I am sitting in the lobby of the extravagant Grand Hyatt overlooking the Causeway in Tampa. When I entered donning my red Osprey backpack, the man at the door asked, “Have you registered at the hotel?” I kind of heard him, but wasn’t sure what he said, but instead of saying “Pardon?” or “Excuse me?” what came out was, “Problem?” I then giggled at my response. He did not.
“Have you registered at the hotel?” he asked.
“I have not. I’m just here to have a drink.” I said, still a bit giggly like a real weirdo.
“Okay,” and he nodded.
I ordered the cheapest red wine for $11, about $7 too many in my opinion, but the view is incredible and I will try not to make a habit of this.
On my Toshiba I started searching for a story I thought I had written about meeting Dan from Colorado on top of Lover’s Leap in Dunedin, NZ to add to the manuscript. I didn’t find it, but I decided to open my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) attempt from 2011. I started reading and was surprised that I had forgotten about a lot of it. Three years ago, I wrote about half a novel in the month of November about working in retail and using dictionary.com’s word of the day to make connections to real life experiences (thinking it’d make for a cool way to learn new words. Especially for the GRE). I didn’t remember the flirty conversations my main character had with the bookstore employee named Jay. I was reading my own “novel” and I was hooked. What a cool realization. Maybe the realization should be that I have a terrible memory. My character was likable and Jay was charming and witty and top notch. I wish he was real.
But I guess that’s weird since he’s me, really. Hm.
beth of fresh air 