I am once again traveling, this time within the US.  My chosen hotel had the most stars on Google Maps of any hotel within 10 minutes of my work destination.  Which, given the few things that were said in the reviews, perhaps may be less of a good thing than you might think ( Read more... )

T left this morning.  I got up at 4:30am to see him off.  I went back to bed and slept a bit more.  But I woke up to an empty hotel room which is... for some reason much harder than if he had not come with me at all.  I feel terribly, horribly alone ( Read more... )

Warning: This will be of no interest to those of you who do not travel and therefore do not stay in hotels.

There has been a noticeable trend lately in hotel bedding away from sheets and blankets. I have noticed this throughout the world in hotels that are obviously not related to each other by some chain. I can only imagine that it is some ( Read more... )

You get the part about me being a statistician, right?  One of my occasional job duties is to teach a class on surveys.

So I start teaching a regular statistics class yesterday and we get to the part where I am introducing the Greek letters for mean and standard deviation.  So I go off on a  sample vs population tangent with the Census as the ( Read more... )

Seriously. Stranded ( Read more... )

I saw another foreigner today. ( It was kinda nice to see that I am not alone in my chaos, panic, and language frustration. )

The first number I called was the concierge.  After 20 rings, I gave up and pushed a button mysteriously titled "Guest Services Manager".

"I want to speak to someone who speaks really good English!"

"Eh?  Ex-cuse me?"

"I want to speak to someone who speaks REALLY GOOD ENGLISH!"  I said it louder and slower.

"Please wait a moment."  I waited.

Crackle- ( Read more... )

I'm not sure why they felt it necessary to sanitize the TV remote control, but I'm sure I am grateful.