Due to my current straitened financial circumstances, I had to go super-cheap on my flight arrangements for TAM this year. This meant I had to leave Atlanta so early the MARTA trains weren’t yet running , and I spent six grueling hours on two flights between Hartsfield and McCarran. This was compounded by the fact that I’d gotten very little sleep the night before; I don’t sleep well before trips.
But I arrived at the South Point hotel and casino by early afternoon and checked into my room, which is all the way at the other end of a hallway from the elevators. One of the criminologists on the TV show CSI once said rooms so situated are nicknamed the “murder room,” because they’re too far from most other rooms on the floor for the noise to be heard.
I’ve tried to find confirmation of this, and can’t. It seems unlikely on several fronts. Mainly, are premeditated murders committed in hotel rooms often enough for this to become common parlance? If a person were planning a murder, would he (statistically, it’s a “he”) invite the victim to his hotel room first? More likely, he’d go to their hotel room, and it’s unlikely he could count on the victim choosing to rent a room at the end of the hall.
Moreover, murderers get to choose their methods, and there are many quiet ways to kill a person. A murderer thinking far enough ahead to specify this room would also have the forethought to buy a silencer, a garrote, some poison, or what-have-you (you’ll all be pleased to know I’m not well-studied in murder weapons). He could plan it so that it makes as little noise as possible.
Anywho, I checked into my room, unpacked, then headed down to the Conference Center to pick up my badge, T-shirt, and program. Here I discovered that since I’m participating in a workshop with my fellow SINners (“Blogging Skepticism: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” on Thursday at 2 p.m.), I’m classified as a presenter this year. Sweet! But my name is misspelled in the program. Not so sweet!
The T-shirt design is pretty sharp. I’ll see if I can share a picture of it later.
After picking up my materials I went back to the casino floor. My mission was to get a Krispy Kreme doughnut (What Happens In Vegas…), then repair to my room for a nap. But I ran into my friend Derek Colanduno and we ended up standing there and talking for over an hour, joined by fellow SINner Beth Ann Erickson and her husband. Always a good talk with Derek. I keep telling him he should write a book about his stroke and its aftermath. It would be an unputdownable read, but I can’t convince him of that.
Soon after five I went to the Del Mar Lounge to meet Beth, Wendy Hughes, Rebecca Bradley, and Jacques Rousseau to talk about our workshop.
Good times. After this I went to the South Point’s fitness center for my daily run, and then I went to bed.
Soon: Thursday!
