My Blood Runs Crimson...

I know my previous posts were witty and comical but lets talk about something serious:

It's heeeeeeeeeeere!! It's fall, it's beautiful and it's football season!

I dont think I'd shock anyone if I exposed that I'm a Daddys Girl



(thats him and my ever faithful pup Brindle too)

Anyhow, growing up I thought whatever my dad did was cool && that trickeled into my love affair with college football. I absolutly LOVE the SEC. I talk smack, I buy all their merchandise, and on Saturday nights Eric avoids me "because he could be on the ground bleeding to death and I'd ask him to wait for medical attention until the game was over"

Lucky for me I have a job that allows me to talk football to a LOT of guys and a few years ago I was fortunate to meet a guy named Randy Wood. Mind you that checking into my hotel in the fall wearing any sort of Alabama football gear automatically gets you an upgrade and if you wear those damn War Eagle colors I usually threaten to have you thrown out of my lobby. :)

Randy was a regular at my hotel and we got to know each other pretty well & apparently I had mentioned that I'd never been to Bryant-Denny Stadium and that I hoped one year my dad and I could go as an early christmas present and watch the game. Randy was shocked that we had been fans for so long and just havent gotten there to see a game live! He joked and told me that we he ordered his season tickets he was gonna get us some too. I laughed and sent him on his way never thinking that he'd actually do it.. buuuuut




I couldnt believe it!! He ACTUALLY did it! in 70 days Dad & I will be in Alabama visiting family && then spending the entire day on November 18th walking around Bryant-Denny Stadium! Eating local food! Spending rediculous money on things at the book store! OMG I cant wait!!

Football season is here people!!

Mambo #5

There comes a time in your life when you realize that sometimes you just need to do the right thing. This is a lesson that I frequently am reminded of by Eric mostly because he's usually doing the right thing and reminding me to fall in line.

Sometimes it's clear: 76 year old lady from our building is struggling to take out the garbage and Eric will pop on out and do it for her. (I on the other hand was deeply engrossed in an episode of 24 and missed this opportunity until he comes back into the apartment and I look at him like 'where were you?')

Sometimes it's a little more of a struggle: 2am phone call from drunk friends needing ride home. As far as I'm concerned we work at 6 am and didn't even hear my phone but no... Eric is that guy. He might hate that he has to do it-- he might bitch and complain about how irresponsible people are but every time he says "it's the right thing to do"

Other times we're tired and just dont want to do anything and someone wants to hang out with us that we havent seen in awhile and can we stay home? Not a chance. It's not the right thing to do...

Last night "it's the right thing to do" was put on a whole new level. I come strolling in from a nice relaxing evening of bunco (I was out until 9:30pm! go me!)
and Eric informs me that our dear friend Michelle's boyfriend is in a band and was having a show for battle of the bands. The show starts at 10:30pm (eeek I should be asleep by then! I'm OLD!) and that because Ben came to HIS show... it was the right thing to do!"

Fine. Doing the right thing could be worse... I might have to change someones tire someday, or bail someone out of jail! A concert in a bar? No big deal....

ohhh but this wasn't any such bar... we were in the middle of the white trash census bureau count. Just in finding Ben at the bar I was eye-violated by 2 men over 45 wearing wife beater t shirts and skull caps. We quickly find out group and start to watch the show.

Contestant #1 is a guy named Kujo and it's just him and an acoustic guitar. Not bad.. I can certainly handle this.

Contestant #2 is where the pain and suffering sets in. This band is a semi heavy metal band that had NO ORIGINAL MATERIAL. We realized this of course after the first 2 songs where we couldn't even understand the words and then the third song was a heavy metal version of the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" theme song that then ran into a metal version of "Baby Got Back". Kill me now. We laughed and joked and made bets on what cover song they would play next (the 3 bets were Mambo #5 from me, mmmbop from Kevin and Sam chose spice girls' if you wanna be my lover)

Contestant #3 gets up on stage and this is Ben's Band "Prey of Misfortune" they do great but whoever was running sound was awful and we couldn't make out ANY of the words!! It was all a bunch of screaming and thrashing and yelling so Kevin, Sam, and I start singing Mambo #5 at the top of our lungs and NO ONE HEARD US!!

I suppose for doing the right thing it could've been worse. I spent the evening having a few drinks, a little singing, and a lot of laughing. All in all I'm glad we did the right thing...

It's Not Just About Finding Your Prince Charming

Countless times in my life have I heard women blame their misguided perception of relationships on movies. Why not blame it on Cinderella? I mean.. lets spend a timed 30 seconds rattling off the movies dedicated to making us believe that Prince Charming is out there waiting to sweep us off our feet.... and go:

Cinderella
Beauty and the Beast
Little Mermaid
Anastasia
Pretty Woman
An Officer and A Gentleman
Breakfast at Tiffanys
Casablanca
Dirty Dancing
My Best Friend's Wedding
Runaway Bride
Every Nicholas Sparks Movie EVER

ok and time. My point is I BARELY got started... but this isnt really my point. My POINT is that it's acheivable! It might not be the rediculous set up/heartbreak/true love ending that is exactly depicted in the movies... but there are a TON of happily married people out there in the world. There are PLENTY of people who are satisfied in their relationships (myself being one of them) so all those ladies out there that are blaming their inability to find "true love" lets just face it... YOUR PERSONALITY NEEDS WORK!

Ok so my point wasnt really about true love being achievable... my point is that movies are misleading us one one HORRIFIC AWFUL OTHER DIRECTION! Why oh WHY do movies
set me up to think that one sweet and precious day... i'll take part in a public DANCE SEQUENCE! Why hasnt this happen!?!? What do i have to do to MAKE this happen?!?
I mean look at the abundance of evidence that tells us that this should be achievable:

500 Days of Summer (thank you for sparking this blog!)
Napoleon Dynomite
40 Year Old Virgin
She's All That
Hitch
Dirty Dancing
Enchanted
13 Going on 30
Superstar
Beetlejuice
Ferris Bueller's Day Off (yeah you started this!)

but you know how many times this has happened to me?! NONE! Not one damn time! Infact.. Idont know one single personal friend who has achieved this not on a stage... so someone please explain to me why there's a mass of girls bitching about true love and finding their damn Prince Charming and no one else is concerned about dance sequences!

The Following Link is what my dreams are made of:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2seAJsrtIbQ

Who Taught Boys to Shower....

Let me just start out with this disclaimer that this is NOT A SEXUAL POST.

Over the 25 years of experience in my life I have realized that boys shower stupid. I've witnessed this event many times in my life (and to spare everyone I'll just go ahead and put out there that this is all through my countless times of baby-sitting, and locker rooms on the swim team where most shower were taken with swimsuits on as to soap out the chlorine in the suit and not just some sort of steamy X-rated image you can all burn your retinas on- but occasionally those too)

As I was saying, boys shower stupid. Yeah sure they can get the basics down, but there are doing one VERY important thing wrong. Now.. again, I haven't taken too many showers with women but I'm gonna go ahead and just bet that 98% of women do this task correctly just based on gender..

Ok-- so i'm in the shower.. and i'm suds-ing up my hair (yay shampoo that smells like fruit!) and this is the easy part. Most everyone can manage this.. but then the hard part. RISING!
Can someone please tell me why there is a genetic difference in rinsing!? For me (and again i'm assuming 98% of all other women like myself.. tilt their head back and let the water reach JUUUUST to the brow and let all the soapy water run down their scalp, back, and eventually down to the drain.

Boys, do NOT do this. Somewhere along the lines, someone taught boys that they should tilt their head DOWN dace into the stream leaving an endless run of soapy burning water RIGHT INTO THEIR EYES! Then once this happens they reach out like some sort of crazy Frankenstein reaching for a towel to wipe their eyes. If they're brace they may just give a hard wipe to the eyes and then spend two minutes whining about "how it burns!"

So I'd seriously love some feedback. WHY DO THEY DO THIS?! I've literally been standing there watching this about to happen yelling NO DONT! JUST TILT YOUR HEAD BAAACK NOT FORWARD!!! and nothing. They just dont listen. It is just genetics? One father teachers his son to do this and so on and so forth!?

Can we remedy this unneccessary pain and stupidity?! Can we really together as women and mothers, girlfriends, and baby sitters and change the world!?

So Thanks for the Cake...

Today I attended the funeral for Mr. Thomas Donahue. Sadly, I never knew him as Tom Donahue- to me he was simply Mr. D.

Mr. D was a fellow firefighter with my father on the Hammond FD but he was more than that. Mr. D was the best substitute gym teacher an elementary school kid could ask for! Screw the plan! Screw the Billy Ray Cyrus electric slide video we were SUPPOSED to learn. Screw the big and little arm circles that Richard Simmons Sweat the the Oldies. Mr. D was all about hardcore gym fun.

Mr. D was about dodgeball, and those rediculous scooters that you had to move by turning the large handles side to side rapidly! Mr. D was about democracy and he let us US have a vote. He let US choose what to do for our 60 minutes of required activity. This man was about Freedom!

Even better was that Mr. D took a special liking to me since he worked with my father. The year we moved from Hammond I suppose my dad was telling him how I was having a hard time adjusting and April comes around and what does he do? He has my dad call me to the firestation for and I walk in to find that he bakes me a cake! A damn good one too! That shit had chocolate swirls! (So much for physical fitness!)

Today I spend 2 hours watching a few hundred firefghters, family, and friends make their way past a casket and pay their last respects. I watched my dad stand tall for Honor Guard.
I hugged his wife and told her "I'm so sorry", I hugged his son JT and said " you and your family are in my prayers, and I winked through tears at Mr. D and said "thanks for the cake..."

My Not So First Day at Work..

Over the years I've had a few people question the validity of the work-related stories I have told. People figure that one job cannot simply produce all the mayhem that I've endured- and I used to think it was just the Hammond cluster that was subjected to this ridiculousness and have recently realized- it must be me.

I've been working with WLS for a little over 6 years now and held a management position for 2 1/2 of those so I've had my fair share of events. Yes I've evacuated from a flood, multiple fires, a few too many ambulance calls, too many power outages, and my fair share of "hey security? I have some hookers in the lobby..."

I guess God didnt want me to get rusty at my new property so he went full force on me on my second day of work, but my first day alone.

My shift started at 7am and I'm immedately thrown on the front desk. Thank GOD that this is a pretty awesome comfort zone for me. I have NO problem making/taking/breaking reservations, answering phones (although I know I said Hammond a few times by mistake) and handling various customers. The only tricky part is... i dont know where everything actually IS. All in all no big deal.

7:15am I look over and realize that there is icecream dripping out of the fridge in the gift shop and everything is DARK. Great! I figure hey-- no problem it's probably just a breaker that popped. Problem- where the hell is the breaker for it? CRAAAP! So I call my hero Herman in maintainence and he quickly resolves issues number one. Unfortunately for us during all this Becky my cafe supervisor comes over to tell me that the freezer unit we JUST had fixed is now holding temp at 70 degrees. Not so hot (err cold) for a freezer. So we scurry to call Rent a Center to get back the one we had the previous week and move all the product to the other freezer before we lose temp and we have to throw it out.

7:30 ish I start getting the housekeeping assignments for the day and realize that with the impromptu group of Nipsco guys (30 rooms for 3 nights!) that came in unexpectedly last night I'm already understaffed by 1 person when I get a call off from one of my housekeepers. Bummer. I am now down 2.

7:40ish I get a call from the laundry attendant stating that a belt broke on our industrial size dryer. Fantastic. Herman gets called to the rescue again.

Meanwhile I get a power outage flicker that was not devastating but just enough to make it neccessary to reboot my entire computer system and set me back on RE-making the housekeeping assignments after the call off. During this reboot I decide it's probably best to give my GM a heads up on the mornings activities. She of course is fantastic and says that she'll come in and help clean rooms (what a saint!) but we decide to see if we can call anyone in from another hotel first.

Multiple phone calls later there is NO one that will come in to help us and my my phone rings with oh yes, the SECOND housekeeper calling off. What does this mean?! This means that I am now down THREE people and my poor 7 month pregnant housekeeper who WAS scheduled to inspect will now have to clean rooms and I will have to inspect after my desk shift.

FML. A couple more power flickers later and I can inspect a ton of rooms and go home.

What awaited me the next day?! Oh yes, two more housekeepers called off so my GM and I got to clean a board of 12 rooms.

Not bad for my first day alone.. besides it was just another day in the life of a Hotel Manager..

I Walked 12 Miles for Russel Brand?! UGH!

Lets not confuse my confidence with cockiness here but I've got a lot of great things to say. If you're one of the privileged few who get to hang around me on a regular basis this blog will suit you for nothing more than an occasional shout out. The rest of you are in for a treat!

Day 1 of blogging. Where to begin?! Today I'm blessed with not having to work which is good, but it's a monsoon outside of the apartment which is bad. On the other hand I've pushed my undomesticated self to go grocery shopping so there is NO REAL REASON to leave the house unless I want to confirm to my fellow apartment neighbors that I am not in fact a hermit. (Again, no REAL reason to leave the house) End result? Sit back and contemplate yesterday's activities.

Last night I went with Eric to see my dearest friend Shara. We ended up having dinner at the Lucky Monk where we had a refreshingly awesome waitress (although she didn't have a name tag so no one knows who this mystery lady is!) who was awesome enough to recommend so delicious food and was brutally honest about steering us away from other items.

After that we went to AMC 30 to go see GET HIM TO THE GREEK. Let me first start out by saying that this theater was bigger than the Merrillville Mall. We parked (around 8pm) 600 yards away and trekked all the way up to the front row of parking and found roughly 3000 handicapped parking spots up front. At first we pondered how the city of Schaumberg even HAD this many handicapped people but then moved onto the fact that even parking in the front row left you with a 200 yard walk across the biggest concrete pond known to man!

Around 8:07pm we finally get to the entrance and walk up to purchase tickets. This is nothing more than an illusion of closeness to the actual movie. With NO ONE IN THE BUILDING we were still forced to walk through their assembled Que line for 6 rows back and forth and back and forth and back and forth all the way up to the movie window. We purchase ridiculously expensive tickets and move into the next room that one would think is the lobby.

8:15 and we only have fifteen minutes left before the movie starts (poor Shara is in heels for this marathon!) we walk 6 steps past the lady who gave us our newly purchased tickets to walk up to a man at a gate checking tickets. If they stretched out their hands I'm pretty sure they could touch... so obviously this was a serious checkpoint.

8:16pm I look up ahead and waaaaaaaaaay in the distance I can see a pop corn stand. 8:19 we're in line and pay $23.00 for the smallest bag of popcorn and 3 icee drinks. I then turn to the girl and ask her where we go for our theater and I swear she responds "Gate 27". Ok maybe she pointed and said "Screen 27" but we look down a 2 miles hallway and can only see the sign for Screen 18 before it bends and we lose visualization of our end destination.

Eric goes for the bathroom since this will be a long trip and us girls start our trek. Around Gate 18 we consider taking off our shoes..... we veer right and way in the distance- there it is! GATE 27! It is now 8:30 and the movie has started. We walk another unneccessarily long ramp up to the seats and plop down three rows from the back dead center. FINALLY!


Room gets dark.. more weary travelers are filing in. Previws start and we're a go!


Lets Tarintino this back to dinner for a sec when Eric and Shara are talking about going to see GET HIM TO THE GREEK. My thoughts were... "yeah it looks ok but i'm pretty sure that Russel Brandt plays the same character in EVERY movie. Couples Retreat, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, this one.. they all look like the same damn guy so i'm pretty sure that other than a minor plot twist I've already seen this."

Back to theater- What's the main character's name!? ALDOUS SNOW! Who is he!? THE EXACT GUY FORM FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL! Infact! Kristin Bell makes a cameo appearance AS SARAH MARSHALL! uggggggggggggggggh. Thank you Russel Brandt for making the same damn movie 3 times now. Screw you. I want my $8.50 back from you personally.

The movie is mediocre at best. There were some hilarious lines but they were scattered throughout at best. Not to mention is this fancy schmancy theater the sound proofing was bad and I heard every bass line and every gun that went off in whatever action movie was playing over at Gate 26.


Movie is the same as all the rest. Poor group of people is having not the best situation in life. (ie. dead end job- get him to the greek, rough patch in marriage couples retreat, about to be married- the hang over, bad break up - forgetting sarah marshall). They do some crazy event to get over it. IE. Book a rediculous show, go on a vacation, bachelor party, another vacation)
They party and have rediculous stories to tell about how they got drunk/high/laid/whatever.
They end some sort of apology or reconcilliation to the other party and go on living their happy normal life. End scene of all four of those movies. Great.


We walk 6 miles back to the car and talk about how Zombieland was amazing...