Vacation Hard!: En Fuego!!.......

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.






------BEEEEEEP-BEEEEEEP-BEEEEEEP-----ATTENTION GUESTS OF L'ENFANT PLAZA---THERE HAS BEEN A FIRE REPORTED INSIDE THE BUILDING---

 

Irma starts knocking on the bathroom door, where I am sitting in peace, and hollers "There's a fire, Danny!". "Nuh-UH!", I want to holler back, but I don't.  Just because my internal monologue filter is broken doesn't mean Larry won't whip my ass for being a jerk to his lady. I drag my bones up to get dressed and lurch out. Grab my shoes and socks and out we go.

 

Out in the hall I notice the lack of smoke odor. "There ain't no fire in here. Can we just go back into the room and hide?", I ask my Dad. "I think you're right, but lets just do what we're supposed to", he says,  so we file down to the stairwell with the other 12th floor guests.

 

I plop down in front of the stairwell door to put my shoes and socks on and tell my Dad to go ahead and I'd catch up. He decides instead to go back to the room and double check that we had all major valuables, but didn't tell me that when he walked off. So I got my shoes on and waited about 3 minutes when a guy from the hotel came by and said we should go. Now, if I had any inkling that there was actually a fire, I would have waited for Dad, but I've been in a couple building fires before and this building was not on fire, so I left.

 

Down the stairs we went. The hotel guy followed right behind me and I'd stop every now and then and look up and listen to see if Dad was coming and he'd stop and ask if I was ok. "Yup, just waiting for someone". At one point he told me "You're almost there! You're doing good." like I was 5 years old.

 

At the bottom of the stairs, I'm freaking out a little. I never heard Larry behind me or even the sound of a door opening, so I was thinking he was being a smart ass and decided to stay in the room after all.

 

I turn to the hotel guy and ask "Did you see a guy come in behind us from the 12th floor? Did you hear anyone behind us on the stairs?".

 

"No", he says.

 

"Did you go through and knock on the doors to make sure everyone was out?".

 

"No, why would I do that?"

 

I look at this dick like he was from Mars: "Don't you think the hotel would want you to make sure it's guests are safe?".

 

"I don't work for the hotel, man."

 

This guy was wearing a pair of khakis and a black polo shirt and a hat with matching logos, so I assumed he was a hotel worker, but he was actually a roofer or carpenter or something when I looked closer, probably in for a convention or something . Shithead was telling me "We better go" and acting like a concerned employee of the hotel.

 

 

Even though it was a little irrational, I was pissed. I should have gone and checked to make sure Dad was coming, instead I'm being herded by this "Samaritan" asshole who probably thinks he was doing a good deed by "helping" a fat dude down some stairs.

 

Have you ever stared intensely at someone, not saying a word, until they leave your presence due to the severe anxiety it causes them? Try it, Reader. That shit works.

 

I exit the stairwell and there is Larry, standing with Irma outside in a mild drizzle. He tells me he went down right before me, probably slipping past me in a small group of people that left right before I did. We stand out there for about 15 minutes, waiting for the fake fire to be cleared. Afterward, tired and dishevelled, we wander off to dinner in the fancy hotel restaurant then up to bed.

 

 

Vacation Day 7

I got up early because sleeping in a fancy hotel bed with fancy down comforters and pillows is for fancy ladies and not for fat blue collar nurses with an asshole complex. I wander down to the lobby and snatch a complimentary paper, for which I had to show proof I was a guest at the hotel. Everybody in that lobby at 6am was wearing super fancy suits and ties and I was in comfortable vacation clothes, making me feel pretty out of place. This is why, last night at dinner, the waiters in the restaurant were just a little impatient and rude with us. We just weren't wearing the right shade of Calvin Kline and Brooks Brothers. I grab a coffee from the little bistro in the lobby and park it in a comfy chair and people watch in between reading the Washington Post, which has an unusual hard on for the Redskins, even for an NFL town. Probably because they don't want to think about how bad Washington politics suck right now so they turn the attention to something that sucks less.....The Chesapeake Watershed Region Indigenous Persons (PC term for the Washington Redskins - I thought it was funny)......who suck a whole lot these days.

 

 

I find the little computer room in the back hallway for the guests and print out the vouchers for the bus tour that we'll be going on today and call up to the room, cause those bums would've slept in til 10am if I let them. They get down to the lobby and grab a coffee and we got going into the little strip mall that's right underneath the hotel. We wander around down there and see a few shops and a little spot for a buffet style breakfast and stop in there, grab our dry omelets and corn beef hash and sit down. About 5 minutes go by and, I shit you not Reader, the fucking lights go out.

 

 

In the hall and in all the other businesses around us that we can see, all of the lights are on......but where we are.....where I am.......no lights. It was at this point that Dad and Irma are starting to show signs of actually believing that being on vacation with me is the proverbial crap shoot: any minute now somebody's gonna come in with a gun or there's going to be a monsoon (that's called 'foreshadowing' in case you were wondering). I mean, when the lights first went out the mood was like "Hmm, how strange," then, as we continued eating in the dark I caught them glancing at me quickly then looking away. Then they started leaning away from me and I'm pretty sure I saw Irma reach for a rosary in her purse. Then my eyes turned red and I was vomiting pea soup while my head spun around..........

On the next episode of Vacation Hard!: "O! say does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave...."

.........then I walked in and nerded all over the floor.

Vacation Hard!: Part 10 - An Adventurous Venture for the Venturless Adventurer

First a gentle reminder. If you experience any of the following:
Easily hurt and/or compromised feelings
Extreme religious and/or political opinions and mentality
Diarrhea of the mouth while suffering the above afflictions
Please do not read my blog.

If you have an aversion to cursing, violence, sex, destruction of property, having a sense of humor, or Article 19 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights please do not read my blog.

If you dislike or have difficulty understanding satire/sarcasm, just don't even bother. Nobody likes you anyway.

Awesome blog reading discretion has been advised. Don't be mad, Boo.

We all get loaded up on the flight and I wasn't the last person to be sat next to and it was kinda nice. And the lady who sat next to me was tiny, so much the better. The flight to Maryland was pretty uneventful and we land, grab our stuff and catch a ride to D.C. from Baltimore on one of those shuttles which we shared with some interesting folks from Australia and Thailand, and after seeing them I felt much less "touristy".

We get to the L'Enfant plaza hotel, where Ellie had strategically booked us. That hotel is the perfect distance to the National Mall, which was where all the really cool things to see and do in D.C. are, not to mention that it's situated right on top of the subway and also the perfect price: cheap. After settling in the room, we decide to get moving to see the sights.

We get outside and it's overcast......there have been overcast skies ever since I left Oregon. I haven't seen the fucking sun for more than five minutes the whole time I've been on vacation. And the humidity in D.C. is actually worse than it was in Texas that day.

Being awesome in front of the hotel

  But off we went down the block to the Smithsonian Castle. As we walked down there was a slightly obscured view of the Capital Building.....to which my Dad says to Irma, "Look, honey.....it's the White House."



  That stopped me in my tracks. This man used to grill me about everything from history to geography (knowing the capitals and cultures of different countries was a huge deal in my house) and it was hard for me not to be a total dick and correct him at the top of my lungs. So I just let it go.....for now.

 

 

We're just about to get to the cross walk to the castle and we see this thing:

"What the fuck is that?" Dad and I ask almost in unison. It didn't answer us, so we moved on.

We cross the street to the Castle and wander the grounds for a while before going in.




There is soooooo much to see when it comes to the Smithsonian buildings (and the capital in general), so we quickly toured the castle which has a little bit of everything, and got out of there in about an hour, walking out on the other side where hundreds of tourists are wandering around on the mall grounds. We have a look around, seeing the Capital building, the Washington monument and most of the other Smithsonian buildings and realize there is no way we're going to get to it all, but it won't be for trying, so off we go down to the Washington monument.

Because of my curse (sorry Virginia and D.C. residents) there had been an earthquake about a week before I left on vacation, which had significantly damaged some of the structures in D.C., including the Washington monument, so it was closed to the public. I didn't even realize you could go up into the thing, but now I do and am highly disappointed that I couldn't because I'm cursed. Also, there was a storm on the way up the east coast, but we'll get to that later.

Moving past the monument and walking down the thoroughfare I see the Lincoln Memorial, which I'm totally geeking out about seeing, and I proclaim "There it is!", like the nerdy nerd I am. Larry asks what and I tell him. He looks at the map and says, "Oh, no, that's the WWII memorial. The Lincoln memorial is past that." I don't know if he was trying to eff with me or what, but since I know the man well and his M.O. has always been "I'm only wrong if I say I am, and only then because I thought I was wrong in the first place, but I was actually right". So I mutter, "Uh, ok", and get on with my life.

 

 

 

 

 

We get to the WWII memorial which, consequently, is not the Lincoln memorial, stop for a bit and move on down to the Korean and Vietnam War memorials.









As we come up to it we can see that the reflecting pool is not a pool at all.......it's a fucking mud pit. Apparently it needed renovating and the dudes down at the memorial preservation office got together and said, "Well, it's been 30 years or so since the pool has been fixed, so when should we do it?.........What's that Stirdivant?.........You want to wait until Daniel Briggs is on vacation here?......Hmm....sounds reasonable. Did he buy a really expensive camera just for this trip?......perrrrrrfect........" - This is the part where I imagine my old nemesis Stirdivant steepling his fingers and doing the Dr. Evil laugh. He's been dogging my shit since kindergarten.

Here is a shot of the Reflecting Pool reflecting fuck all.............no wait!! It's reflecting that porta-potty down there at the end!! Oh, joy.

On to the Lincoln memorial we go and I love it. If the pool had been there it would have been almost too perfect, despite the overcast skies. A few pictures here and we move down the road to the newly constructed MLK memorial.  A few pics there and I start feeling woozy and irritated. I realize that I haven't eaten anything today, it's now almost 5pm and we've been up since the time nazi debacle this morning. I think this is the most I've accomplished in one day since nursing school.

I'd love to show more pictures of the MLK, Lincoln, and the three war memorials, but I found that I've lost something like 50 photos.  Needless to say I was livid, but I have better ones that I took a few days after this that will be in an upcoming blog and later on the 'ole facebook page.  Feel free to stop by and say hullo! 

I walk ahead of Dad and Irma, saving them from "asshole mode". I walk across the bridge on the tidal basin and stop right in front of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing for a quick rest and a drink. My folks catch up and we all head back to the hotel.

 

 

When we get back, we're all seriously exhausted, irritated, and in dire need of showers. Well, I suppose I was the only one who smelled like a brothel, because being as big as I am (and paranoid about B.O.) that's just the life I live. So I drank my weight in water and head into the bathroom. I take a very long shower and get out and sit down on the can to relax in silence (easy with the visuals, Reader, my six pack isn't that sexy).

 

 

I'm totally exhausted and feel like a bag of smashed assholes. Sitting there for just a minute was wonderful and peaceful, like a mini vacation from my vacati --BEEEEEEP-BEEEEEEP-BEEEEEEP-----ATTENTION GUESTS OF L'ENFANT PLAZA---THERE HAS BEEN A FIRE REPORTED INSIDE THE BUILDING---PLEASE EVACUATE IN A CALM AND ORDERLY MANNER-----BEEEEP-BEEEEEP-BEEEEEP----ATTENTION GUESTS OF L'ENFANT PLAZA.........

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No..........................................fucking..............................................way.

Next time on Vacation Hard!: En Fuego!!........NOT!

"Then my eyes turned red and I was vomiting pea soup while my head spun around.........."