Crazy After All These Years

Thursday morning, I left town for a conference and just got back today in the middle afternoon. It was full of therapists (insert therapist joke here) and classes. The presentations went well and were very informative, except for the session in which the presenters read all of their information off of the power-point slides on the screen while we held the handouts in our hands. Paying a few hundred dollars to be treated like a kindergartner is not my idea of sheer joy. The really interesting thing about the conference was that I was once again informed that I looked just like someone else. This may not seem like an odd thing, but this has happened to me several times over the years. My sister was out with some friends and they all thought they saw me at the bar. She walked over and discovered that it wasn't me, but another guy she already knew. Another time a nasty Cruella DeVille woman stopped and asked me how my mom was doing, calling her by name, although it wasn't my mother and I did know the woman. I told her how the woman was doing and later figured out that she thought I was my friend. Then someone else confused me with another friend of mine by a guy trying to hit on my friend's sister. He asked how the parents were and I told him since I did know how his parents were doing. Another friend of mine took me to her friend's place of work, Pier 1, to hang around for a while. When we arrived, they all accused me of being someone else until I got within a few feet of them. These are my best examples of this and there are others I have probably forgotten. During this training it happened two more times. I met a therapist on Thursday and he told me right off that I looked like old what's his name that he went to school with. Then this morning, an attractive PhD. told me that I looked like her brother's boyfriend and that wasn't a bad thing. She also asked me if I was still in grad. school, which I took to be a compliment. I joked with her that I must be the most average looking guy in the world. (That also bring up how a man who has traveled the world over told me that I could pass for at least five different nationalities without a problem. He was a freak, but maybe he's right and I could travel abroad more to find out the truth. ) With this being said, I have a hard time understanding how easily I blend into the background when around other people when I look so much like every other guy out there.

My motel experience at Crestwood Suites was one of the worst ones I have ever had, if not the worst one for me ever, if it somehow tops the Microtel Inn incident. Here are both, you decide:

Crestwood Suites is the white-trash version of Bradford Home Suites. The wall looked really dirty and parts of it were painted while other parts of the wall had a stale, brown color dribbled on them. The room had a smell to it that I can only explain as 'overused'. I killed one roach on the wall, never a good sign of a great hotel room. There were no lights above the front parking lot, so breaking into a car would have been simple and now for the worst! I stayed on the second floor and for some reason had people staying right above me. On my last night there, I arrived at 7pm to hear him, her, or they moving about overhead. 'It' did not stop moving and continued to move even after I awoke at 6:15 am, and beyond that time until I left. It sounded like it weighed around 350 pounds and each step shook my entire room. I wore earplugs as I slept to cover up any outside noise, since I am a super-light sleeper. At some point it actually used a vacuum cleaner on the floor. I was so ticked off. I only got 2 hours of sleep and then had to sit through 5 hours of lecturing awake. I called the front desk 4 different times and the Anna working there never got things to settle.
Microtel Inn off of I-10 near Baton Rouge was the place I stayed the night before I took my licensing exam at L.S.U. I had a room on the second floor and was kept awake by stomping feet and the interstate traffic right outside the window. A South Park marathon was on and I had a hard time not watching it. I got about 45 minutes of sleep and then drove toward L.S.U. I didn't know that it was homecoming weekend, so I had to park a mile from where I was taking the test on campus, and then had to wait an hour to start on it because the people administering the test waited 45 minutes for people late from traffic problems. I fell asleep and woke up as the test was handed out to me. I felt like crap and slept most of a day once I got home.
The bottom line is that it's better to pay through the noise for a good hotel room, rather than get a good deal, never get decent REM sleep, and feel like crap.