Last Friday, we went to New York City. Just a quick trip up on Friday afternoon to attend an event on Friday night, and back on Saturday morning. Not quick enough as it turned out.
Despite the rain and traffic , we got there with enough time to spare so that Tim could work up a good aggravation before dinner.
First of all, when we asked if the room had a refrigerator, they apparently thought we asked if the room was a refrigerator. Now I'm all for air-conditioning when it's ninety degrees outside, but when it's sixty? Call me crazy, but somehow, I think that you should at least consider switching over to heat, or at the very least turning the air off. A good rule of thumb would be: if the guests' fingers and toes are turning blue and they are calling room service to request parkas and hot water bottles, the room is probably TOO COLD!!!!!
Thinking this was a problem easily solved, we chipped our way through the block of ice encasing the control panel, and bumped it up to ninety...and the air just blew colder. Great, now we could become honorary members of the polar bear club. Finding the blower control, we explored those options as well while we still had some feeling in our limbs and at least a smidgen of fine motor skills left...and, impossibly, the air blew even colder!!! On the bright side though, by morning, we would be cryogenically preserved, and for just a fraction of the price Walt Disney paid.
Before frostbite could set in, we just shut the system down altogether, and ordered flannel PJs, thermal sheets and blankets, a book of matches, some graham crackers, chocolate bars and marshmallows (why be cold and miserable? When life hands you a frozen lemon...make s'mores!).
Anxious to be warm again, or at least not colder than a block of ice, I went into the bathroom to change, so we could go downstairs to the event. Through the door, I could hear Tim muttering to himself, which is not usually a good sign. Sure enough, when I came out, he was squinting morosely at his computer.
"Bad news?" I enquired, then wanted to kick myself for opening that can of worms.
"The internet service isn't working, so I can't get online," he groused, "and, the light on the desk isn't working either, so I can't see a darn thing." (Okay, so he didn't actually say darn, but it was close, although there may have been one or two other four-letter words and colorful adjectives in there as well. I'm not sure because I was too busy trying to lock the room safe which kept beeping at me.
He interrupted his tirade when it became clear that something took precedence in my universe over him being able to get online.
"What are you trying to do?" he interrupted himself.
"Nothing. I can't get the safe to lock," I pressed the series of buttons once again as though it would make a difference, and got computerized groans and an error message in response.
"You're hopeless with mechanical things," he informed me with an air of superiority as he brushed me aside, "I'll do it."
Oh yeah, and you're so good at getting things to work. How's the whole online thing working out for you? Would you care for a flashlight to see it? I thought it, but I didn't say it.
"All you have to do is punch in four digits and hit 'lock'" he instructed me loftily.
Gee, now why didn't I think of that? I guess because I've never traveled before and seen one of those new-fangled contraptions. Go-ool-ly. Is that what they call tech-no-lo-gy? Too bad I can't read either, or I might have seen the directions printed right on the front. By the way, you manage to get the heat working?
Beep...beep...beep...beep. Rattle, rattle. Boop boo. Error.
I just smiled smugly.
"Clearly, it's broken," he defended his computer expertise.
No. Really? I guess that's just one more thing to add the the (growing) list then.
Not in the best of moods, we somehow made it through the rest of the evening and into the next morning without further incident. They did come and fix the safe, but not the internet or lamp, and although the heat never came on, at least we had stopped the cold air from actually blowing, so we considered it a victory to get one and a half out of four. Woo hoo!
I took the first shower in the morning, and while Tim tried to defrost himself with the hot water, I finished packing up. I heard the shower shut off, and then Tim laughing, which is not his usual reaction to being clean.
Almost afraid of the answer, I called out, "What?"
Choking back more laughter (which frankly had a slightly maniacal edge to it), he told me that it was a good thing that I had taken the first shower.
"Why?"
He opened the door to show me the knob to the hot water cradled in his hand.
"It just fell right off" he explained, shaking his head.
Before anything else could go wrong, we finished packing up and got out of disaster central.
"Did you have a good stay?" the guy at the reception desk asked Tim as we checked out.
"Yeah, Fine," realizing it was not this guy's fault, Tim decided to forgo the litany of complaints associated with our stay.
"Good," the clerk enthused.
Tim rolled his eyes and bit his tongue.
"Glad you had a great experience with us."
That was it. The magic word. The duck dropped. Tim couldn't keep it bottled up inside for another second.
"Great?" he fired back at the bewildered man who looked like he had pulled the tail of what he thought was a kitten only to realize too late that it was a lion. "Great? Yeah, it was great when the internet didn't work and there was no light in the room. And it was really great when the safe didn't work. It was super great that our room was so cold you could hang meat in it. But the greatest thing of all was when the hot water handle fell off in the shower this morning. I tried to be nice, but you just couldn't let it go. You couldn't accept 'fine'. No, you had to push it with 'great'!"
I don't think I've ever seen anybodies eyes grow that large that fast before. I'm guessing it was at that point that the man erased the word great from his vocabulary. I imagine him now enquiring of departing guests, "How was your stay? Adequate?"
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