Day Four

Snowing outside, temperatures falling, wind starting to gust a bit. A couple of inches on the ground with a couple more to come. It’s our third snowfall of the winter here in Short Pump, Virginia. Yesterday, my wife headed over to the new Publix mere hours before it was to begin and texted me: Publix is so quiet...either Richmonders have stopped freaking out about the snow, or this store is doomed...

I feel reasonably confident that my fellow Short Pumpians have not stopped freaking out about the snow.

Day Four at Shangri-La, Short Pump finds me getting more antsy by the minute. Our two bedroom, two bath suite seems to have shrunk considerably since Sunday. But, it’s the little things that are starting to annoy me. In case you’re wondering, we still have a blanket-covered stack of luggage in front of the vent to nowhere, having decided that our makeshift solution was preferable to having to pack up and move to a room with a more logical HVAC plan. I’ve moved on from the big things and started to obsess over the smaller annoyances...

- a coil top stove with burners that will not lay flat, leaving every pan deployed on them tilted manically 

- showers and sinks which feature dial turned spigots which go from arctic cold to scalding hot within a millimeter of each other

- trash cans so small, they are filled up halfway through the preparation of one meal

- a sofa which can’t decide if it’s a sofa, futon, or chaise lounge, but regardless of which it is, declares war on the spinal column of anyone sitting on it.

While all of these things are incredibly annoying to someone like me, I must admit that when you write them down and read back over what you’ve written, it practically screams back at you...First World Problems!!!  Here I am, four days into a stay in a hotel suite which is bigger, and more luxurious than the bedrooms of the world’s richest Kings two thousand years ago, and considerably more luxurious than the homes of over half of the world’s present population. I’m agitated about the scalding hot water while 2.5 billion people on this planet would give just about anything for clean running water at any temperature. So, yeah...I’m a spoiled American.

Something else has occurred to me during my stay at the Residence Inn...Network and cable television is doomed. Each night of our stay, we have had three televisions to choose from for the night’s entertainment. The standard cable package along with HBO is available, free of charge. Not once have we chosen to turn them on. Instead, we sit close together, huddled around my wife’s laptop to watch the latest episode of Black Mirror...on Netflix. We do so despite the tiny eleven inch screen and the inadequate speakers which require extreme concentration to hear. Sure, we watch Andrew Freiden in the morning, and we did watch the end of the Vikings / Saints game Sunday night, but that’s about it. I don’t think we’re alone. If I worked for one of the major networks or a cable television company, I would be looking to acquire a new skill set. Their days are numbered...