Greetings from the land of dial-up and fire alarms

I'm sitting in our hotel room...Monkey Man just woke up from his mandatory nap and we're trying to get our act together to head back over to my parents' house.

I am exhausted. When we checked into the hotel yesterday, they screwed up our reservations and instead of giving us a nonsmoking king room with a sofa bed, they booked us into a smoking room. Then only had nonsmoking double rooms left. Therefore, this means that one of us is the winner of the Sleep with Ninja Monkey Man contest and last night I was the unlucky winner. He was so overtired that he thrashed, kicked, and tossed all night long so I didn't get much sleep at all. Well, tonight is Joey's turn so I wish him well as he receives approximate 372 kicks in his kidneys. It's really not bad if you drink enough bourbon before bedtime.

So after being pummelled all night long, I was awakened at 5:45 AM by Joey getting ready to leave for the football game...then at 6 AM the wake-up call that Joey had cancelled rang and woke me up again...then I fell back asleep and woke at 7:15 realizing that we had to be ready and in the lobby at 8 AM to have breakfast and hitch a ride with my sister and brother-in-law to my parents' house (Joey had the Pimp Mobile for the game). As I'm getting out of the shower I hear the fire alarm going off on the hallway.

At a moment like this, you are faced with two decisions. Either streak buck-ass naked through the lobby (only to discover that it's a test and the entire volunteer fire department that you went to high school with - Hi Jim Bob! - is ogling you as you streak past the complimentary breakfast bar), or you can burn to death.

I chose burning to death. There was no way I was leaving that hotel room in my pajamas with wet hair to stand outside. Not to mention the fact that my hair would frizz like nobody's business if I just went product-free outside. I've got priorities, yo.

Now, before you finally put the seal on my Mother of the Year Award for almost letting my child burn to death, let me explain that when I got into the shower I could hear someone hitting the fire alarm bell in the elevator. Typically this is wired to the controls system so according to code it sets off the fire alarm for the whole hotel until someone shuts it down. So I kind of knew it was a false alarm in all likelihood.

I've got so much to write about, but it will probably have to wait until I get back to high-speed internet land. Not to mention the fact that I'm sure after tonight's dinner I'll have even more fun with vegetarianism to write about. And my niece's nefarious plot to talk my brother into letting her take an internship next summer in either Yemen or the Sudan, her top two choices. Why the kid can't take a nice internship in Washington is beyond me, but then again, life without meat is kind of beyond my realm of comprehension as well.