I’m at home for Christmas (after a four hour and ten minute Greyhound bus ride from Minneapolis to Duluth…do not get even me started) and today the phone rang so I answered it with my customary, “Hello?”

“Hi, is this Missy?”

“Who?”

“Missy.”

“No, this is Amanda.”

“Could I have the wrong number?”

“Maybe. This is blahblahblah-blahblahblahblah.”

“Oh shoot. This is Nancy Yapel. I was trying to call Glenmore Resort. Who did I get?”

“This is the Morleys.”

“Really? Well merry Christmas! I always get the rounded telephone numbers mixed up in my head.”

“Merry Christmas to you too, Nancy.”

“Okay, I guess I’ll try again. Take care.”

I love Tower.

This weekend is going to be a weekend of dreams come true. Not dreams for ME neccessarily, but dreams nonetheless.

Today, everybody's friend, Gabe, celebrated his 90th birthday as well as his retirement from the shoe shine business. Gabe has been stationed on the first floor of the building where I work for the past 32 years and now, at the age of 90, he has decided to throw in the towel. Why? So he can travel. Honest to God, this 90-year-old man has decided to retire from shoe shining so he can travel. I love it. However, I will miss Gabe. Today over the lunch hour there was a birthday/retirement party for him and the mayor AND governor came. Rock on, Gabe. Take New Orleans by storm.

Retirement = dream.

Tomorrow, the New York Jets check in to "my" hotel. This is our only pro team of the season, which has actually done amazing things for our bottom line, but volunteers are just not available to work the check-in. I'm not sure if it's because they hate the sales manager who handles the team (my reason for originally passing up the opportunity) or if they had prior engagements (another good excuse I could have used), or because the Jets, well...suck. In any event, somehow I am working the check-in along with Darren. I'm still not sure how it happened, but it's like Make-a-Wish for the kid, who has no physical ailments other than abnormally putrid feet (which is definitely not Make-a-Wish worthy). Tomorrow morning we are going shopping so he has something nice to wear to impress the boys. He even mentioned looking for a Jets tie. How did I get so lucky?

Meeting your fantasy football players (even if they haven't done shit for you all season) = dream.

Right now I'm at work, doing the coat check thing. I have movies to watch and my laptop to keep me busy and I'm making tips for spending my workday effing off online. I mean, more than usual even. I guess that's a dream come true in its own respect. However, I expect to be stationed here until about midnight again tonight - that's another eight and a half hours - and THAT is less than dreamy.

Shit.

This past week was hell week at work. It was the week where I had to handle 850 holiday cards and right around 200 gifts for group clients at the hotel. And do you know what my favorite part was? The fact that to send the gifts, I had to bring the packages to the post office to see how much it would cost to send them, then bring them back to the office to post them, then bring them back to the post office to have them sent out. Efficiency at its finest.

Yesterday I went into work at 8am and I left at midnight. Sixteen hours. By the end I was knocking shit over left and right and just laughing. Laughing, laughing, laughing. It's probably a good thing they moved the portable bar away from my coat check station early in the evening. However, my favorite part of the night was watching my bus crush fall asleep on his seat mate on the way home. There was more manic laughing at that.

Now I am tempted to say that exhaustion beats being drunk, but it seems that much more sleep is required to ward off exhaustion than to take care of a hangover. I slept for over eight hours last night (which happens to be about five hours more than I get when I drink), but I felt I needed a nap three hours after waking up today. So at about 1:15 I went down, fully intending to take a little nap, then work out, take a shower, get myself humanized to go to the grocery store with Darren when he got off work at 6. So I was out in a matter of seconds and I woke up four and a half hours later at 5:43.

So the moral of the story is, go get drunk. It's far more time-effective.

I'm sorry I suck so bad. My brain is still mushy.