This blog was started on December 7th, and not finished....
First of all, I want to take a moment to wish a Happy Birthday to two basketball greats of our time: Larry Bird, who is 51 today, and Ousmane Barro, who will not likely be celebrating his 23rd birthday, which is also today. It's ok, Ous, I will celebrate for you!
Anyway, this blog is LONG overdue. Lately, I haven't experienced much that has been blog worthy, so I thought I would go back to some things in the past that I didn't blog before but should have.
Last year, we were having meetings at school to talk about how to increase the language proficiency of students in our school. Apparently at a meeting that I did not attend, the principal decided that it would be a good idea to send Lers and I to a conference on the topic.
Whaaaaaaat???
We wondered, has she met us? Does she know what we're about? This is an absurdity.
Lers and I, the dynamic duo of drunkeness, were to travel to Kansas City to attend a conference, and our airfare and hotel would be paid for by none other than our lovely school district. Holla!
I don't think it's even possible to describe how excited we were for such and adventurous voyage!
We were to spend three nights and four days in good ol' KC.
AC volunteered to drive us to the airport, and as usual, Lers was runnin' late, which caused AC some serious stress. It ended up working out perfectly, though, and we just didn't have to wait as long.
We got to the airport, checked our bags, and enjoyed our flight.
We arrived in KC, which my grandpa had informed me was the City of Fountains. There was not a fountain in sight.
There were, however, signs that said such things as "NYC, LA, LV, KC." As though Kansas City is on par with New York City, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. Come on now....
To our dismay, we found that there were many other teachers flying in from all over the central states for this conference.
In case you didn't know, I think teaching is the least fashion-savvy profession. Almost every time I see a group of teachers together, it makes me want to call the boys from Queer Eye, or Stacy and Clinton from What Not To Wear, or someone who has the ability to take away my eyesight.
You can spot these women a mile away.
The regular teachers are pretty bad.... Our school doesn't seem like THAT big of a struggle to me, but that could be because I'm used to it. I went to a district Math meeting last week, and that made my eyes bleed. There was a teacher with a medallion that was the symbol that used to represent Prince's name during his time as "The Artist Formerly Known As 'Prince'." No, I am not kidding.
But let me just tell you, foreign language teachers are the worst dressed people in the United States. Someone should call Mr. Blackwell right now and just let him know to look no further than a foreign language conference.
By the end of that week (which we kept calling a weekend, because that is what it felt like!), I was ready to swear that if I saw another woman wearing Eiffel Tower earrings, or carrying an Eiffel Tower totebag, or wearing socks of the same design, and so on, that I was going to stab myself repeatedly in the eye with an Eiffel Tower pencil topper (which I am sure were available in the room with all of the vendors).
Anyway, we spotted thesse 50-something's a mile away, and tried to avoid them as much as possible.
We got to our hotel, which was the Hyatt Regency Crown Centre. Big pimpin', for us teachers!
____that was where I stopped on the 7th.... Continuing now! _____________
So we check in and get our keys and such. We decide to ask about where the best places to go are for food and drinks and so on in KC so that we would have good recommendations. So I asked the guy at the desk, and he gives me a map of the city, which he marks with about 1500 different x's and circles. It was beyond overwhelming. And we were quite hungry.
What made the hotel we stayed in more than just a regular hotel was the fact that it was attached to this giant building that was a mall with a lot of restaurants and such.
Lers and I decided to check it out....
This gigantic mall was attached to the hotel via a skywalk thing that was entitled, "THE LINK."
This would become immensely important to our lives during our stay in KC.
We went to a place that made subs and pizzas. Since we were starving, we each decided to get a slice of cheese, and another slice. Lers went with pepperoni for her second slice. I was less decisive, and then ended up with a slice called "Da Bronx," which was also the name of the restaurant.
Wow.
Da Bronx was a slice of pizza that was about three inches tall. It had sausage, pepperoni, canadian bacon, hamburger, onions, peppers, mushrooms... I feel like I am even forgetting something. Black olives? It was a lot.
We decided that a picture was necessary. Unfortunately, we decided this after I had eaten a lot of it and smashed it down. I had wondered why the people in the restaurant were shocked by my order, and making comments about how I must be hungry... Until I saw my twenty pound pizza. Here it is.
After our very large meal, we decided to check this mall out. There were lots of cool stores, like the crayola store, where we drew pictures on easels, and the chocolate factory store, where they make fudge and all kinds of delicious treats.
We also went to a dog store. So far on this pattern, you may think that they sell dogs, but you'd definitely be wrong. However, they did sell merchandise that celebrated every dog breed imaginable. I deeply offended the clerk when I suggested that Lers buy AC Gilman a pair of Bichon Frisé socks, and he more or less asked us to leave. It was hilarious.
And don't worry. Cat lovers, don't fret. There was a cat store as well.
Freaks!
Anyway, the time of the trip, as I may have mentioned (I started this blog over a month ago, and don't feel like re-reading it all now), was during the Big East Tournament. So we knew we'd have to watch that, since Ous and MU were in it.
But where? The possibilities were completely overwhelming. And of course, we were going to want to drink.
SO, we decided to ask the wise woman at the cat place where we could get some alcohol. We had come to the conclusion, as poor teachers, that we should watch in our hotel room, and relax. After all, the flight had taken quite a bit out of us.
The wise (freaky) woman at the cat place told us that what he needed to do was go to The Apothecary, which was a drug/convenience store in the basement of the mall. Jackpot! We bought some cat cards from the kind crazy cat lady for us to play some games in our room whilst enjoying the game. And since we were so tired, we ordered room service to watch the game.
We thought we should take a picture of our array of tools.
You can see clockwise from top left... The captain, of course, courtesy of the Apothecary. Next, the bucket of ice we'd use to put in our drinks. Then there's the program for our conference, and a bottle of diet coke. Next is my glass, which is proping up my nametag and lanyard. Then is the coupon book, which included my coupons for the shops in the mall, including what we used on the cat cards, and at the Apothecary. This coupon book is, of course, leaning up against a lime green cat-shaped case for the $7 cat cards... Then Lers' nametag on her lanyard, and Ler's glass. Looks like a good time to me, no?
Well, to make a long story short, Lers and I would get quite reliant on "THE LINK." In fact, we would never even leave the complex, until on our final day.
You may be wondering, "Why does she keep putting 'THE LINK' in the weird quotes and all capital letters?
That would be because of the signage and labeling.
Check it out.
Yeah, it's blurry. I took it on the last night of our trip. I was hammered.
I know, I went straight from the first night of the trip to the last night.
It was almost a year ago. Also, honestly, we really didn't leave the hotel at all. We watched basketball and SVU every night in our room, and ate at restaurants that we could get to through the link. We honestly did go to the conferences we were supposed to go to. And let me promise you, we spent a great deal of time laughing hysterically, and making fun of our colleagues. We also hid our lanyards all over the complex, as there was a pharmeceutical sales convention going on at the same time, and all those people seemed normal and dressed all kinds of fly. We didn't want to be associated with the whack job foreign language teachers!
On the last night, we still had a fair amount of the Captain left, and a decent amount diet left. So, we decided we'd have to finish off the alcohol, as we'd certainly not let it go to waste.
I asked Lers to make me a drink whilst I sent Ous the obligatory "good luck" text.
Here's a picture of it prior to the addition of the diet coke....
Note to all reading: If you desire to maintain sobriety, do not ask Lers to make you a drink.
Chi hua hua.
Another thing you might've been wondering is what this link situation looks like.
Here's "THE LINK" in all its glory, as seen from our hotel room.
That snakey lookin' thang is "THE LINK."
So Lers and I got hammered, and watched the MU game.
We were alarmed when we saw that they pictured a hispanic man in the starting lineups for Ous. This was actually the second night we were there, but I had set the games to DVR at home in case we wouldn't be able to see them in KC. I took a picture of the absurdity on our tv at home.
Here it is!
That is definitely not Ous!
Anyway, so I texted Ous that night and asked him when he turned into a Latino man. He called me after that game quite confused! I explained, and we thought it was hilarious.
When we were contemplating what to do that last night, over drinks, we had decided that we were going to stay in again, at first. Seeing the way that Lers mixes drinks, we determined that we needed more alcohol. So we bought a couple bottles of wine from the Apothecary, and a corkscrew.
Then, we had a change of heart. Decided to go out. And decided that we'd go to one of the nicer places on the other side of the link. But, we were hammered, as I mentioned in the explanation of the picture of the labeling.
Fortunately for us, we ran into one of Lers' professors en route, and spent time with her in the elevator, hammered. Bru-tality.
Then we got to the restaurant. Hammered. Ordered a bottle of wine to share.... Just what we needed! That'd make three, in addition to the remnants of the captain we had just downed.
The waiter was something else. I guess we were, too.
He asked us if we were high!
We drank more.
Ate lots of bread, which came in round loafs. We wanted another. We asked the waiter for a shenanigan of bread.
Yes, a unit of bread is also known as a shenanigan.
We were reminiscing about all kinds of things. We called Meams. She was afraid for KC with us on the loose, since she had known that we had been asked to leave the dog store, and other interesting parts of our trip.
We wanted to text Zak Attack and ask him if he had a small map of this place, in the style of "Staff" from the camping trip (yeah, I know, I keep saying I am going to blog that). Since at that time, I didn't have his number, I instead texted a completely different Zac, and asked him instead. He was very confused, whilst Lers and I were very amused.
We ended up immensely enjoying our meal, going home, and going to bed. We got up and went to our conferences, and came home, mostly without incidence.
One thing, though, that we noticed both during the trip, as well as waiting in the airport to leave, was that KC has completely brutal news! It's obscene! There were babies kidnapped, elderly people beaten in an atm vestibule (yes, I thought of the Friends episode with Jill Goodacre), weird stores catching on fire.... All types of heinosity!
I was pretty sure that armegeddon was taking place, but clearly we're safe. Phew!
All in all, amazing trip. We even brought back chocolately treats, cat cards, wine (yeah, we didn't drink three bottles in one night) and I got my three rings that I usually wear on my right hand. Great trip!
Mom, this blog was for you and Clarence. Thought you could use a laugh. Love you!
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