My Hotel Room is an Edge Lord

So, this week, I'm meeting the Feds in Dallas. Despite the fact that people (okay, just JFK) have gotten shot doing this, despite the fact that I've managed to go almost 18 years without meeting Our Federal Partners*, here I am, a state govvie in a hotel surrounded by federal buildings, a mere seven blocks from The Grassy Knoll (Pro Tip: if you search for 'grassy knoll,' in Google Maps, it pulls up Dealy Plaza. Evidently a lot of people do this, not just slightly nervous state employees with a tendency to panic when surrounded by tall buildings.)

I was already a bit anxious about this trip before even checking in, for several reasons:

1. The aforementioned anxiety about tall buildings.
2. An unfailing habit of getting lost in downtown areas (Yes, I got lost this time. That is why it is an unfailing habit and not just a tendency. Diction matters, y'all!)
3. Anxiety about being in a two-day meeting (I have the attention span of a crack-addled squirrel. Meetings are painful. I have to constantly will myself to concentrate, and it's exhausting. I'm always afraid I'm going to drift off and at the end of the meeting someone will say, "Dammit, Diana, you committed us to a 92% cost reduction and a relocation to Waco!", although if you read two posts ago, you'll know that a U-Haul to Waco is currently only $99.).
4. Anxiety about the Feds, how fancy and serious they must be and whether, when I go through security, they will stop me and put me in jail for being 'just not quite right.' (Of course they can tell that sort of thing at screening--they're Trained Federal Observers!)

Feds. This is what I imagine
tomorrow's security check
will look like. Which would be
kinda okay because Will Smith
is fine.

Me. I don't think the Feds
would appreciate my shirt,
because Toby is clearly not happy
with his elected officials.

The good thing about the hotel is that one side of it is across from a grassy knoll (no, not that one...evidently, Dallas has a thing for grassy knolls, which is weird, because you'd think they'd want to forget about them), so at least I am not completely surrounded by tall buildings, just 75% surrounded.

The design of the hotel, though, is like a hipster and a business person had several rounds of craft beer culminating in a one night stand in a warehouse the night before the design meeting. (Life Lesson: Excessive amounts of craft beer lead to poor life decisions, millennials!) Without further ado, may I introduce you to Room 319:

The ceiling. It is probably supposed to look artistically stained and raw and concrete-y, but (1) that is a closer look than I ever want to have of my sprinkler pipes because now I'll be worried about fires, and (2) I've lived in enough cheap apartments to wonder what leaked and whether the ceiling will start falling in on me in my sleep.

So we have Urban Brick, plus, Unfinished Building Concrete, plus Ikea Particle Board all next to each other, in some sort of Sad Wallcoverings Ugliness Competition. Clearly, Unfinished Builiding Concrete was the first prize winner. I am really troubled by the two neon orange dots on the bottom. Are they there because that was the real unfinished building concrete and they are being super committed to authenticity, like the Christian Bales of interior design? Or did some decorator carefully go into each room and paint random dots on the concrete to make it look authentic? Did they still have self-respect the next day?

Okay, this. Seriously, WTF, hipster business people, WTF? So there's this weird little area behind the desks, sofa, and TV and in front of the window. There's a little ledge formed by the furniture. Why? Is this a corral for your toddler? Or Pomeranian? Do the housekeeping staff have cockroach races in there during the day? You have to pull back the curtains to see it, so you could hide stuff there. Like, if you committed a murder, you could totally store a body there and close the curtains and it might take several guests before anyone noticed. Although, Dallas is warm in the summer.

The shower has a window with a pull-up shade, just in case you are so extremely supportive of the federal government that you want to provide free entertainment to the federal employees across the parking lot. Also, there is this weird window ledge. It's not under the shower head, so it's not a shower bench. Just a window seat that happens to be located in the shower. I guess if you have too many people in your hotel room and everybody's getting squashed and you've already put the trouble makers behind the curtain with the dead body, you can always tell people to sit in the shower.

Here we have a pleather headboard topped by a print of map colors. Because you shouldn't have to choose between being kinky and coloring in your My Little Pony coloring book. Okay, never mind. You should totally have to choose.

And then there's this. It appears that there may be a slide connecting the fourth floor to the third floor. Either that or housekeeping is kinda lazy about moving trash bags down from the upper stories. Part of me is like, okay, maybe I should go up to the fourth floor and see if it has a sign ("You must be THIS tall to ride.") but part of me is concerned that when I get to the bottom the maids are going to be like, "What are you doing in our trash chute?"

So, here I am, in a hotel that is clearly aware that it is, as my children would say, an Edge Lord (we think they mean 'really cool, edgy' by this, but we could be wrong and they could actually be part of some feudal society based on edginess), waiting to be detained by Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith, which would at least stop me from losing focus and committing us to move to Waco. And the meeting hasn't even started yet!

*My last encounter with a Fed was in 2001 at a conference in Kerrville. There was a banquet. Before the banquet, several of us visited the bar (and by 'visited,' I mean more of an 'extended stay' situation), including our Federal lawyer and his wife. Our table found the banquet incredibly hilarious, probably significantly more hilarious than it actually was. The awesome thing was, our boss was furious but she didn't do more than come over and whisper at us to tone it down because we were at a table with a Federal lawyer, which is an instant pardon, everybody knows that.