Dude.. I went to Woodstock!

Never thought you'd hear ME saying that did you? Well I am! I'm currently in Woodstock Georgia, a suburb 5 miles north of the downtown heart of Atlanta. And what am I doing? Going to the strip club, checking out a bar, clubbin with the boys? No.. I'm ironing clothes and blogging to you guys. Let's see.. this was an unusual day.. I'll try to recall the events in the order of occurence, though the order of strange occurrence would also be possible for today. Well, we got on site at Moultrie this morning at about 11:30. Expecting a quick 1 hour job, we found out when we got there that there was another office to wire up... oops.. no one told us that before.. we assumed that was a closet door or something. Anyway, we finished that job up and I spent the better part of 6 hours in the rack closet, re-wiring the patch panel and making an poor man's 24 port panel installation... I'll show you the presentation later.. lol.. it was interesting. We said our goodbyes to the client, which was actually sad. It's strange to have clients that are so cool that you hate to have to leave them, but we had a time table to keep and we were already about 5 hours behind our desired departure time. Before we left, VC3 called me and asked if we could do another job in Georgia while we're here. Being the awesome team that we are, we said "Sure!, Why The Hell Not?". They love when we do that. THEN they called and said that it was the phone companies fault so the phone company would handle it. THEN they called back and said the phone company denied ANY involvement in this mess.... but they would handle it on their end. THEN they called back and asked us once again to do the job... to which we said... DUH.. ok! (ACk.. GET THIS CAT OFF THE LAPTOP) Damned cat locked the CAPS key.. I'll get to that story in a minute... shit.. now it's drinking my coffee.. we're gonna have words here!!!! That's MY coffee and MY blue berry muffin... EWWW.. she licked all the blueberries! I offered her pound cake instead but apparently that's not cool enough!!! Ok, back to my point. We began the drive up here and placated ourselves with flipping through the radio stations trying to find hard rock and alternative stations... it was funny to see Hal head banging to Nine Inch Nails... then I had to explain the meaning beind the words to "Closer".... hmmmph... anyway. Once we hit the Atlanta outskirts, Hal decided he wanted to experience the HOV lane on the highway. Apparently, he'd never had the experience of the HOV lane because he's always on trips solo.. so he really wanted to enjoy the HOV experience. Then, I finally had that moment in my life that I've been waiting for: Waiting for someone to ask"What does HOV mean?"... just wanted someone to ask that.. that fact has been banging around in my head since I learned it.. like 10 years ago. Finally, Tim relieved from unfulfillment by asking "Tommy, What does HOV mean?" Hal and I announced together "High Occupancy Vehicle".... Now, I can't decide if the moment was truly worth relishing... I finally got to say it.... but my thunder was stolen by Hal, who ALSO knew the elusive meaning to the dreaded street sign that never gets explained. It's like figuring out Darwinism for the first time only to find that someone else already knew it... and could have told you before... takes the glory away. Upon arriving at the Hampton Inn in Woodstock, I was greeted with a hotel NOWHERE near as cool as the other Hampton from last night. As I came in, there was a bag of someone's trash wrapped up neatly in a Wal-Mart style bag at my hotel door. (Oh yeah, Hal and Tim seemed disappointed to have to share a room, but I'll be damned if I'm sleeping in a lumber mill again tonight. I'm interested to see which of them wakes the other up the most during the night with their incessant snoring! Serves them both right.. lol) So, to continue my narration of the evening's events: I stepped over the trash bag at my door to enter a not-so-cool hotel room. Tim met me here and we went for our nightly raid of the front desk concession stand. See, Tim raids 4 or 5 packets of hot chocolate and I raid half a dozen creamers and 30 or 40 sugar packets. Now, when we get in the elevator to go down to the lobby to make our rummage-raid, the elevator power blinks and stops us midway between floors. I'm immediately crushed by the thought of being stuck in an elevator in the dark, without my phone which I left in my room, with TIM... instead of Tyra Banks.. who it's SUPPOSED to be in this scenario. However, my consternation is short lived as the lights blink back on and the door eventually opens onto the landing. Hal is dutifully taking care of the Laundry for all of us, which is made somewhat aggravating due to the lack of cash on hand. None of us are carrying cash at this point and the laundry services don't use credit cards. What gives? EVERYTHING takes credit cards. I've seen condom machines that take credit cards.... but ok... So, Hal, in his way (OFF MY MUFFIN KITTY!!!) ACK!!!! Ugh... anyway.. Hal, bribes 2 dollars off the man at the desk to wash laundry somehow and then we settle in to begin on the dilemma of food. Hmm.. 11:30 right near downtown Atlanta Georgia, and there's NO pizza places open for delivery. In fact, there's NOTHING open for delivery.. we looked everywhere. Meanwhile, I'm on the phone with the wireless technician who provides support for the Hampton's wireless internet. He tells me he doesn't know what's wrong because he can't get into the router remotely. (No Duh shit head... if YOU could get into the router, then I could TOO.. and we wouldn't be speaking about this in the first place!) Eventually we work together and get it fixed... which is to say I got off the phone and waited for the Gateway device to finish rebooting in this lightning storm and then it let me on. Now, whilst all this is going on ( I love the word "whilst".) Hal is continuing to attempt to locate food. Well, everything is shut down in this town apparently, so what does he do? He sneaks around the main floor of the Hampton and KNOWS that there is a prep-room for tomorrow's morning breakfast. We got real friendly with the people at the last Hampton Inn and saw how their's was setup, so Hal assumed this one would be the same. Upon successfully negotiating his way through the dangerous office staff, he finds the stock room with 3 refrigerators unguarded. At this point Hal decided "screw it" and raids the fridge(s). He comes back to the room with stolen pound cake ( a whole bag of it) stolen blueberry muffins (half a dozen, minus the kitty's which she stole) and a ton of apples, and milk. So we munch on our stolen goods and check email etc while the clothes are finishing. Later on, I hear a strange sound in the hallway. I open my door and what do I see? Nothing! Hmm.. ok.. so I turn around and come back into my room. Guess what... there's a Russian Blue kitten staring me in the face as if to say "Dude, shut the door and let's find some grub!") Dutifully, I shut the door, pour the kitten some water into a clean ashtray for a bowl, and prepare to share my pound cake, which I've since learned is less palatable to the feline digestive system than blueberry muffins apparently! Now, at this moment, I sit here typing to you while my cigarette burns beside me, my half eaten muffin attracts my attention, and this kitten is asleep on my crossed legs in the chair, purring contentedly on a full belly of water and muffins... which.. hell, that's all I had for dinner tonight too... so she can't complain too bad. I contemplated calling the Hotel manager, but that's a no no because the owner would get into trouble for having a kitten here anyway. I decided that if no one comes knocking before morning, that I'll have me a new kitten on the ride home tomorrow. I've already had a cat with this name, but I find it fitting, so if I wind up keeping her, I shall dub her Georgia. Since I know there are those out there reading this who are the "aww.. she's so cuuuuute" type, I'll post a picture of her (right above this blog) and let you see her for yourself. Ok.. I'm tired of writing now.. you all have a good night. I think I've recanted most all of my evening and now I plan to curl up with a good book until I pass out (and probably get attacked by this cat!) Love all of you.. and hope that I'll be home tomorrow night.