Safely arrived in Bellevue. You can now skip the rest of this unless you're interested in travel stories.<\/p>\n
Mostly everything went fine. Got to the airport in plenty of time for once; parked on the street outside longterm parking, which you can do for free over a weekend; everything went smoothly. Flight was delayed, but only something like 15-30 minutes. The flight was uneventful and smooth; the pilot apologized for roughness at one point, but I hadn't actually felt any roughness. The only unfortunate side to the flight itself was that after I swapped computer batteries, my PowerBook totally died--wouldn't restart. (As you can tell by the fact that you're reading this, it mysteriously started working again by the time I got to the hotel.)<\/p>\n
The adventure part of the evening began when I picked up my rental car. I had rented an Economy car, but what Alamo gave me (I discovered after walking halfway across the garage to find it) was a Chevy HHR LT<\/a>. It looked much too big for my tastes, and the rental woman hadn't said anything about upgrading me, so I trekked back across the lot to ask for a smaller car, only to find that they didn't have any. That's what I get for arriving at 10:30 on a Friday night. So I figured the only thing to do was enjoy it, even though I'm a little bit tense about having all that car around me, and even though I always think this new breed of quasi-car looks kinda like a cross between a PT Cruiser and Reid Fleming's milk van<\/a>. (It does appear to get decent gas mileage, though.)<\/p>\n So that was all right. And despite the rain and the darkness and the unfamiliarity of both car and roads, I followed about 95% of the Google Maps instructions to get to the hotel, and I was smugly thinking to myself how nice it was that the roads were clearly marked and that I had directions and that the car designers had thought to incorporate a small bright white spotlight in which one can hold a map to glance at it while driving. But a moment of uncertainty at a crucial juncture took me to the wrong half of an exit, which led to 20 minutes of driving around in circles, parking in a fire station's parking lot, trying desperately to escape from the Verizon corporate parking lot (which, much like Hell, has no exit whatsoever<\/em>), and asking directions from a gas station attendant. Which he gave me, and which got me 95% of the rest of the way (I had almost made it that far on my own, but silly me, I thought the sign that said \"90 East\" over the roadway ahead meant that it was a freeway onramp). And then there was no hotel at the place where it was supposed to be.<\/p>\n After some more driving around in circles, I called Directory Assistance, which informed me that the hotel I was looking for was in Renton, one city west of where I was. So I called them, and they told me that they also had a branch in Bellevue, and eventually (after leaving me on hold for a few minutes) gave me the number.<\/p>\n So I called the Bellevue branch, and the guy was very nice and gave me very specific directions--take the right-hand branch, do not go through the tunnel, continue straight, and then where it says \"Dead End\" just keep going (!)--and I found the place, and it's got a nice tastefully appointed lobby and the guy at the desk was nice and friendly and they have a covered parking garage and I came up to my room and I have a full-size refrigerator and a stove<\/em> (!) and a kitchen sink (!) and what looks like it'll be a nice view of the woods when there's light.<\/p>\n And! It has a nicely labeled Ethernet jack in the wall next to a big desk, and I plugged my Ethernet cable in and I have high-speed Internet access, as advertised, without the uncertainty I associate with wireless. Yay!<\/p>\n