On Saturday we checked into the Holiday Inn and Convention Center at about 4:00.  I had reserved a poolside room on the 2nd floor, but they gave me one on the main floor, just set slightly off the pool. 

It was an ideal location since the kids could run back and forth to the pool and I didn't feel I had to sit out there the entire time.  There was a casting call for a movie in the room next to us, but by 6:45, they were picking up everything off of the table outside their room and calling it a day.

But midnight the kids had been swimming for several hours, pizza had been eaten, the cousin dropped off home, and the pool was closed.  There was an awful lot of noise coming into our room, but you have to accept that when you have a pool-side room.

By 1:00 AM, though, after having drifted in and out of sleep for about an hour, I called the front desk.  "Um, I was just wandering if you might be able to quiet things down here a little bit?"  "Sure, where is the noise coming from?"  "I think it's in that movie room next door."  "We'll send someone right down."

Then things got noisier for a few minutes, I heard knocks, loud voices, and soon it all seemed to quiet down a bit.  But at 2:00 the noise had picked up again to its loudest yet.  Another call.  "Um, It's really noisy down here.  I really need to get some sleep and I don't know what to do."  (It's true, I am sometimes utterly irrational if I have gone 2 or 3 nights without sleep.  And I rarely sleep well before a trip, so I'm a recipe for disaster when travelling with the kids.)  "And where is the noise coming from?"  "Everywhere.  But I still think it's that movie room."  "We'll send someone right down."

This time, I go into the bathroom, from which the children and I had clearly heard the R-rated auditions resonating from the next room earlier.  Strange.  It's actually quieter in here.  It's not the movie audition room!  So I wake up slightly and decide to wander out in my jammies to investgate.  I grab the room key and leave the room.

Two young men are talking right outside my room window.  A family of four with two toddlers are standing beside the rail on the second floor.  The couple are talking and looking a bit displaced and the children are fussy and loud.  At 2:15 in the morning??!!  Wa it.  On the second floor?  Damn.  The noises had been coming from the room right over my head!  Why did I think it was the audition room?  Security must have thought I was nuts.  But apparently they had taken care of the problem.  Only a few minutes ago there seemed to be a full (and large) party in progress.  Now the young family was leaving.  And whatever hordes had been lurking in the shadows - they seemed to be gone, too.

So I began wandering back to my room.  The two good-looking young men were still standing right outside my room talking.  Talking.  Droning on and on.  Did I mention that I can get really owlly when I am very tired??  I weighed my option - and then I did the unthinkable.  I marched right over to them and said "People are trying to sleep in there.  Do you think you could move??"  They looked at me as if I were insane and nodded, but didn't move.  Only a second had passed when I added, "It's *bleeping* 2:00 in the morning!"

Then I stalked over to my door and inserted the card with a self-righteous flair.  No green light.  Tried again.  And again.  And again.  And again.  The card was not going to work.  I knocked a few times, at first quietly and then louder.  Those kids were not waking up.  Then I tried the card again several times.  No use.  The card was not going to work.  I was very careful not to look towards the men, who were still standing only about 6 feet away from me, quite silent now.  I evaluated my options, and then I pounded loudly and repetitively on the door, surely waking up every room up to 6 rooms away.

The door opened and I slunk inside.