It's the end of the world as you know it

Saturday was graduation, a rather pointless affair with mediocre speeches and cheap champagne. Dinner with my family, however, was very good - we ate at the Capital Grille in Minneapolis and my uncle splurged on an amazing bottle of cab. After meeting up with a few friends at an uptown bar to say goodbye, I went home, slept for 4 hours, packed up my apartment, and departed for St. Louis to visit a few friends there for two days. All went reasonably well there, aside from getting attacked by a slug and a June bug and being forced to watch an episode of Springer.

Earlier today I left for the next leg of my trip - a one night stay in Amarillo, Texas. It was an 11 hour drive, which doesn't really bother me, but apparently the lack of sleep I've been getting lately has taken it's toll - I actually attempted to drive away while pumping gas. Not good. Thankfully I didn't get that far and the hose stayed connected. Thanks to the bad gas station karma, I had trouble finding gas when I needed it the next time around, stopping at a gas station with a subway but no fuel. To not make the stop a total waste, I decided to eat dinner at the subway there - when a group of 3 people cut in front of me in line. The employee then proceeded to make all of their sandwiches (and a few extra for some people that were apparently in the car) with the speed that only a sloth would appreciate. After about 15 minutes of waiting I wanted to leave, but felt committed at this point and stuck it out.

I finally rolled into the hotel at about 9:30 this evening. Aside from a short wait, check-in was without incident. It was all downhill from there. My room was located at the other side of the hotel, so I lugged my two bags up to my room, plugged in my key (which worked), tried to open the door, and found it latched from the inside. Being the complete idiot that I am, I figured it was messed up some how and proceeded to try to jimmy it open... until the 60 some year old occupying the room came to the door, slammed it shut, opened it, barked "wrong room" and slammed it again. I trudged back down the stairs, told the front desk that someone was in my room, and they re-assigned me to a room farther down the hall. Back to the third floor again, I found out that my door to my new room (which was vacant, thank god), didn't work. The key was fine, but the latch was broken. I played with it for a good 10 minutes, attracting some strange looks by people walking by, tried calling the dowfront desk from my cell and got no answer, then resigned myself to the fact that I was going to have to walk down there again. As I made my way down the hall (with bags in tow, which had somehow doubled in weight), a guy around my age asked if I was having room trouble. I explained what had happened, and he offered to let me use is phone to call the front desk. Not wanting to get gang raped (which, given my luck today was sure to happen), I declined. He then asked if he could just try my door for me. I weighed the risks of rape versus carrying my bags back to the front desk again, and at this point basically gave up. After a few minutes, he was able to get my door open. And he left after that point, dispelling any fears I had that he was going to accost me in my room.

After pretty much collapsing in bed, I ended up deciding to get a movie. Halfway through The Queen, I got a great deal of static until the picture finally cut off. After sitting on hold for about 20 minutes with the front desk, I was informed that I should reorder the movie and they would deduct one of the charges off the check, but seeing as there was no way to fast forward through the half I had already seen, I just requested that the item be taken off of my bill entirely. The night manager, somewhat disgruntled, agreed.

I've now officially given up on this being a good day by any stretch of the imagination, and will cut my losses now by going to bed. This, however, my be easier said then done, as I seemed to have seared off about half of my skin in St. Louis (thanks to all the direct sunlight, which I hadn't seen since before law school started), so now it hurts to have anything touching my back or arms. It's going to be a long night.

Tomorrow, I'm banking on getting food poisoning and then getting into a car accident. At least I'm finally used to the feeling of my life spinning completely out of control, which should help with the bar prep. And I'll have my PMBR Property CDs to keep my company all the way to Flagstaff.