The ATL

• Room service at hotels – could it BE any more of a rip-off (done in my best Chandler Bing voice)?  I ordered the turkey club with a coke (I made the mistake about asking about Pepsi in Atlanta, apparently no one here has heard of it).  The sandwich was $15 and the can of coke was $3.50.  After the delivery charge of $3.00 (it’s really expensive to walk the food the 100 steps to my room), plus the 20% gratuity included "for my convenience" plus the 8% tax, my bill came to $27.50 and of course the delivery guy still asked for a tip on top of that.  My sandwich was good, but I didn’t order the caviar.
• So for dinner I tried ordering Pizza Hut online.  That went much better, and I didn’t make the mistake of ordering pop with the meal – instead I ran up and got a 20oz pop for $1.99 at the in hotel convenience store.  Although one thing interesting was that when I placed my order, it said it would be ready in 105 minutes (so 10:30 Atlanta time).  I realized not everyone can make the 30 minute delivery time, but 105 minutes was a little crazy.  The pizza got here at 9:30, so not such bad timing.
• I was actually able to get some sleep on the flight down here for a change, and when I wasn’t snoozing, I was paging through the SkyMall catalog to get ideas for stuff we certainly don’t need, but would be cool.  Here’s my list:
  • Airflow breeze – it is an electronic device you put on your heat/cooling registers to suck more heat/cooling out of the heating system.  Something we could use upstairs.
  • Wireless headset – for one of us to listen to TV in bed while the other sleeps
  • Fire escape ladder – I keep saying I need to get one of these for our 2-story house, and one of these days I need to pull the trigger
  • Inflatable hot tub – this is one of the best ideas ever.  Unfortunately, it’s $900.  If someone else had one and could tell me how cool it was, I’d probably fork out the cash for it.
  • Sun visor DVD player – apparently you can replace your passenger seat sun visor with a DVD player.  Becky would like this.
  • Puppet theatre – a little cloth stage that you can hook onto a doorway so you can play puppets with the kids.  I think that would be a cool idea for the girls.
  • Twins toy chest – to complete my Twins-themed room downstairs, I really need to get a Twins toy chest.  It’s both functional (we need a place for all the toys down there) and decorative (the more navy and red, the better).  My top wish for birthday.
  • Poker table – after the poker game we hosted a couple weeks ago and with some rearranging of furniture downstairs, we now have the opening for a larger table.  It would be pretty cool to get a big poker table.
  • Portable air bed – rather than having all these guest beds around, it would be nice if we could get a portable bed or two to have when we needed them, and then we could free up space for my toys and stuff.
• I checked out the room where I had to present when I registered for the conference, and it’s bigger than I pictured it.  I guess I need to practice what I’m going to say a little bit more
• The Sheraton in Atlanta is a nice hotel, but I’ve been spoiled by the luxury of nicer hotels when I’ve stayed in downtowns in big cities.  The fact that my window looks out over the maintenance area probably is spoiling it for me.
• One more thing – they must have my name down wrong in the system somewhere, because every staff member keeps calling me "Mr. Johnson".  The room service guy called me that like 6 times before I got a chance to correct him.  Seriously, 6 different staff people have called me that now.  Apparently none of them have the authority to update the system with my correct name.

That’s all for now – looking forward to getting home on Thursday.