So I'm safely back from Austin. It wasn't uneventful even if I never did make it down to Debauchery Central on 6th Street. Oh well. But I did have a productive few days of work serving on a panel for the Texas Commission on the Arts. That part of the trip isn't really very interesting though. So here's the story:

Just for a brief bit of background information, Beeki and I have been having car problems lately. (Exhibit A) My car is in the shop because the engine fell apart roughly 8,000 miles after the warranty expired. I borrowed a car from Crackhead and the Colonel, but Beeki was driving it because it has an advantageous parking sticker on it. So I was driving Beeki's car. I filled up with gas and hit the road.

The drive itself was uneventful if late. Just as I was pulling into town, I noticed the "Check Tire Pressure" light come on. I was previously unaware such a light existed. I thought that surely it must just be a quirk of Beeki's car because I had just replaced the tires on her car a few months ago. But as I pulled into my hotel, which can be found in the 8th circle of Dante's Hell between the Falsifiers and the Sowers of Discord, I heard a telltale hissing sound and found a nail in my brand new tire. Since it was midnight, I decided to just head to my hotel room and deal with it in the morning.

So I went to check in. I was greeted with the usual check-in formalities until the very end. That's when the following conversation occurred:

Evil Hotel Lady: Okay, how many room keys will you need?

Cach: Umm, two please.

EHL: Okay, here you are. Have you ever stayed with us before?

Cach: Umm, nope this is my first time.

EHL: Great, well just so you know, we are an extended stay hotel. So room change service will only be given once every seven days and since you're only staying with us for three days you won't have any maid service. But if you need anything, just let us know.

Cach: Umm... okay.

(I began to walk away when I heard the following exchange between EHL and the two men who had been behind me.)

EHL: Can I help you?

Man #1: Yes, I need shampoo please. There's none in my room.

EHL: No, there isn't any in the rooms. But I can get some for you. (She does.)

EHL: (To next man.) Can I help you?

Man #2: Yes, I need towels please. There's none in my room.

EHL: No, there isn't any in the rooms. But I can get some for you. (She does.)

I got into the elevator with the two men and one of them tried to offer me one of the bottles of shampoo that EHL had given to him. He was creepy as hell, so I told him I brought my own and then stared at the elevator floor which appeared to have been the site of a mass murder judging by the number of random dark stains.

Now, I'm a pretty hardy traveler. I've lived in third-world countries and stayed in some pretty rough places. But I would take still-warm just-cut goat skins on the dirt floor of a Bedouin tent mere feet away from the latrine in the Sinai Peninsula over this place again any day of the week. All I can say for the bed was that it was lucky for me that I was always as tired as I was or I never would have been able to ignore the itching.

The first time I flushed the toilet I nearly crapped myself. (Which is remarkable because, biologically speaking, I was empty.) The toilet made the most evilly loud noise I've ever heard emanate from a can. Little did I know, but it wasn't the only loud plumbing incident I would encounter.

The most remarkable feature of this hotel was the smell. I found a dead cat in the parking lot and strapped it to my face to serve as a mask against the ungodly stink that permeated the entire building.



At roughly 6:00am, an hour unknown to those of us in the Arts, I was awakened by what can only be described as screaming. There's no other word for the noise coming from the pipes in the wall between my shower and my neighbor's. I was so confused. Before I actually woke up, I was dreaming about someone screaming thanks to the noise. So when I did wake up, amid the screaming pipes and the stench that you could almost taste, I was very confused. I shut the bathroom door, cried a little bit, and went back to sleep.

Now, amid all this complaining, I actually don't have the best story from my group. One lady found a raw chicken in her room's refrigerator. Yes, a raw chicken. She called the front desk to ask them to remove it and was told they would do so the next day. They did not, so she left it on the front desk. I wish I could have watched that moment.

As bad as the hotel was, the work environment was sweet. We met at the Texas State Capitol building. It's friggin' huge. It is the largest state capitol building in the nation. Duh. We met in a secret underground bunker set up to keep our proceedings top secret. We walked the halls with congressmen and slutty interns. (Point of Order: I have no evidence that the interns were slutty, it's just a base assumption I make these days.) We even ate in the capitol cafeteria. For lunch the first day I had pecan encrusted chicken. On the second day I noticed them serving lemon encrusted chicken. I was suspicious of all the encrusting so I stuck with salad. Here's a little video of the inside of the capitol rotunda:



So back to the car, through a series of uninteresting events that circle around the incompetence of the local Goodyear mechanic, I finally got my tire repaired. I made it back to Waco just fine and now I'm trying to catch up on sleep. As usual, I'm failing. I hope that you're all still awake now. I promise to waste your time with more drivel throughout the week.