Hot or Not?

I'm in a small city in Massachusetts for a meeting. They're putting us up at a local hotel.

Well, technically, it's a hotel, but it could also double as a showroom for Hitchcock painted furniture, which you probably won't have heard of unless you read the ads in Yankee magazine. And since Yankee magazine is pretty hard core (pronounced "hahd co-ah") you won't have done that unless you're a dyed-in-the-wool New England Yankee.

By "Yankee" I don't merely mean "person born north of the Mason-Dixon line." That's a start, but it doesn't go far enough. No, by "Yankee," I mean "a fair-skinned, bland-food-eating, over-educated, dipsomaniacal cheap bastid who probably swears way too much and has a bizarre, inexplicable attachment to braided rugs, Indian pudding, Country Curtains, The Boston Red Sox, and Dunkin' Donuts--maybe even baked beans and brown bread."

This hotel is definitely owned by Yankees. I haven't seen any doughnuts or braided rugs yet, but the curtains in my room aroused my suspicions at once.

And the owners are definitely cheap bastids. My room is freezing. It's so cold that I'm sitting here huddled under my laptop for warmth (purr, purr, nice Macintosh--so cozy.)

And when it comes to interior decorating, I think this hotel, like my mother, updates things about once every fifty years. Our motto is "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without." Another trademark of the traditional Yankee (as if there were any other kind. There are no neo-Yankees or Yankee wannabes. If your ancestors haven't been here braiding rugs, baking beans, eating doughnuts, and saying "Yankees Suck!" for at least 200 years, you don't qualify. Give up and move to the sunbelt, becuase you'll never fit in.)

Of course, now that I've said all that, I've done an internet search for Hitchcock furniture only to discover that Hitchcock Furniture was a 180-year old firm--but they just went out of business. And their hideous "phony Colony" (pronounced "foe knee cologne knee") furniture is now apparently a hot collectible. Whatever, people.

So ... hotel room? Cold.
Hotelier's sense of style? Colder.

But free wireless internet access? Hot!

I just hope they don't find out that big chain hotels charge $9.95 for wireless access. Because I'm a cheap bastid doughnut craving Yankee, and free wireless rocks my world.