Boise, in a not-so-bad way

All day my status message has been "Boise, but not in a good way". Hannah asked what a Boise was. I'm not sure I know the answer to that. The point is that I'm in Boise, ID. I got here last night at 11:45 p.m. local time, about 2 1/2 hours after I normally go to bed, only to discover that the hotel where I had a reservation, guaranteed with the standard IBM issue American Express card, was full. I.e. there was no room there for me. Much to my comfort, they had taken the liberty of getting me a room at the Holiday Inn Express at the "bottom of the hill". Sadly, the first thing that crossed my mind was that when I did my expense report, I was going to have to answer the questions "Did you stay at an IBM approved hotel" and "Did you get the IBM negotiated rate" with "no" and "how is that possible, given my answer to number 1" respectively.

Fortunately, I found the hotel quite quickly; it was less than 1/2 a mile away. The desk clerk asked me what the rate was that I was going to pay at the other place and charged me that rate. I have no idea if that was higher or lower than she would have charged me otherwise, but at least I can confidently answer "yes" to question number 2 above. After giving me the obligatory two room keys (what's with that? Tthere's one of me so either she figures I'm smuggling another person into the room or I'm planning to get lucky), she says to me "Let me know if you need anything. I'll be here all night". I contemplated what I might need after midnight from someone whose hair style resembled either an Whoville escape or a show-cut Yorkshire Terrier as I walked to my room. It was warmish and stuffy and it was too dark to see outside. So I just went to bed.

The next morning after a 7:00 local time call on store security, I walked downstairs for the continental breakfast and realized it was stunning outside of my hotel. Here's the view from the front of the hotel:

Nice, huh? No complaints there. Of course my room was on the back of the hotel. Let's just say I'm glad that when they asked what floor I wanted a room on , I chose something higher than 1.

In any case, everyone I told I was going to Boise said to me "You know they still have snow at Sun Valley..." as if I had time or inclination ski when when I had a 2:30 meeting and still needed to prepare.

But the meeting turned out well and I had a great dinner at an unexpected little local restaurant called Cucina di Paolo. The website doesn't do it justice. I even got a "tour" of the 4 cases of lasagnas and entrees and desserts. And I quote: "I plus I make deviled eggs because I have this devlied egg plate and I love it, so I don't want it to just sit around". But the Chicken Breast stuffed with presuto, mushrooms and spinach in a tomato sherry sauce over fresh fetticcini more than made up for it.