Monday, June 8, 2009

Living in the lap of luxury

That's right: I'm in a Motel 6.

There are a couple of days of teacher workshops on weather and soil at a university in my state. They didn't have enough teachers to fill the slots and were practically begging people to come help them spend their grant money. In exchange for attending, I'll be getting a $250 stipend and a weather station worth $200 which I assume science club will put to good use. The only downside is that it's for teachers in the region where I teach, not where I'm spending the summer.

I could have driven five hours to my delta town today, then risen at the crack of dawn to drive another two and a half hours to the training site. Instead I chose to drive directly to the university town, a trip that also happens to take five hours, and get a room for the night. Frivolous? Heck yes! Worth it? Absolutely! Even with two nights in the motel, gasoline, and food, I'm going to come out ahead financially in addition to learning new things and getting twelve hours of professional development credit. If I had to do all of the extra driving, I would have been tempted to stay home.

Plus, I'm counting this as my vacation trip for the summer. It didn't involve traveling until the wee hours of the morning crammed into the backseat of a car with my little brother while my parents either bicker or seethe up front , I have an entire queen size bed to myself instead of sleeping on some relative's floor, and I get to eat out wherever I want instead of living on sandwiches from an ice chest for days on end. It's everything I dreamed of as a kid.

3 comments:

Over the Cubicle Wall said...

I spent about two years of my life in about two months at a Motel 6 in Slidell, Louisiana once. I hate Motel 6.

E.C. said...

It sounds like there's a story there...

Over the Cubicle Wall said...

Not too much of a story. When I first moved to Louisiana, I was working in New Orleans (by myself for a while), and worked outside all day in the Summer from daylight to nearly dark. The company I worked for found me a hotel in Slidell (the motel 6), so I had to drive way out there across the lake to sleep on a hard bed. I was usually tired and filthy by the end of the day. The water in Slidell has a strong sulphur smell so I never felt like I could get clean. It was just a really long two months where all I was doing was working and sleeping. Didn't know anyone down there, etc.

Finally we got a few more people working on the project, and we had a mass 'revolt' until they agreed to find us a better hotel closer to the city (a Ramada Limited). Eventually we opened an office, and I got an apartment and stayed three years in relative normalcy.