If you know me...

I've thought about starting a blog for a long time, seeing how I spend large amounts of time reading my favorite blogs. So here goes...

If you know me...you know that:
1. I am a big procrastinator (I've been meaning to type this first post for about a week and a half now. "the last year of 20" was supposed to start on my actual birthday starting the last year of 20)
2. I leave personal belongings everywhere (recent examples include car keys on a clothing display, my wallet on restaurant tables, and my cell phone at the grocery store self check out counter)

V and I went to Arizona over spring break to visit friends and watch some baseball spring training. This is our third year to do this, so we're feeling pretty "in" about the whole thing. We get autographs, try to talk to players (or in my case, get up to the player and NOT talk to them...) and just hang out in the Arizona sun.

So this year, we got a bunch of autographs (yes imagine me in a big group of small children) on several different baseballs. The hotel we stayed in had this big chest of drawers/dresser/TV stand. Before I go on, you should know:

3. I am really concerned about getting robbed in all aspects of life...car theft, house robbery, identity theft. Since all three have happened to me, I am now pretty vigilant about security and drive everyone nuts about it.

Anyway, on this trip, we misplaced one of our room keys to our hotel room. It was just one of those credit card things, very generic. When we went to the front desk to ask for another one, the desk manager just asked us what room we were in and made us another key! She didn't ask for ID, or anything. That sent me into some major mental agitation! I went on and on to V about how easy it would be for anyone to just go up and ask for a key to any room. I decided we had some very valuable items in our room...obviously several baseballs and tickets signed by people such as Colby Lewis, CJ Wilson, Nelson Cruz, and Brandon Webb. I also was in charge of getting Josh Hamilton so sign a copy of his book for my co-worker's son (which I did!) Note that I did not think about my $500 camera or my wallet or anything else, just baseball memorabilia (see how irrational I get when I think there might be a breach in security?!)

So,
I hid the stuff everywhere when we went out at night and then accounted for it when we got back. I did this for about 4 nights.
The night before we left, we packed and looked over the room several times to make sure we got everything, flew home the next day, got home, pulled out the swag, and were quite proud of our productive trip.
And I'm paraphrasing:
Me: "Wow, look at all this cool stuff, where's that world series ball?"
Vivek: "I don't know isn't it in the bag with all the other ones?"

You predicted it didn't you? We left the most important baseball of all! I had V call the hotel because of course, I knew exactly where it was (like all things I leave) and then I emailed the manager of the hotel requesting a huge favor to look for it.
Forever passes by and the next day Paul, the manager, emails to say that it was indeed exactly where I said it would be and that he was FedEx-ing it to us right then.




He actually over-nighted it to us. So a big shout out to Paul at the Highland Hotel. You saved me yet again from having to learn from my mistakes...