ACC 2008 – Update #1

I have just emerged from the bathroom of this Continental flight down to Houston for America’s Classic. For a half hour I’ve been in there trying to balance on the closed toilet seat while being thrown back and forth between the walls (pilot says “we’re having a little weather.”)

Why have I been in the bathroom balancing on the toilet seat? Because I bought a bag of dark-chocolate-covered almonds which were sealed in impenetrable shrink-wrap which I had to rip at with my teeth and the tray-table wasn’t working so I was balancing the cup of coffee, the two magazines with Britney on the cover, a pillow, a blanket, iPod earphones which wouldn’t work because to hear the movie you need two prongs not one for the holes in the arm, while trying to type with my thumbs on this stupid device because the touch-screen isn’t working again, and between being squished in there with all these worries I didn’t notice that the chocolate-covered almonds had poured out of their mangled shrink-wrap, fallen onto the seat under my butt and melted. So by the time I finally managed to extricate a hand to reach under the pillow to get a chocolate-covered almond all I felt was a warm pile of goo between my legs and as I groped around realized to my horror it was smeared all over my butt and the whole seat, gooey sticky dark brown chocolate with lumps of almonds, like some mammal had been foraging under the pillow and had left droppings. Uh oh. If I hadn’t already attracted enough attention just by being buried beneath the mountain of stuff while balancing coffee and writing with my thumbs, I DEFINITELY made a scene when I jumped up yelling “Oh NO!! HELP! SOMEONE! Stewardess! Disaster Over Here!” and since my hands were now covered in globs of chocolate I couldn’t touch anything to get the pile off my lap. What a mess.

So that was how I ended up shivering in the bathroom with my pants off. Of course this was the first comp, in two years, when I finally decided to travel light and bring one single pair of jeans for the weekend. Usually I bring the pair with one rip, and the pair with tons of rips, and the pair that Melissa told me makes my legs look five miles long. But this time I took a walk on the wild side and brought one single lonely pair of jeans, which I was now frantically scrubbing in the sink that gives one drop of water per push.

The stewardess was VERY not happy. She didn’t like me anyway, from the first minute she saw me. I don’t know why. She was mean to me when I didn’t want peanuts. But now she was acting like I messed my pants. I kept saying “I am so sorry. I know this looks like something awful but you have to believe me it’s just chocolate and those chunks are almonds.” She had to go find a whole ‘nother seat cushion to replace mine.

Anyway, that’s how the trip began.

The hotel is 10 minutes from the airport so there’s a free shuttle which runs every fifteen minutes. We waited for 45 minutes then called the hotel. They said oops the shuttle driver decided to skip our terminal since most flights don’t come in to that terminal. So an hour later the shuttle came.

The hotel is huge, but the rooms aren’t, shall we say, extremely wonderful. I hung my towel on the towel rack and the whole rack came crashing down in pieces, some of which fell into the toilet. There’s a ledge in the shower for your shampoo and razors and stuff so I put all my toiletries on the ledge then turned the shower on to get hot. I heard a series of crashes, bangs and thuds and glass breaking and ran into the bathroom to find that everything on the ledge had slid down into the bathtub because the ledge is SLANTED and when it gets wet nothing will stay there, not even a washcloth.

I will write more later – it’s hard using this stupid slide-out keyboard thing and as I said the dang screen is going blotto. I’m definitely getting an iPhone when I get home

Lots and LOTS of majorly excellent dancers here. Four concurrent tours – WSDC, NASDE, AANCE, and the Masters tour. Tomorrow we’ll be dancing competing from 2pm on through late at night.

We are the only DC dancers here! Quite a few from Florida, some from NY and Boston (including Kathy and Joe Mahoney, looking completely refreshed after New Year’s), and of course people from this part of the country. And they’re all good – veddy veddy good. It’s intimidating.

More later. Miss you guys. How was Cherry Hill?

Xoxoxo

Love Liza and Genieboy