My boss, Brian, summing up everything in one simple gesture.
Eric's Seattle Trip
Friday:I wake up at 7 for a little on-the-job training (I'm covering for the Barometer's webmaster for a week) to find that the power had gone of during the night, resulting in a completely fried power supply on my computer. After my training, I hunt one down, install it and ensure that things are kosher before I dash to class, duffelbag in hand.
We left Corvallis around 3pm, an hour late. I swear, haivng such a deadline-driven job, you'd think that these people would be prompt. no-fucking-way. So, we hit the road and make the trek up to Seattle. The drive was quite uneventful. I did shoot a spitwad in one of my coworker's ear, but we got it out, no problem. I laughed, but I immediatly felt bad.
We arrive in Seattle, get our rooms and within 10 minutes, we are all hammered. I brought along my bottle of Crown Royal and we killed it within 5 minutes. Then, we head down for dinner, which consisted of pitcher after pitcher of overpriced beer and some shitty entres. Eventually, we make it down to second street and hit up a few bars. It is only 10pm and I am *lit*. Me and Conrad decide around midnight to walk back to the hotel while the rest of the gang makes their way to the next stop.
we make it back to the room and fall asleep pretty quickly. the sleep doesn't last long.
2:30am rolls around and the crew finds their way back home. They bust into the room and one guy immediatly goes into the bathroom and doesn't come out for nearly 2 hours. Everytime he heaved, we all laughed, which made him laugh, which made for a really fucking awkward situation on his end (I assume) -- have you ever laughed while you are throwing up? yeah, didn't think so.
finally, i fall asleep.
Saturday:
My alarm goes off at 7am. I hate getting up early. I shower, the crew gets ready and we head over to the Seattle Center for the Seattle-times hosted conference. I won't bore you with details, but I did learn a lot and met some literary badasses.
fast forward: three of us skip the tail end of the conference, go back to the hotel room, get very-very-very-very high (I havn't smoked in *ages*) and head off to the EMP. After manuvering about 7 blocks of Seattle, laughing our asses off the whole way, we arrive at the museum. I have been to seattle probably around 4 times in the last two years, each time, missing the museum.
let me just say, it was worth every fucking penny of admission. The special installation was a Bob Dylan / Hendrix exhibit. fucking amazing. I won't go into detail, but sufice it to say, we spend 4 hours there, only leaving because the museum was closing. I was so enthralled in it all that I didn't take a single picture.
Kiss's suits look really fucking lame up close, but Jimi's guitar looked divine.
we head back to the hotel, eat some food, drink some beer and hit the town again, heading down to pike's marketplace. summary: we drink lots and lots of beer then walk home.
we all fall asleep watching Seattle's public access (they had these fugly biker-chicks wrestling in cole-slaw out in the middle of south dakota, it was REALLY fucking weird). Around 4am (i'm not 100% sure of the time [fucking DST]), the fire alarm goes off. we hear sirens. I grab my pants. I put on a shirt. I run into the hall with the rest of the crew. Not seeing any smoke, i breathe a sigh of relief (I AM STILL VERY DRUNK AT THIS POINT) when suddenly, it gets really hard to breathe and my eyes start watering.
someone pepper-sprayed the fuck out of our floor.
long story short, the hotel has to be evacuated, we stand out in the rain for around 45 minutes, everyone coughing and rubbing their eyes.
finally, we get back to our room and crash.
Sunday:
being hungover, we sleep through our wakeup call, miss half of the conference and as a group, decide that we just want to go home. We rally the troops, pack the van and drive home. An uneventful drive, the high point being a group-singalong to Weezer's Pinkerton. perfect.
anyway, that's about it -- this week is going to suck, but I love you all, regardless.
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