Ahh the sweet smell of cancer causing agents...

Beth, Adam and I arrived in Mobile this morning about 12:00 AM. Dropped Adam off at the school w/Carrie only to watch the power go out of the entire campus. Didn't surprise me really considering the wind was blowing about 40 MPH (not an exaggeration).

Beth and I then headed to our hotel w/directions from Carrie. After driving around a while it became apparent we didn't know where to go. I knew we should have printed off directions from MapQuest. So we called the hotel and got directions. We arrived to find the Police Crime Lab fingerprinting the front door and front desk. That's comforting... We finally got checked and grabbed our stuff and headed to the room. As soon as we opened the door a wave of cigarette smoke hit us in the face. Clearly not a nonsmoking room like they had promised. With the combination of the crime lab and the repulsive smell of smoke we decided to abandon the hotel. I called the Hampton Inn about 3 min from the school. Their computers were down because of the power outages. I asked if he had any rooms for tonight and he said "Yeah, just call back in 15 min and I should have the system back up." I did only to have him tell me "Oh we don't have any rooms for tonight." Clearly "yeah" in Mobile has a different definition that we have in Chattanooga, Ft. Collins, New Castle or any other city in the country. To his credit he did tell me that the hotel down the road had 6 rooms still available. So I called them. She confirmed the availability of the rooms but proceeds to tell me that they are $120 a night. I said "Whoa, that's a lot more than the other two places I've called are you willing to help me out and budge on that." She retorted "That's the rate of the room." It's always eluded me the logic of hotels. They'd rather not rent a room at all for the night than sell a room for a discounted price.... Mind boggling.

So we decided to abandon our search for a decent hotel and stay here. However, I wasn't about to stay in a bar room atmosphere so I went to the front desk and got them to get me a different room.

Currently Beth's sitting on the floor gettin' all "purdied-up" as we say in the country and I'm surfing the web w/the free Internet. (there are some good things about the hotel) although I must add that after breakfast Beth found out that the hot tub is not going to be open until Dec 15th because it's under repair. That didn't make her real happy.

As for the plans today, I have no idea. We'll have to let you know later.