jianantonic | (no subject)

I wish I could sleep in hotels. But I always toss and turn way too much and never get enough rest. I'm in Silver Spring, MD now, waiting for the Sunday Swiss game. Ahren and I drove up yesterday and played in the B/C/D pairs, which is playing up a level for us (we could've played in the I/N game). The first session, well, I don't want to talk about it. We were holding our own in the second session until a meltdown in the last two rounds, and we dropped just out of scratching. We got paired up with an older couple who were not the least bit excited about playing in the B/C/D Swiss for today, so I think we're going to play in the NLM Swiss. That's fine, because I'd like to leave here with *something* to show for the trip.

Fingers is working the tournament, so we went out with him last night looking for a place with the following qualifications: a bar, vegetarian food, not so skeevy that I can't get a good Margarita, *anything* vegetarian on the menu, and where we can order entrees for less than $10 apiece. The sub-$10 rule combined with the non-skeevy rule made it really hard. We walked into one place and were seated, but when we looked at the menu, the only thing veg on the whole thing was like a $23 salad, we just walked out. I feel like such an ass for doing that, but I don't feel too bad, because we were there for a good 10 minutes without once being greeted by the waitress. And we didn't dirty up any of our silverware. After walking several miles (okay, blocks), we finally found something that met my requirements PERFECTLY. Ruby Tuesday. We sat at the bar and I ordered my Margarita. The bartender did not card Ahren, but did card Fingers. Fingers laughed at that, and she said "It's the hair. Oh shit, I didn't mean to say that out loud! I'm sorry! Don't hate me." Fingers laughed - she meant Ahren's hair - or lack thereof. I told her "I'm going to order a drink; are you going to want to see my ID?" To which she replied, "Yeah, so your other friend doesn't feel bad. Shit! I didn't mean to say that out loud either." She was cool.

I was SODRUNK after a few sips of my margarita, so we decided that the bartender had the hots for me and must've slipped me something. When we were done there, we went looking for a hotel. A Courtyard Marriott and a Crown Plaza were within view, but I told Fingers my hotel requirements were non-skeevy, but not so non-skeevy that it's too expensive, i.e., it can't have "Crown" or "Courtyard" in the name. We walked several blocks to a place Fingers was sure was a hotel, only to find it was condos. I was kinda pissed about that, because for some reason when I'm intoxicated, I can't walk very fast. In order to keep up with Ahren and Fingers on our long trek for a hotel, my drunk ass had to run. I've probably never looked more ridiculous, and I wore a cow costume to work on Halloween 2004.

Anyway, after walking miles (for real this time), I was ready to take anything, so we actually did end up staying at the Courtyard Marriott, which is not actually as expensive as I'd thought it would be. If only we'd looked into that before we walked all around Silver Spring. We actually parked right next door to this hotel when we got here. Dammit.

Anyway, it's time to get up and get on with the day. Hopefully we don't get spanked today.

Peace.

PS - there is an owl outside my hotel window. It's 9am and that fucker is hooting up a storm. Weird. Remember that time I rescued a baby owl? That was awesome.