Cruising, part 2

For dinner, we were assigned with three other groups of two. There were married couples from Raleigh and Philadelphia and two female friends from Denver. The company was enjoyable since one of the women was a former American Airlines employee and one of the couples lives in Raleigh, which we used to live in as well. I had a spinach salad, a mojo marinated pork chop with sweet potatoes, and for dessert, peach and blueberry crumble with vanilla ice cream. The food was really good but I really enjoyed the conversation as well. We're going to be eating with these folks the next couple of dinners, so I'm happy that it worked out so well.

From there, we went into the central lobby area where a band was playing rhythm and blues music. Then, they had a little girl light up the Christmas tree in the lobby. It wasn't the biggest tree ever, but still nice to see all the lights come up at once.

Then they asked for contestants for a game called "Finish that lyric." I volunteered to go up hoping that there would be older music, and not current pop hits. There were nine other contestants besides me and I really wasn't feeling overly confident. But in the practice round, I got a Bee Gees song, so I knew I was in good shape. I survived the first round by answering an Elton John song, while six people got eliminated. Then I survived the second round as I got a Jimi Hendrix song right. They said it would be harder, but they gave me "excuse me while I kiss the sky," from Purple Haze. Only one of the most famous lyrics ever.

In the finals, there were just two players left: myself and a guy from Michigan. He got lyrics from Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville and couldn't get it right, so I was declared the winner. For fun, they gave me another song, a Temptations song that I knew a little, but I couldn't quite get. For my efforts, I got a keychain, a lanyard, and a big rectangular magnet. Truth be told, there are a lot of songs given that I would have missed. At the end of the day, I just got lucky.

I accepted a few congratulations, then just killed a little bit of time. I went to a Christmas concert, also in the lobby. It only lasted thirty minutes. I was really hoping for more. The band had a full horn section and the four singers were really talented too.

The staff decided to schedule an adult party at the same time and in the same room as the singles get together. It felt like a loud club with a lot of crazy laser lights and a lot of thumping music and an incredible amount of awkwardness. I had one non alcoholic tropical sunrise beverage, but after maybe 15 minutes, I was ready to go. I went back to the room and slept on the rock that was supposed to be my bed. As usual when I sleep on a new bed, I think it took two or three hours for me to fall asleep.