Home Again, Home Again

This was my view for a lot of the last two weeks.  Flying to D.C., Virginia, Tennessee and Connecticut for nine days out of ten was a little tiring.  I enjoy traveling for work.  I'm able to see places I normally wouldn't get to visit, and I get to hear about great, really needed services being offered to victims of crime.  I have also confirmed my suspicions that I will never, ever tire of going out to eat.  : )

I've also realized how pitiful I am on my own.  I feel weird eating in restaurants alone, like everyone is staring at the poor lady with no friends.  It feels even weirder to sit and read while I eat or play on my phone, so I do an awkward take a bite, check my phone, put it down, look around and take another bite.

I also lose all sense of reason when I am alone.  The restaurant suggested to me in Tennessee was a country food buffet.  The waitress gave me the soup bowl and said salad plates were at the buffet.  At least that is what I thought she said.  The soup bowl was a weirdly large shallow bowl, but there were tiny red plates by the salad bar so I dished up some soup in the weirdly large shallow bowl.  I then fill up a tiny red plate with salad.  As I walk back to my table, I realize the weirdly large shallow bowls were actually for the people (like me) who bought the soup and salad bar only, and the tiny salad plates were for people who bought the whole country food buffet.  I then noticed the dark brown, blend into the dark brown container soup bowls that were for, you know, the soup.  I felt like an idiot the whole time I ate out of my giant bowl.

Then, in Connecticut, my hotel room's deadbolt was really difficult to close.  The strike plate was not lined up with the deadbolt so I had to push on the strike plate really hard to close the deadbolt. The second picture shows how the lock turned.




















As soon as I checked in, I pushed in the strike plate and locked the dead bolt and unlocked it and all was well.  The next morning, I get dressed, go to the door and cannot unlock the door.  I tried to keep from panicking as I tried over and over to get the lock to turn. It would not budge, so I finally called the front desk and they promised to send someone up right away. I decided to try one more time.  For some reason, instead of unlocking the dead bolt, I pulled on the actual handle and it opened.  Of course.  I had to call the front desk again and tell them I had escaped.  Again, feeling like an idiot.  It is probably better for everyone that I am not traveling for the next six weeks or so.