what a lovely idea...

http://www.co-abode.com .... why didn't someone think of this a long time ago?

Update: Changed link so it works. Thanks, gurath.

it's gotta be the uniform...

The ways people react to it shouldn't surprise me anymore. Sure, there are two main camps -- roughly, "submissive" and "defiant" -- but the variation within them are sometimes startling. On the one hand, you get the people who react like you've prodded them with hot tongs whenever they see you. And then you get... the Others.

I got a taste of each last night.

The night starts off with an "awareness round." It's the first patrol of the night, just after I've been briefed, when I go check all the doors, let the staff know who's on duty and that I've got the Nextel on. It's usually when I figure out pretty concretely what the tone of the night is and why the previous guard looked so worried. I generally end the patrol with the bar, because if there's a problem, the bar is usually where it is. And if I'm going to get stuck there, I want to not worry about what else hasn't been checked yet. Besides, with the ballrooms directly above, the bar is a good vantage point. The ballrooms are the other hot spot anyway.

Well, last night I walked into the bar and took my usual spot, standing just inside the doorway. The crowd was subdued for a Friday night, but I couldn't figure out why for a couple of minutes. (Trust me, with our usual Friday nights, one doesn't look that sort of gift horse in the mouth.) However, after a minute or two...

"Excuse me, officer. Are we doing something wrong?"

I looked over -- the question's coming from a worried-looking man standing near a corner table. Built like a brick wall, he's got to be seven feet if he's an inch. But the expression on his face is "little boy about to be taken behind the woodshed." I smiled. "No, sir. I'm just observing. Killing a few minutes at the end of my patrol." He didn't buy it. Instead, he got more assertive. "Well, I mean, you've been standing here watching everything. Why are you here if we're not doing anything wrong?" Erm, maybe because it's my job. "Because it's as good a place as any to end my patrol, sir." "Well, I'd appreciate it if you'd go somewhere else. I'm a paying guest, I pay my tab, and I don't pay to have someone standing over me." He's raising his voice by this point, and I'm beginning to wonder exactly what it is he is so worried about. About thirty seconds later, I find out. Because three young-looking girls appear from the back and occupy the table. He's been buying them drinks -- turns out, only one of them is twenty-one. I called the Raleigh P.D. End of story for me, as all four are escorted off the premises.

And then.

And then.

Among our other guests, is a Gay Bowling Team named -- and I swear to God I could NOT make this up if I tried -- the Grab Its.

They were good guests, for the most part. I wasn't completely happy with the way they were treated, but I'm not exactly customer service -- I am a customer liaison simply because I'm among them so often, but I'm not Guest Services. We had two noise complaints regarding them, nothing out of the ordinary for a high-spirited group of guys. I was largely ignoring them. Until I did my second patrol, and on the door of 1523 there's a note. There's a Do Not Disturb sign, of course, and frankly, it's one of those things which make me truly thankful to our airline crews. They come in, go to bed, put up the Do Not Disturbs, and sleep like the dead until 5:30 AM. So whenever I see one of the signs, I mentally write it off as "airline crew wanting to sleep," and go no further. Saves my peace of mind. Really, it does. But anyway. I look at the note: it's addressed to security, states that he's noticed I do patrols of the floors, and asks that he be "given" about thirty minutes, because he's "in with someone."

Eww. Euww. EUWW!

Here's how it goes, kids. The uniform doesn't make me your mother confessor. Straight, bi, try, I don't care. I don't wanna know. I won't knock on your door unless you send for me or you're disturbing your neighbours.

I removed the note, shook my head, and walked away. Just another night at the hotel. Wonder what they've got in store for me tomorrow.

house on a hill

... is it sad when your greatest ambition is to become the kind of person whose house the normals won't let their kids go near?

Forget working nine to five. I wanna be the strange lady on the hill who bakes cookies and writes stories and makes lace and lets her kids run around in the mud with her pet fennec. I want the porch filled with windchimes and the garden full of herbs they've never heard of and wildflowers they've never seen in bloom because they cut them down and weed them out before they flower. I want fountains in the front yard and statues in the garden, I want stone walls that don't slow down children one bit, and huge stones with inclusions to fascinate lying around. I want the music echoing down the hill to be the type to draw in wandering children and make them dance and daydream. The kind their parents would never ever play. I want to throw pots and fingerpaint and do pictures on the wall in broken bits of tile and glass. I want them to hear the stories I tell and never know that I wrote them. And then I want the ones who care enough to wonder to know exactly who wrote them and where to find me. I want my work to be insidious, sneaking in bits of joy past their tended walls and planting them deep, letting them loose to spread and tangle and corrupt their whole worldview.

Slightly Warped Individual Seeks Position
Position Sought: local eccentric / good fairy
Qualifications: sense of joy, craving for freedom, sense of mischief, love of magic and nature
Education: one childhood spent running wild, one young adulthood spent growing in strange directions.

Require room to spread out, few restrictions, lots of leeway and encouragement. In return, promise to dream dreams and share visions. Promise to make messes and music, start and abandon and finish projects according to inspiration and not timetable, and with varying results, but always always always with the ultimate goal in mind. To wit: corrupt the world with joy.