I’m currently sitting in my room in the Holiday Inn RiverCentre dreading tomorrow. For those of you wondering why I got a hotel room, it’s because I have a hard time sneaking hookers into my parents’ house. Seriously, it’s because it’s a 20-mile drive to the testing site, I’d have to cross the Minnesota River and there’s no guarantees when it comes to traffic and/or parking around here. Registration starts at 7:30, lasts for an hour and directions begin at 8:40. They ain’t gonna delay the start of the bar exam for nobody (unless someone falls out of a plane and crashes through the ceiling of the building, but that hasn’t happened for, like, eight or nine years, so it’s not something I can count on).
Conversely, it’s much easier to rent a room that’s two blocks away and leave my car parked in the lot here. It’s more expensive, of course, but the convenience is worth it as far as I’m concerned. Plus I have high-speed Internet access here, so I can babble on for lengths and not have to wait quite as long for it to get posted on the blog. (It might only save 10 seconds, but it’s less time, dammit!)
The only down side is that I’m bored out of my mind. Being here in the hotel room means I’m stuck watching TV, reading a book, babbling on for lengths or (God forbid) going over some notes at the last minute. At least I’m not overtired at the moment, so I’m sounding mostly coherent. For the time being.
Thankfully, I haven’t been completely isolated from human life for the past five hours or so. I ran over to Subway when I first got here—it was pouring, but I brought my rain jacket for a reason. I figured, “Buy a foot-long sub, eat half for lunch on Tuesday and the other for lunch on Wednesday.” I walked up to the door and saw that it closed at 5:00pm. Why? Hell if I know. Maybe it’s because they only have enough workers to fill one shift per day, so it’s open for eight hours max. Regardless, I got there, flipped open my phone to check the time: 4:55. Whew.
I bought my sub, went back to the room and waited for a phone call. I made dinner plans with a friend—there’s a bar called The Liffey attached to the hotel, so we were meeting over there as soon as she got off work and drove over. She’d called me while I was driving into town to say she’d be getting out later than she expected. No worries, I thought. Then while I was sitting in my hotel room, it started raining harder. A lot harder. She called shortly thereafter to tell me that while traffic was moving, the speedometer on her car was on zero. Her final phone call was while she was back on the road, asking if I wanted to postpone until after the bar exam was over. I said I could have dinner on my own… she decided to come anyway.
Technically, I guess that wasn’t her final call—the last one was to let me know she was waiting for me in the lobby. We went over to The Liffey, where I ate a BLT that was pretty good, though the fries left something to be desired. Katie had a mixed greens salad that was significantly larger than she expected. Plus it gave her onion breath. Ah well… at least we had fun together. In my hotel room! And we could have slept together, too!
Wipe that smirk off your faces—nothing happened. We were talking in the bar, which was getting louder the longer we stayed, so I suggested we head upstairs where we could hear each other. We got in the room, I sat down in the chair by the desk and she plopped down on the bed. After lying there for a moment, she said she could have fallen asleep right there. (Had she done so, I could have laid down next to her and taken a nap; we would have slept together.)
We talked for an hour or so, at which point she had to take off and study for a class she’s taking (Biopsychology). After she left, I was sooooo glad she stopped by to distract me from the nasty stuff that’s looming in my immediate future. Now that she’s gone… this is all I’ve got to distract me and I’m pretty much done writing. I’ve received lots of good luck and best wishes via phone and e-mail during the course of the day, so I’ll try to put it to use tomorrow.
