Uncle June Does Dallas

Thursday night Uncle June is grabbing his bags and heading out for another work trip to Texas, but instead of Houston, it’s “June Does Dallas.”

I’m going, too.

You know I hate travel, but this time I’m going by myself, I’ll be home Sunday afternoon and it’s a convention that will require comparatively minimal effort in comparison to the other trips.

I went to this convention two years ago, and although I’ve tried to block out the traumatic memory, I feel the need to tell you exactly how not wonderful it went in hope talking about it will eliminate the chance of it happening again.

It started out okay in that my plane landed safely (always a good thing) and I arrived at my hotel room to find a nice gift basket welcoming me to the event.

However, I soon found out that the promised Internet connection didn’t work and they had no plans on finding out why that was. At all. I had to walk through the rain to a coffee shop and buy tea so I could use their connection for a couple hours each day/night to get work done.

But that was the least of my worries that trip.

The first day I was there I lost my favorite zip-up hooded sweatshirt walking back from said coffee shop. Not only was it my favorite sweatshirt, but it was my only coat for the trip.

The mall that my hotel was connected to—one that included a food court with veggie options—closed at 3pm during the week and didn’t even open on the weekends (this is still the case, but I’m including it anyway.)

At a costume party the second night I only lasted until 8pm, not because it was nearing my bed time—although it kind of was—but because I became extremely queasy.

I ran back to my room and began dry heaving into the hotel toilet.

So there I was—dressed like a hippie and dry heaving into a foreign crapper, wondering if it was food poisoning or the flu—when I started to lose my vision as a migraine set in.

Five minutes later I was half in my pajamas but with my hippie hair piece still in, still dry heaving with a migraine and my OCD raging, wondering how things could get worse.

After a sleepless night of nausea and several pleas with the devil to take my soul in exchange for relief, I soon found out how things could get worse.

I went to e-register and get my boarding pass for Sunday’s flight and found out I had made my reservations for MAY 18 and not APRIL 18. I could detail the long story and frantic conversation with the airline, but it boils down to me being a distracted idiot and that my travel troubles aren’t limited to simply being directionally challenged.

At any rate, that trip was a disaster but not because of the convention itself, so I’m hoping this time will be exponentially more pleasant. At the very least, I hope to not find myself dry heaving into any toilet anywhere and have access to the Internet if I do so I can blog about it.

And since I know you’re wondering, I have triple and quadruple checked my itinerary.

I will be coming home Sunday.

Of this week.

With the gnome…and hopefully a better story. 

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