Back to the West Side / The Accommodations

I flew out to LA today (Milwaukee to LA, non-stop) for my season start up. It’s so much more convenient to fly direct. I sat next to a nice guy and we actually spent the majority of the flight chatting. He had recently moved to LA to do the acting thing and it was interesting getting some insight into that lifestyle. It’s a blessing when you sit next to somebody that you can actually talk to as opposed to the people I usually sit next to: halitosis guy, the snorer, Big Jim – the armrest eater, or Mom and crying baby. Picked up my luggage (second continuous flight where my bag was ruined!) and headed to the Hacienda.
The Hacienda Hotel is basically an airport hotel - close to LAX and continually buzzing with the comings and goings of airport dwellers: airline crew, business travelers, overnighters on their way in and out of the country and also tour leaders. The cavernous back hallway of the South Tower houses the sterile hotel rooms that tour leaders call home between trips and at the beginning and end of each season. Each room is basically identical: one queen size and one twin bed (If you are lucky enough to arrive first you can stake claim on the queen sizer), a TV (“Bienvenidos, y gracias para alojarse con nosotros), a desk and a chair. Most time spent at the hotel during the summer season isn’t usually, well, relaxing. Most of the rooms in are full with other tour leaders, so you end up spending most of your time hanging out with your friends that you haven’t seen for some time blowing off steam talking about the couple of dumbshits that plagued your last trip (Lars, the German with rancid breath, the ornery girl from Wales that wanted everything her way or she would actually cry, the Koreans that didn’t know that they had booked a camping trip, the English guy with the thick Cockney accent that didn’t ever help around camp, you get the picture). Well this time I lucked out, since it was off-season, and I ended up having my own room. Nice. Just threw down all my shit and hunkered in for my week stay.
Big news for the day – My external hard-drive crashed! Bought it three weeks ago and spent about 125 hours ripping all the CD’s that I own (about 1000) onto it with the intention of transferring it all to my Ipod. Unfortunately I hadn’t done any transferring, so it’s all gone. Now I’m about to head to Mexico to start my season and I’m tuneless. I’ll have to figure out a way to have someone send me my CDs, since music is an integral part of my job. I’ve been having the worst luck with electronics lately – first a broken memory stick slot on my new laptop, then an ipod that I had to return because it had a hardware failure and now this. What a bitch! Down with Robotronix!