19 July 2009

Random observations: Part One

For the most part, the hotel I’m staying at for this week’s conference is the equivalent of the pretty but vacuous sister of our regency romance heroine. It’s nice to look at, but has little substance and is even dangerous in a stupid sort of way.

It’s over air-conditioned, which creates havoc with my allergies. The elevator doors close quickly even when you’re in the midst of boarding (as the bruise on my arm shows) and the toilets seem to overflow with shocking regularity.

I’ll talk more about my bathroom geyser later. First, though, I have to give the staff a hand for trying. The engineer walks around with a plunger. Outdoor seating is abundant, and we have plenty of women’s restrooms—more important than you’d think at first glance.

Out of 2,000 conference attendees, maybe 10 are men. So imagine 1,990 women trying to jam into the same three restrooms between workshops, and you can picture how that would cause unimaginable havoc to the schedule.

So the good staff here at the Marriott converted several male restrooms into ladies rooms by taping a sign over the door and hiding the urinals behind yards of white linen and a row of vased gladioluses.

We all knew what lurked behind the flowers and the fabric, but the effort made us smile and kept us right on track to get to the next event.

Now if only the windows opened enough to let in fresh air.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Great start to your blog, Keena. On a side note, I love that one of your tags for this entry is "exploding toilets." Isn't that just apropos to everything happening in the world right now?

Keena Kincaid said...

LOL! Tags are fun to think of, and sometimes difficult. But given I witness two exploding toilets at the conference, I just had to include it.