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Outside the Comfort Suites
The Blizzard covered up my rental car and I was pretty upset that I have to wipe off all of that stuff I always find it impossible to sleep well on the first day of travel, especially if I'm in an unfamiliar surrounding, like a hotel or a stranger's house. I have to get used to the bed regardless of how comfortable it is. The pillow too, needs a little wear and tear before I can be comfortable with it, not to mention the blankets, the comforters, the hum of the air conditioners, the background noise and the ambient temperature. I probably got no more than three hours of sleep that first night in my hotel in Castle Rock, Colorado.
I was lying in bed, staring straight up at the ceiling, in darkness, cursing at everything under the Sun because I was wide awake instead of being comfortably numb. I look over the bed stand where the digital clock reads 4:30 AM. Damn! I pick up the remote control in darkness and turn on the TV. There's nothing to watch, mostly infomercials and cowboy movies. I love cowboy movies but I was not in the mood to watch one at this hour. I wanted to sleep. I channel surf some more. ESPN runs Sports Center for the umpteen time. Boring. HBO movies
Knee deep
There I am, burried deep in white fluff are even more boring. After clicking on the remote at three channels per second I threw it at the television. I don't know if the screen cracked and frankly, I don't care. I probably missed and hit the wall because I pushed the OFF button before I threw it and heard a thonk! instead of a ding! which indicated to me that I probably put a small dent on the wall. Now it's 5:00 AM, mountain time. Back home in the Bay Area it's still 4:00 AM. If I was home I would still be sound asleep and dreaming of a passionate romp with some blond goddess on the beach somewhere in the South Pacific. I curse some more. After a while I got tired of cursing and actually fell asleep. But it only lasted for fifteen minutes because a little disturbance, the sound of the continuous rush of water from the shower head in the bathroom of the hotel room next to mine, promptly woke me like a slap in the face. Damn the guy for waking up and showering early. It's still 5:30 AM.
At 6:00 AM I reluctantly crawled out of bed and turned on the
Winter Wonderland
The blizzard dumped twelve inches of snow overnight bed lamp. I didn't even bother to put on my glasses, I just got up and head straight for the bathroom. I stepped on the remote control that I hurled at the TV earlier this morning. It accidently turned the TV. I kept walking like a zombie, ignoring the white noise and show image of the TV screen. I turned the lights in the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I had no glasses on and my contacts have been soaking in saline solution overnight, so my image is blurry. I look closer for a better focus. It wasn't very encouraging. My eyes are bloodshot red. The skin underneath my eyes are baggy and dark. I look like a Goth out of hell, or at least a prowler in the night, a raver, a Nine Inch Nail concert goer. I look tired and terribly overstressed, just plain awful. But I have no choice but to move on so I put on my contacts, looked at myself in the mirror some more (no improvement), gurgled some Listerene mouthwash, turned on the shower, and stood underneath the shower for ten solid minutes without doing anything, not soaping, not shampooing, nothing.
Dark and gloomy
It's been snowing for the last eighteen hours and there's no sign of it stopping soon. Just stood there motionless and let all of that water rush down on every inch of my body. It didn't help. I didn't feel refreshed. So I soaped up and shampooed, rinse, and towelled off. My image improved a little bit after the shower but I didn't feel any better. I was still very tired.
At 6:30 AM I went down to the hotel dining room for breakfast. There were only a couple of people having breakfast and I didn't see any waiters or waitresses so I just helped myself to the buffet line and got some eggs, bacons, toast, orange juice, and coffee. That's about all the appetite that I had this early in the morning. I picked a table at random, sat down, had my breakfast, and read the morning paper. I skipped all the political news and the weather even though there's a whopping blizzard that swept through the Front Range and dumped twelve inches of snow overnight. I went straight to the sports pages. The local story in this town is the Denver Broncos. On the first page of the sports section there were three articles relating to their beloved Broncos, one opinion, one beat,
Not a pretty sight
I should've stayed home. and one human related article featuring a Bronco player, his trials and tribulations, boring stuff like that. Frankly, I could care less about the Broncos; my real interest at this point in time is baseball, baseball, baseball. My Oakland A's lost in the ALCS against the Detroit Tigers and they in turn lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals the night before.
Downtown Castle Rock is pretty small. You can drive through it is five minutes. My final destination was not downtown Castle Rock but in the outskirts of town towards Franktown where the communications satellites are located. They are located there primarily because of the low interference from other radiating sources and because of the altitude. It's a perferct place for a satellite ground station. On my way there I pass by barely populated land. Mostly they are ranches owned by people who either have a lot of money or have been passed the ownership through generations. It's a nice wide open space and the whole time I was driving through I dreamed of owning one of these huge ranches and the huge house within. These houses look like castles. Far south as I was driving
Large cone of shave ice
The dish is covered up to the brim. through the highway I can see Pike's Peak with snow still glittering in the sunshine.
After another ten minutes of driving I finally arrive at the ground station. The security guard recognized me immediately since I have been here several times in the last five years. I picked up my security badge and went straight to the conference room for the morning telecon. What followed was just another interesting day at work.
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