Big Country

On a plane between Oklahoma City and Minneapolis

Well… I’ll tell you one thing: this job is giving me an opportunity to visit cities I would never choose to go to on my own. For example, I’ve just left Oklahoma City. Yessirree, I sure did, I tell you what. I must say that, for the most part, I’ve been fairly impressed with the hotels BER uses. In Tulsa we stayed in a beautiful Crown Plaza and I’m on my way to Minneapolis where I think we’re staying in a Marriot. However, last night we stayed in a Clarion… in Oklahoma City. The carpets were stained with what I could only assume to be chaw juice and the lobby/buffet area smelled like cheese zombie. The one thing I will say is that it seems the smaller and the crappier hotel, the better service we get in our conference room. Last week, I stayed at a lovely Hilton on Long Island but the hotel people couldn’t give two shits about our little seminar because there were six other 'conferences' going on, while today the people over at the “convention center” (and yes it was an effort to refrain from using my fingers to parenthesize every time I used this overly-ambitious term today) fell all over themselves helping us out.


One thing that I’ve forgotten about the South or maybe it's a new thing, is one of the ways they have of saying thank you. Rather than saying thank you or I appreciate it, like us ho-hum northerners, some our Southern friends say “I appreciate you.” Now this isn’t after giving them relationship advice or talking them off a ledge, but after everyday activities like making a bank transaction or buying a sandwich. I first heard this in Columbia, South Carolina but then recently heard it again today in Oklahoma City. However, I must admit, it meant more the first time because the SC woman’s accent oozed so much that the word 'appreciate', actually dripped into the word 'you', giving 'you' like 5 syllables, which somehow gave it even more significance. Y-oo-ooo-uuu. Meanwhile, the OK guy’s “I appreciate ya” felt like somebody hurling dry toast at my forehead. Still, it’s nice to know that he appreciated not only my sandwich buying capabilities, but ME.


What I learned today: There are an inordinate number of male teachers named Todd.