Feelin' Minnesota

Well, here I am in the NWA Club Lounge at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport, sipping a free Bloody Mary. Gigi from NWA gave us passes to the lounge, and I must say, it's pretty sweet.

The trip went pretty well, with a few exceptions.

Exception #1: When I got to the gate, it was mobbed. Turns out that the flight that was leaving before mine was delayed for 4 hours. Everyone was pissy and bitter, as I'd be. Well, Chickie and Pete's bar was right across from the gate. I watched a lone middle aged woman with HUGE hair stumble out of the bar and to the gate. As she walked past me, she fell on her face (no, I did not trip her). A man who is a much nicer person than I am helped her up and asked her if she was okay. She slurred some unintelligible nonsense and then leaned over and puked a little bit, right on the carpet. Gross.

Luckily, just about then, they made an announcement that my flight was changing gates, so I had the opportunity to leave that scene behind.

My flight took off with no problems and by the time I'd landed and got to baggage claim, my bag was already there. I hopped onto the free shuttle and got to my hotel, the Radisson Bloomington by the Mall of America, by 8:15 - just in time to dump my stuff in my room and hit up the mall.

The mall was about 2 minutes from the hotel, so I got there by 8:30. I only had an hour before it closed but I did a little bit of shopping - I bought a pair of shoes for my friend's wedding at Nordstrom. Then I went to Ruby Tuesday's (ugh) and sat at the bar to have dinner.

And then I got back to my room.

First of all: there was a little nook with two sets of bunk beds in my room, in addition to the queen bed. Very strange. A family with four kids could stay in that room for $150 a night.

Secondly: there was a sliding glass door and a balcony that looked out into an indoor water park. I kid you not. It was cool for about a second but then I realized that it was a lovely night and I had no opportunity for fresh air, because my door opened to a chlorine-smelling enclosure.


Anyway, I did some work, watched a little TV, and went to bed.

This morning, I got ready, then did some more work, and ordered room service for breakfast. At noon, I went down to the lobby and met up with Joel. It was really dark in my room without any sunlight coming in the window. Stupid water park.

The hotel called a car for us to get to NWA, and the driver got lost. It was NOT fun. I told him "We're going to Northwest Airlines, 2700 Lone Oak Parkway..." and he said "Oh, I know where it is." Then he took us to the airport. And then gave us a lot of attitude when we told him he was wrong. Then he got lost on the way to the office, and we ended up being a few minutes late to our meeting. I called Gigi and she was cool about it (she said it happened to everybody) but we got to the offices soon enough.

Our meeting went well. It was nice to finally meet them face to face; I've been working on the account for over 2 years now. They were very impressed with Joel's Omniture dashboards and we all left happy.

After the meeting, Joel headed to the airport but I had hours to kill, so I went back to the mall, but didn't buy anything. It was too overwhelming, plus it was starting to get busy and I hate crowds. Then I went back to the hotel to get my stuff and came to the airport.

My flight boards in about 20 minutes so I'll have to leave this cushy lounge soon.

All in all, not bad. People out here (except for our driver) are very, very friendly.