So I'm walking in the rain,
Thumbing for a ride
On this lonely Kentucky backroad
I've loved you much too long
My love's too strong
To let you go, never knowing
What went wrong

Kentucky rain keeps pouring down
And up ahead's another town
That I'll be walking through
With the rain in my shoes,
Searching for you
In the cold Kentucky rain,
In the cold Kentucky rain

Showed your photograph
To some old gray bearded men
Sitting on a bench
Outside a general store
They said "Yes, she's been here"
But their memory wasn't clear
Was it yesterday,
No, wait...the day before?

Well I finally got a ride
With a preacher man who asked
"Where you bound on such a cold dark afternoon?"
As we drove on through the rain
And he listened I explained
And he left me with a prayer
That I'd find you

Kentucky rain keeps pouring down
And up ahead's another town
That I'll be walking through
With the rain in my shoes,
Searching for you
In the cold Kentucky rain!
In the cold Kentucky rain!
In the cold Kentucky rain!

"Uhh thank ya very much ladies and gentlemen, thank ya very much."

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Doubletree Twitters Me

So, last Friday I blogged about checking into the Doubletree in Lexington, Kentucky and how happy I was in comparison to the "Hotel-Chain-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named" that I had checked out of a few days earlier.

Here's another example of how cool it is being on Twitter. THE VERY NEXT DAY, I had the following Twitter message waiting for me from Doubletree which, amazingly enough, has its own Twitter account!



If you check their Twitter page you can see they use the app to send nice messages like the one they sent me and to tell their guests in various locations about things going on around the hotel area in which they are staying. Just another way Twitter is functioning as a social media tool and a marketing tool for businesses.

Follow me on Twitter.

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We'll Always Have Paris

Sunday I finally had a day off. I slept until 10:30 when my bladder forced me to leave the comfort of my bed. And if I haven't mentioned before, the bed at Doubletree is EXTREMELY comfortable.

I fell back in bed and tossed and turned for a few minutes before finally deciding I wasn't going back to sleep so I called Cindy for our every-morning call and then stumbled around the hotel room for a while before deciding to go see "Taken" at the movie theater.

"Taken" stars Liam Neeson as the former special-ops father of a teenage daughter who is kidnapped in Paris by white slave traders. You can guess the rest. As a story, it was ok, with the usual plot holes and questions left unanswered that accompany most action/adventure movies, but overall it was a satisfying movie.

The main reason I went to see the movie is because when Cindy and her mom and I were in Paris of May 2007 we happened upon a scene being filmed on the Champs-Élysées with Liam Neeson and an actor that we thought at the time was Kevin Spacey. We were wrong about the Kevin Spacey part; it turned out to be an actor who looked like him from a distance. But it was fun to watch the scene being filmed right in front of us and a real kick when that scene came up on the screen at the movie theater. I wanted to shout out, "I was there!"

If you want to see what we saw that afternoon, you can go to this link to read about the experience and view the video I shot of the scene and afterward.

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On The Road Again...

I'll be on the road today, first for an afternoon meeting in a town about 2 hours from the office, then driving another 2 hours to a town in Kentucky named Hopkinsville to spend the night before a meeting there on Thursday afternoon.

Hopkinsville is a city located in Christian County, Kentucky in the western part of the state. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 30,089. It is the county seat of Christian County.

Probably the most interesting thing about Hopkinsville is that it was the birth place and home town of the notable psychic Edgar Cayce.

I'll be staying in a hotel that is NOT a Comfort Suite. Speaking of Comfort Suites, I answered their request for a survey of my stay at the hotel in Georgetown. I was a little nonplussed by the fact that, though they allow you to make a comment explaining the situation you were unhappy with, they limit you to 256 characters! Hell, get with the times, we're not living in the dial-up days any longer. Comment sections can and should be as long as necessary to tell your tale. I can only view it as further evidence of a lack of caring about customer service at Choice Hotels. I DID leave my full review at Tripadvisor, so hopefully other travelers will be warned about the lousy customer service at this hotel.

After my meeting Thursday afternoon, I'll drive the 4 hours back to Lexington and the comfort of the Doubletree. They're even being nice enough to hold my large suitcase for me so I only have to take my carry-on bag on this 2-day 1-night trip. As I write this, the forecast is for rain all day Wednesday and snow all day Thursday with ice and sleet thrown in both days for good measure. It's going to be a fun drive!

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Doubletree In Lexington

After leaving the front desk on Tuesday night, I went back to my room, got online and booked a room at the Doubletree in Lexington, a hotel that, while a little farther away, was getting good ratings from some co-workers.

I arrived there Wednesday night about 8pm to check in. Let me tell you, the difference in customer service levels between Doubletree and Comfort Suites is like night and day. The room itself is fantastic, decorated in what I would describe as a Modern European style (NOT that I know ANYTHING about such things, it's just a shot in the dark, ya know?), reminding me of our trips to Scotland, England and France.

The bed is one of the most comfortable I've ever, ever slept on. And the bathtub is some kind of double-sized monstrosity with spa jets that look like they could create a tidal wave, lol. I haven't used it yet, preferring to shower as I usually do, but I may have to get a beer, a cigar and a book one night and enjoy the jets.

I asked for a top-floor corner room and they apologized profusely for only having a corner room available one floor below the top. When I was checking in they noted that I was a diamond-level member (something I didn't have to point out to them the way I had to with Choice) and thanked me warmly for choosing to stay with them. At the moment, the longer drive is definitely worth it.

I've been extremely busy the past few days as we prepared for a fairly high-level meeting that was held yesterday morning. I felt it went very well, and thankfully my boss, her boss and her boss all felt the same. It's always good to please the boss. :)

Photos of the new room below, but first the best news of the hour...I have this Sunday off! The time off to rest and recharge will be very, very welcome. These past two weeks I've worked 144 hours, which doesn't count lunch time off each day and driving back and forth to and from the office. If I get out of bed Sunday before noon I'll be extremely surprised. And mad!















Ok, ignore how messed up the color is in this shot and look at the size of that thing!



Looking down from the fourth floor hallway to the interior courtyard/lobby.

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If It's Thursday, This Must Be Lexington

Yes, another city and thus another hotel. But this move was a voluntary one on my part. Sort of.

I've never been a fan of Choice Hotels (Comfort Suites, Quality Inn, etc.) but when I was in Iowa back in July through October of 2007, there was a brand new one that opened close to the office and everyone of my co-workers who were holed up there gave it rave reviews so I got a room and immensely enjoyed my stay there for a two month period. The room was nice and the staff was always friendly and helpful.

So, when I needed to find a room late last week in the Georgetown, KY area I noticed there was a Comfort Suites and, though I had a small bit of trepidation, my positive experience in Iowa beat it down and told it to shut up while I booked a 30-day stay. I asked for a top floor corner room, as I always do, but had to bring up my Platinum Elite status (from all those nights in Iowa) to get them to give it to me, which was a little irritating because it meant they weren't even looking at my booking information where that level is noted.

This past Monday night I checked into the hotel after a 13 hour day. Though worn, the room was clean and comfortable. However it had a strange layout that prevented you from seeing the TV if you were sitting at the desk. Since I love to dual-task by working on my laptop while watching TV, this was a bit aggravating, but since I also did not have much time to do either while on this current schedule, I wasn't truly bothered by it.

The next morning I woke up, showered, dressed and left the room to go downstairs and see what was for breakfast. Out of habit, when I'm leaving any room I'm staying in I always close the door and then automatically try to open it to be sure it has locked shut. In 18 months of traveling and staying at a multitude of hotels, I've never had one that did not lock as it should.

Until Tuesday morning.

I tried several times to be sure I had pulled the door completely shut and checked inside to see if there was some kind of latch that I failed to notice, but no matter what I did the lock would not engage. I remember thinking that it is a good thing I always engage the deadbolt AND close the inside door jamb latch; otherwise someone might have come in during the night and molested me. No, wait, that was a dream I had. LOL

So, I went downstairs and informed the young female desk clerk of the problem and she promised to have maintenance fix it first thing that morning. I was running short on time so I left my clothing and toiletries in the room, but took my laptop and camera with me in the rental car.

At work I sent an e-mail to the hotel asking them to notify me as soon as the door lock was repaired, but I never heard anything back from them and I was so busy that I didn't take the time to call them. Driving to the hotel after working another 13 hour day, I was slightly perturbed that they had not responded to my request.

I entered the hotel and walked up the stairs to my third floor room. Without using my key card I turned the handle...and the door opened, completely unlocked. I went in and made sure my belongings were still there, then went back downstairs to the front desk where a young (are we seeing a trend here yet?) man who was reading a book entitled, "Searching the Scriptures" was sitting. I informed him of the situation and he phoned someone who he identified later as the maintenance person. He hung up and reported that the maintenance person said he fixed the door. I said, "Well, I'm telling you, again, that I just opened the door without my key card, so it obviously is not fixed." He shrugged and with an unconcerned, unapologetic tone and attitude said, "So, do you want me to move you to another room?"

Although the entirety of the situation was causing me a great deal of anger, especially since I was tired from working long hours, I always try to represent my employer in a positive manner and not do anything, by action or behavior, that would reflect badly on it. So rather than following my anger-fueled wishes, I simply told him I would stay in the room that night and then check out the next morning and cancel the remainder of my 30-day booking because the hotel's actions and attitude were not acceptable. He again shrugged and said, "Ok."

My decision to not trust or deal with such an uncaring staff was borne out in the morning when I checked out and the young woman I had dealt with the previous morning said not one word about the door lock or my early check out. Maybe the kid from the night before had left a warning note, I don't know. But the level of customer service at that Comfort Suites hotel was below acceptable and quickly moving into the realm of completely unacceptable.

Next time: So, where did I move to?

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