I was very excited to sign up for this blogging service. Then, as I signed in for the first time, I realized that in order to blog, you must have something interesting to say. Damnit, now what? Am I going to try and blog about my life and what a rotten childhood I had, or am I going to blog about the present and how most of the time things are pretty good for me? Hmm, I think I'll start with the present and good things and, if the notion hits me, I'll talk about the dark places.
I live in Florida. I like it here. I moved to Miami in 2005 with a hotel management company that was based in Cleveland. I had a ball in Miami and learned alot about the world. The job was absolutely, hands down, the best job I've ever had or ever will have. It was at the height of the booming economy and the hotel I had was an airport property and one of the busiest that I've ever had. We were so profitable I very rarely even heard from the corporate office so I was pretty much left alone to run my hotel as I saw fit. It's like that in the hotel world. As long as you are putting massive amounts of money in the bank every day the owners and corporate office could give less of a shit what's actually going on. I actually had an owner say to me once, "I ask two things of you. 1. take the money to the bank every day and 2. keep me out of lawsuits. If you do those two things you will rarely hear from me". That's when life is good and that's the way it was in Miami. I had a wonderful seasoned staff that knew what they were doing, a director of sales that was as slick as any Venzuelean could ever be, and I hired my best friend as my front office manager. My days consisted of going into the office in the morning, taking a long breakfast next door with the other local business people, taking the deposit to the bank, checking the inventory, talking to a few guest, and spending the afternoon either socializing or having a beer down the street at the billiard house. Ahh, the stories I could tell you. There was the time we bought a pony keg, tapped it on the Office Manager's desk and spent the entire afternoon, into the wee hours of the morning, drinking that and Venezuelean rum. We took turns riding the sales director's scooter around the hotel parking lot screaming and giggling our heads off. Then there was the time that we went to the DMV to license the shuttle van. We decided to stop off at Benigan's to have a beer afterward. Around midnight, as we made our way home, we pulled over to let me throw up. A very nice police office pulled behind us with blue lights on. The cop walked up on the passenger side with a flash light and I promptly turned and puked on his shoes. Being in the company van worked in our favor. My office mgr leaned over and casually said, "picked the little lady up at the airport, I think she's had too much to drink. I'm taking her straight to the hotel." The cop, looking horrified at his shoes, just said, "have a good night" and ran, yes ran, back to his car and left. Hahaha.. good times !
So, yeah, never have had another hotel quite as much fun as that one. I could never even imagine anything like that at the hotel I am in now. Too many stuffy people and besides that, it's a different financial climate all together. It's work work work here.
