Phone adventures

So I just got back this evening from a dental conference. I found it most informative and interesting, and fully intend to blog about it--maybe tomorrow. If I don't, ask me, because it's worth talking about. The quick summary is that what happens in your mouth affects the rest of your body.

But for this post, I'm going to talk about our hotel. We stayed just cati-corner from the convention center, at a splendid high-rise Hyatt. My room faced west on the thirteenth floor, which sounds very ominous. It had four one-cup-size packages of coffee to brew, four styrofoam cups, and three cream-and-sugar packages to put in the coffee. It had two glass glasses and a giant bottle of Fiji water labeled $5. The pool was under repairs. The lobby had several stores and a Starbucks in it. The room phone had the Starbucks on the quick-dial, which entertained me.

On the way over to the convention center, the first time we walked there, I told the story about the Life conference I'd attended in 2001. We stayed in these ancient and non-air-conditioned dorms at Ohio State, and it was hot as all-get-out, and one night some prankster got hold of the phone numbers for our whole floor and methodically called every room around two am. I'd slept pretty much through it, but my roommate hadn't been very happy. Mrs. M., the good doctor's wife, was pretty sure nobody would prank call us at the Hyatt. If so, she'd certainly have something to say about it.

I thought no more about it. We had a long and deeply scientific day, at which I learned the truth of the old Campus Crusade adage, "The mind can only absorb what the seat can endure." Becca and I crashed early that night, in our thirteenth-floor room facing west with a lovely view of the sunset over the ugly white building next door; we'd been up since well before the crack of dawn, and dinner was excellent and large. She read her dental textbook and I read about the Battle at Pelennor Fields, and about 9:00 we turned out the lights.

At 9:26 the phone rang. I was still just awake enough to realize it was the room phone and to want to do something about it. I whacked and fumbled around the wall, trying to find the switch for the bedside light, and never did get it. About three rings in, Becca got her light on, and I picked up the phone. I didn't even drop it, which is better than I do mid-afternoon sometimes.

"Hello?"
"Yes, is this Ms. M--?"
::I deduced from this that they thought they'd called the good doctor's room and figured I was his wife. Pure habit kicked in.:: "I'm afraid she's not available. May I take a message?"
"I just wanted to make sure you found the rooms acceptable."
::Ah. Of course. The rooms. The rooms?:: "I believe we were all happy with our rooms, thank you."
"Is there anything we can do for you?"
"Just...let us get back to sleep."
"Certainly. I'm sorry to disturb you and hope you have a pleasant stay."
"Thank you. Good night."

Becca and I looked at each other. Our first impulse was to call the front desk and make sure it was really them calling. In mysteries, of course, odd calls are usually the bad guy trying to lure the heroines somewhere. But the caller didn't try to lure us anywhere and our thirteenth-floor room facing west was locked.

Our next impulse was the call the good doctor. They were probably asleep, ha! But we decided not to call. They were probably asleep.

Our third impulse was to turn off the light and go back to sleep, which we did.

The next morning we told them our adventure. Mrs. M-- had something to say to the front desk about discourteous courtesy calls at that time of night. The front desk guy didn't know about the specific call, but could tell us they did make such calls up until ten pm, and would certainly take into account the feedback that that was rather too late.

So we probably didn't have a bad guy calling us in the night. But I still get a kick out of taking a secretarial call up to and beyond bedtime. :-)