Hello, Failure

Of all the enemies of literature, success is the most insidious

Friday, February 18, 2005

Failure of the Day: Luxury

We were recently invited on a quickie trip to Las Vegas with Chris’s co-workers, but we declined due to the possibility of pending higher financial priorities. (Translation: we’re thinking about moving.) Nevertheless, we would like a wee getaway and are well deserving of one; our last out-of-town excursion was summer before last, to the San Diego ComicCon if you’ll recall.

We will most likely go to Half Moon Bay or Monterey for a weekend in March. Chris, he loves him some ocean. He can look at water, just water, for days and days. So being the world-class shopper that I am (have I mentioned that I once got us a room at a Marriott for $35 a night?) I am all over the Web looking at inns and B&Bs and hotels and such.

I’ve only stayed at a B&B once before—Chris took me to one in Santa Cruz for our second date. (That would be a fairly presumptuous move for a second date if I hadn’t hurled myself at him 15 minutes into our first date.) It was lovely, although I think Chris is still traumatized by how he proudly showed me that our room had a private Jacuzzi, and I had to break it to him that hot tubs are strictly forbidden to me on account of the whole central nervous system thing. But I’m just not sure I got the whole B&B experience, frankly, so unaccustomed to even the teensiest bit of niceness was I at that time. I more or less viewed the whole thing through slit-eyed suspicion…Who are those old people and why do they keep handing me biscuits?

Not quite seven years later of course, I am as middle class as the day is long. So now I know that one thing about the nicer lodgings, especially those of the B&B variety, is their use of feathers. Goose down comforters and feather beds are, apparently, the height of luxury. Except that I am allergic to goose down. Not to the extent that I am allergic to cats—I don’t seem to be in any immediate danger of suffocating to very death when I am near goose down, but I sneeze an awful lot and that’s not super conducive to, say, sleeping.

This means that when booking luxury accommodations, I must ask that they please hold the luxury. I like to think that I have to forego most so-called luxurious things because I am constitutionally predisposed to being a Righteous Class Warrior. I like thinking that even though it is deeply and profoundly untrue. It just sounds better than saying that I am a demanding shrew with a large number of needs that are spectacular in their specificity.

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