Well, the cats are in hiding, the neighbors are awake, the vacuum has done the vacuumy equilvalent of passing a kidney stone, but the bi-annual *cough* Yule tree* is down. It’s later than I usually like to take it down, but then I’ve always been kind of an “OK, that’s done, what’s next?” kind of person.
I’m tinkering with databases this year. I got my feet wet making up a small one to help with picking movies for the boyfriend and I to watch. With money tight and all, most of our entertainment is coming out of the public library, which has an exceptional selection. It’s really one of the blessings of living in this area. The problem there is that their excellent selection is spread out across all the libraries in the local system. So I find it much easier to figure out what I want to watch (usually using Amazon) first, and then order it online at the library, to pick up at my convenience.
Well, the boyfriend doesn’t like this method. The boyfriend likes to browse, to look at the pictures on the covers, and to read the blurbs. Sadly, browsing like that at the library doesn’t work that well, since most libraries still seem to find the whole multi-media lending thing a bit shameful, so tend not to display videos as effectively as your average video rental store.** As a result, we’ve been watching a lot of movies that, well, I picked out, with varying degrees of success. (I’m not saying that “valkyrie movies” should be a separate genre, but I’m not saying I’d be against the idea if IMDb wanted to go for it.***)
So, after several arguments revolving around these central themes, I set out to create a database of the movies I’m interested in seeing (there’s a BUNCH), that would give him the information he likes to look at when browsing. The result wasn’t half bad. So now I’m poking around with the vast pile of books I’ve rated on Amazon, trying to work out a reasonable way to set up an organized database of books I like. Because it sounds like fun. Oh, yeah, I AM the geek. I’m not really sure what I’m going to end up with. Honestly, what I really want is for the folks at Fantastic Fiction to start using multiple genre classifications & allow ratings like IMDb does. And then allow you to put together your own personal list of movies you like. Again, with the geeking, I know. But I need a project. And this feels like a good way to springboard myself into book blogging more.
And speaking of projects, I do have some finished jewelry. I’ve been in a mood for multiple strand choker length necklaces. I’ve actually got three more in a similar vein, but pics are going to have to wait until I can locate the boyfriend’s tripod. I’ve been working on the photography as well as the beading. Some experiments just really don’t need to be inflicted on the unwary.
Detail of same:
This one’s my breakout from the aforementioned choker period, and I think it’s, quite frankly, one of the best pieces I’ve done.
And earrings to go with:
And a picture of Stranger. Because she IS the cute.
Oh, and I have to remember to start charting the phases of the moon again. Because the full moon this weekend caught me COMPLETELY by surprise. I met some truly unpleasant people over the past couple of days. Fortunately, Sunday night was, as usual, a nice remedy for Saturday.
The winner for the weekend, and I use the term UNBELIEVABLY loosely, was the young lady, let’s call her Lucy, trying to get into the room that she and her friend, who we’ll call Annette, were sharing. Unfortunately, the room was in Annette’s name, and Annette hadn’t let us know that it was OK to give Lucy a key.****
Now, ordinarily, this isn’t that much of a problem. There are things that we can do to “work around” this sort of issue. However, my willingness to work around a security issue has a direct relationship to the guest’s behavior. Case in point: Lucy.
First, Lucy was very drunk. Very very. I think she was actually trying to talk to the night auditor standing just to my right, who looked EXACTLY like me. Lucy asked me for a key to room 505. I told Lucy I, and my twin, would be glad to make her a key, I just needed to check her ID. Lucy explained, to the best of her ability, that the room was in Annette’s name. I asked her if she knew where Annette was. She told me Annette was still “at the bar” (not the hotel bar, which was closed) and that she had, in point of fact, left Annette at the bar because Annette was, not to put too fine a point on it, a complete bitch, and Lucy absolutely hated her.
I would like to point out that this relates directly to my earlier statement about behavior affecting attitudes toward security. In point of fact, loudly, publicly badmouthing a person is really not the way to convince the nice people working at the desk that it’s OK, just this once, to overlook the fact that their name isn’t on that person’s room record. However, hotels frown on employees actually telling people they are behaving badly, even when they are behaving badly, so in Lucy’s case I decided it best to a) use as few long words as possible and b) stick to the letter of the law. I told her that I was not able to give her a key because the front desk had not been given permission to.
Lucy did not take this well. She was apparently actually familiar with some of the work arounds, so started telling me that I should “ask her the questions.” I told her that since she had already told me that she was not Annette, and that Annette was somewhere else, I wasn’t going to be able to come up with any questions that the correct answers to which would convince me she was Annette. Finally, she drifted away.
A few minutes later, Annette stopped at the desk, because she had lost her key as well (seriously, reprogramable fingerprint locks cannot come too soon for me.) As I was talking to Annette, I checked the lobby area for signs of Lucy, but didn’t see her, so didn’t mention her to Annette. Annette went on up to her room. For the record, she didn’t seem terribly bitchy to me, but then I don’t know her the way Lucy does.
A few minutes after Annette left the desk, Lucy drifted back, and in even worse shape than before. This time she told me that she needed the key to 1404. I told her that that wasn’t possible, since the hotel only has 7 floors. She nodded wisely, and told me that I must be right, she’d gotten confused. Her room was 1505!
At this point I called security to come to the desk. I tried to get an actual room number out of Lucy, but she was convinced she was staying on the 15th floor of a hotel with 7 stories. Then I tried to get her to give me the name of the guest she was staying with.
Understand, I wasn’t simply fucking with her at this point, truly. Yes, I was fairly certain that she wanted Annette’s room, but 2:30 in the morning is a rude time to wake someone up at on an assumption alone. Especially for the sake of another someone who has been speaking about the first someone in less than loving terms.
Lucy got impatient with me trying to get her to come up with either the right room number or Annette’s actual name without prompting. She informed me that this was all stupid, all she had done was leave the room to go to the bathroom, and I should just give her the key to 1505 right NOW!
I hoped, I desperately hoped that that last statement was simply Lucy using another “work around,” badly. Because she certainly was in a state to have left a guest room, in which a bathroom is located, in order to relieve herself in a hallway. Again, I asked her for the name of the friend she was staying with. Finally, finally, she got Annette’s name right.
I suggested we call Annette’s room, and ask Annette if it was OK for her to come up to the room. Lucy felt this was a bad idea, but I stuck to my guns, and made the call. Annette answered, and said it was fine. Fortunately, security had shown up by this time, so I was able to hand Lucy off to them, as I don’t think her navigational skills were truly at their best. At least, I certainly hope they weren’t.
*I say Yule tree because, well, I’m not a Christian, so having a Christmas tree is, well, awkward. But I’ve always liked the story about how Christmas trees came from an old pre-Christian tradition of finding the biggest tree you could haul, bringing it home and burning it on the longest night of the year, with the hope that it would burn through the whole night. If it did, you got good luck for the year. If it didn’t, you’d get eaten by a bear and your buddies would sing really embarrassing songs about it every time they got drunk. Or something like that. And it’s bi-annual because I somehow seem to acquire a new cat every other year, and so when the cat is new, we forgo the tree since, well, cat, tree, brain-damage, you get the picture.
**Yes, I am fully aware that there are serious SPACE issues at work here as well. However, I’ve SEEN the look on some of the older librarians faces when they see how many videos I borrow at a time.
***Simply put, a valkyrie movie has at least five genres, hopefully including at least one of the speculative genres, and at least a 7.0 rating on IMDb. The boyfriend’s catch-all description of “Freakin’ Wackadoo” movies does not, in point of fact, completely encompass my definition of “good” in movies.
****Please note, if you are staying in a hotel with another person, it is a good idea to LET THE FRONT DESK KNOW who is allowed to have keys to the room. The industry standard for hotel keys is now the electronic “credit card” style keys. I cannot begin to list the number of reasons why I think this is an idiotic move, but the worst problem with them is that they can be demagnetized so very easily. If you put the keys near either your cellphone, or your credit cards, they will lose their charge. This means that if you put them anywhere where it is convenient for you to keep them and remember where they are, they will become useless. And that’s a SAFETY feature. Now, because hotels are always looking to streamline the check-in procedure, and because hotels don’t like guests to feel like the front desk is interrogating them at check-in, and because hotels don’t want to actually come out and say, “You can get as many keys as you like right now, but eventually you’ll have to come back and get them remade if you so much as think too hard near them,” the front desk isn’t going to ask you a lot of questions about who’s going to be in your room. So it is a good idea for you, as a guest, to let the front desk know who is allowed to have keys to your room.
