Rants

Holiday Inn

Maybe back in the day Holiday Inns were a nice place to stay. Nowadays unless you get to stay in a newly constructed motel, they all seem like a place going to seed, not yet there, but drifting that way. Our home away from home these last four days has been the Holiday Inn Choo-Choo Hotel in downtown Chattanooga. They have changed the elegant old train station into the lobby, restaurants and offices of the hotel. They have even turned some of the old railway cars into rooms and dining. A nice concept, recapture the glory days of rail travel in America. Unfortunately today’s tourist is not really interested. The kids get a kick out of climbing on the steam engine and standing in the engineers spot, but only for a minute, then they want to go to the pool or play in the video arcade. The place fits my expectations of an older Holiday Inn and it is sad. The rail cars look like they need a renovation instead of the every other year paint job on the roof. You just know that today’s style corporation will use and use just patching things until it stops making money then discard it. Pardon me boy, was that the Chattanooga Choo Choo?

Hollywood III

Went to a matinee of “Minority Report” today. I love Sci-Fi films and Donna usually humors me, of course having Tom Cruise in it helped. Unfortunately the graphic eyeball transplant sequence caused me to have to promise to take her one Julia Roberts movie *and* one Sandra Bullock movie before I will get to pick another movie for us to see. All in all it was a very good movie. Interesting concept that was well executed, up until the very end. At the point where the credits should have rolled, it gave us not one, but two answers to questions that we didn’t ask and really didn’t need to know. I guess the film makers or the studio felt we had to have a warm and fuzzy feeling as we left the theater instead of just the satisfaction of a mystery solved.

Erin Andrews

Who does she work for? Braves – Red Sox have been playing a weekend series and I’ve been lucky enough to catch some of the games on TV. TBS has televised Friday and Sunday while Fox did the Saturday game. I vastly prefer the TBS versions even thought they are more Braves-centric over Foz’s usually overdone graphics and announcers. On TBS they used to just read off the scores of other ongoing games, but now for some reason feel the need to break away periodically to a blonde, tan, pearly white toothed Erin Andrews for updates. Each time we break away there is a flashy EA Sports (a game console game maker) logo video animation, Erin introduces of clip of some ball player smacking a home run, she tells us the score, we get the EA Sports thing again and we are back to the Braves game. Does Erin work for TBS or EA Sports? Hard to tell.

Triskaidekaphobia

We spent last night in a brand new Holiday Inn Express in Anderson, SC. They put us in room 315. It wasn’t until we were leaving the next morning that I noticed that the room next door was 311. In this place all the odd numbered rooms were on one side of the hall and all the even numbers were on the other. That means we were really in room 313. Would they have gotten complaints about staying in that number room?

Tonight and for the next 3 nights were are staying at the Holiday Inn Choo-Choo Hotel in downtown Chattanooga. Our room number is 1015. In this building all the rooms are on one side of the hall and are numbered consecutively. The room to our left is 1014 and to the left of that is 1013. Go figure.

Damon’s

Went out to dinner this evening after running the Miata Club newsletter through the postage meter at Rader. Damon’s is right across the street and we love ribs, so over we went. It was early, the place was pretty empty so when we and asked for a booth in the No Smoking section, we figured that would be no problem. When the hostess turned right instead of the usual left we questioned her. She said, “This is no smoking.” We said, “But it is right near the bar/smoking section. Could we sit over there instead?” She said, “That section is closed, besides there isn’t any one here yet, so…” That is when we stopped listening, turned around and left. There is a Tony Roma’s a couple of miles away. We have been in too many, there is no one here situations before. Invariably just as we are eating our salads, everyone in the booth on the other side of the little wall will light up. No thanks, there are just too many places to eat out to have to gamble on having our meal spoiled by the stench of cigarettes.

Ninety Nine Cents

5 or so years ago when color copiers started to make their way into the copy & printing places it cost a dollar to make one 8-1/2 x 11 color copy. I have never wanted the services of a color copier until now. I print out the Master’s Miata Club newsletter at work. Always used the laser printer in my area for it, until a year ago. They company bought a color laser printer. I started doing the newsletter on it after hours. I didn’t think the folks at the company minded me running 25 or newsletters off a month, after all the Miata Club is a non-profit organization, so it is kinda like a community service. Well fast forward to now. Business is bad, sales are down, production is down, etc. I’m starting to feel a little like they might not take kindly to me “stealing” there paper, toner, time anymore. For the heck of it I called my friends at the Mail Boxes Etc. and asked how much for a color copy. 99?. Big price drop!?! I guess no one else has made enough copies to bring the price down any, huh? I now print 50 newsletters with just the front page in color. I would need 100 copies, fortunately there is price break at 100, times 78? equals $78. Some how I don’t think the club will want to spend that much on printing every month. August I go back to black & white.

Nothing

Today was a nothing day, but I still feel the need to write something here, so this is it. Please deal with it kindly, ’cause I can’t.