Small Separate Side Post

I didn’t really see a place for bitching and moaning in the few posts I wrote about our wonderful trip to Chicago – hence the small separate side post.

First, when we arrived at our hotel, we requested a crib for the baby.  Evening turned to night, and we were still without a crib.  We called down to the front desk, and she kept saying strange things about the missing maintenance guy, but finally he was located.  He delivered the crib and took a look at our ant (!) problem and declared it was no big deal.  Maybe not to him, but I saw the Dateline episodes about the people who got severely bit by the hotel bed bugs!  On top of this, we had a door that would stick so that I’d have to knock every time I came back from getting pop or ice or something from the car, etc.  And then there were the drunken celebrity phone calls…

Not something we did, rather, something we came across when perusing the hotel’s tv offerings.  On the hotel’s video menu, where they usually have movies you can buy, games you can play, and stuff about the hotel, we learned that the Hampton Inn offered some offbeat choices.  First, there was the Hilton Family Channel – 24/7 documentaries about the Hilton family, how they began their hotel empire, and where it is today.  After 10 minutes, I had had enough.  And after those 10 minutes, not a word of Paris, interesting…

Another strange tv offering was under the ‘short takes’ menu.  These seemed to be youtube.com videos – I know I had even seen a few on youtube.  You know, Charlie Bit Me (the British siblings posing for a picture when the baby bites his big brother, a youtube / talkshow sensation), Office Pranks; I’m sure you’ve come across some of those popular videos somewhere in pop culture, yet here they were being offered for (free) viewing in the hotel room!

Still another strange tv offering was “hot for words”.  And before you get the wrong idea (or is it?  I’m confused by this whole concept), this was not the ‘adult’ menu.  Each ‘hot for words’ video however, looked to be something naughty but was actually proven to be individual dictionary lessons – to increase one’s vocab, perhaps?   But it still seemed to be a strange selection for a hotel tv – I’ve never seen anything like that before…

And lastly, perhaps what is the weirdest selection on the hotel tv: drunken celebrity phone calls.  It was a young adult (I guess?) making prank phone calls to celebrities (supposedly).  But the caller was the only person on camera, and there was no proof that celebrities were even involved – maybe it would have been funny if we had seen the celebrities reactions to being called by some random (drunk?) guy, but there was no proof that he was even able to get ahold of the celebrities phone numbers, and even then, a stretch.  It was a really strange thing to have this kid on our tv, watching him make these really stupid, probably fake phone calls.  What a strange tv offering…  yet it was free, and we bit, I guess…

The final bad thing about this hotel is the ringer on the phone – it sounded like a woodland creature, no joke!  I really wanted to get a video of the thing ringing, but when the baby didn’t sleep that well, everything of least importance was put aside.  Too bad, it was the strangest ringtone I’ve ever heard…  at least it rang for the first time in the evening.  If it had rung in the morning without us knowing it was the phone, I would have been convinced it was some sort of wild rodent loose in our room!

Lisa