Third Time’s a Charm (I Guess …)

Pulled out of Cleve-Land (that’s how Howard the Duck said it, anyhow) just before 1pm today. Notacon had two final events scheduled for today (Sunday): the “how did things go/what can we go to improve things” talk, and the Blockparty award ceremony. I am sad to say that neither of my entries won anything. I completely misjudged the crowd when preparing my work; this wasn’t my demographic at all. I am still proud that I entered them. Not everyone can say that they’ve submitted things to a demo party, so that’s something I suppose.

Check out time at the hotel was at noon, which created a weird logistical problem as today’s events were scheduled from 11am-1pm. That meant checking out early, tracking down one of the Wynham’s extremely scarce luggage carts, and wheeling things down to my truck, which was parked in valet parking. Once my truck was filled with several thousand dollars worth of electronic equipment, I then proceeded to pull out of the hotel and drive in expanding concentric circles in search of a public parking spot. I found one a few blocks away. By the way, downtown Cleveland has a 1:10 ratio of parking meters to homeless people. Just sayin’.

Around dinner time I punched “Chinese” into the GPS to see if any restaurants were close, and they were. Sort of. The GPS led me two or three miles off the interstate to where a Chinese restaurant used to be. Oops. I went back to the GPS, threw another electronic dart, and drove to a second abandoned Chinese restaurant. I decided to give it one more try when I found the “Dragon Buffet”. The Dragon Buffet is (and I’m not kidding) co-located with an after hours emergency clinic. At least if the food was bad I’d have a short walk to next door.

There should really only be two types of restaurants, really. What I mean is, there should only be two styles of restaurant care. The first is “hands on” — this is where a waiter seats you, takes your order, servers your food, brings you refills and takes your payment. The other kind is “hands off” where after you order, you’re on your own. I hate restaurants in between those two things, places where I should be taking care of business and yet there’s a floor person begging for a tip. I’m sorry, but if there’s a publicly accessible soda fountain, I don’t need you to get me a refill. Trust me, I need the exercise.

Anyway, no such problems at the Dragon Buffet. You pay at the door and you’re on your own. No one seated me, no one came by to say hi, no one picked up my plates … it was just me and the food, baby. The food was iffy at best and halfway through my meal I started thinking their location in relation to the urgent care center might have been a smart move, but things worked out okay.

I am increasingly fascinated by locale differences in things that shouldn’t have them. Like Chinese restaurants … here they didn’t have soy sauce out on the table — it was on the buffet, with a ladle. Why is that? Maybe it’s a theft problem here at the Dragon; there were no salt or pepper shakers on the tables either — just fake flowers and those cool old-school place mats informing me that I (and everyone else born in 1973) is an Ox and that we should all marry Snakes or Cocks and that we’re not compatible with Rabbits. Noted.

So yeah, no problem getting harassed at the Dragon Buffet; I didn’t see anyone. They save money on bathroom attendants there too because they don’t have a bathroom. If you ever end up at the Dragon Buffet and see the yellow stain on the back corner of their building, you’ll know what happened. Blame it on the extra ladles of soy sauce.

I’m ~150 miles from St. Louis and crashing for the night. It’s raining, but not bad. The parking lot I’m in touches three hotels: Pear Tree Inn, Drury Inn, and the Days Inn. I’m about to flip a (three-sided?) coin, so I may opt for option four again (Chevy Avalanche Inn).