Ahem

Oh hi.  I guess it's been awhile. 

Quick updates.  Got married to girlfriend (is she my ex girlfriend now?) last September.  The ceremony and reception were actually at the hotel.  It was very pretty and I will never have to talk about center pieces again.  My sister also got married this past May.  The Auditor family has grown from very small to, well, a lot more than the four of us.  Also, it looks like I might transform into an uncle tomorrow.  So, yeah.  Family! 

I have also moved from the North side of Chicago to the South.  My permanent roommate and I live in Hyde Park now which means we are still surrounded by college kids, but we are the more rowdy ones this time. We like the neighborhood, have found the Hyde Park bar (singular), and our commutes are much better.  The later is the main reason for the move. 

So why post after so long?  Today is my last day at the hotel.  I will still be working for the company, but I'll be off operations.  I started a few days ago and am working one last Saturday shift as a favor.  I've changed into a nine to five, Monday through Friday guy.  I have worked many different hours and positions, but never consistent normal human person hours before.  It's strange.  For example, I went to a bar after work yesterday with some new coworkers.  And it was Friday.  And it was daylight.  And my shirt was tucked in.  These are new and potentially scary circumstances for a service industry worker.  Going out on a Friday as opposed to a Tuesday?  Who am I?  I also say good morning now, I am not on my feet all day (desk!), and I can make plans on weekends and holidays.  Consistently.  If you don't work industry, you probably take this for granted.  My wife won't have to explain to her family why I won't be there for Thanksgiving.  Amazing.  I am excited, but I am going to have a hard time not seeing some of my favorite people in the world everyday.  Seriously.  I may have to fight off the lone manly tear from crawling down my cheek at the end of my shift today.

What does this mean for this mean for the kind and attractive readers of this blog?  Well, this is my first update in years, so probably not much.  I do want to thank you all.   I checked the view numbers for this blog first time today and I had 12.333 views last month!  That is just under a third of my all time views.  Wow.  I guess the saying is right, neglect makes the heart grow fonder.  Or something like that.  And thank you for the emails.  I like the emails.  Send me more. 

Still not sure what form my web presence will take next.   Maybe I'll start  "NormalHumanPersonShift Chicago".

Goodbye? Hello?

Good news for me and maybe just plain old news to you, but they have hired someone to take over my midnight shifts per my request. I will still be working at the hotel, just days now and occasionally covering the audit shifts for vacations and call offs. I will miss some things and more that I wont, but I am going to become more of a day walker in a couple weeks. Nights have been sometimes interesting, sometimes funny, and surprisingly never lonely for me, but it's time I try to become more like a normal person again who sets his alarm for 8:30 AM as opposed to PM. It was more fun when I was single and in my early twenties, but it's very easy to get stuck doing nights when it gets into your routine. Girlfriend will be much happier too, but she is going to have to find some other alarm system other than "wake me up when you get home." So, I am happy.


But the most important question is obviously what is going to happen to this blog? I am not really sure. I can keep it going by telling all the stories I was too lazy to write before and telling new day time stories. I can start a new blog that tells some of my hotel stories, but also more about my life in Chicago and other slightly more personal things. My friend Mark says I should twitter, which I refuse to say out loud, but it might be a good idea. You may have noticed that a lot of my newer posts have been brief. I kind of like them that way because I think words are a lot funnier when they are more thought out and concise than a word spewing stream of consciousness like I am doing right now, so the twitter thing might fit. Or maybe I can open up this blog to other night folk so you can read their stories. The fate of this blog is still to be discovered and I am open to any other ideas. Either way, even when I am not actively posting, it has made me happy to know that people are actually reading my stories and baffled as to why I have a decent following in Iceland. So thank you and I like you all very much.


In a weird bit of timing a friend of a friend who is a fellow Chicagoan has started a night audit blog from her hotel and asked if I want to collaborate. Her blog is called Tales from the Night Shift which is a much better name than Graveyard Shift Chicago, but we wont hold that against her. One of her posts is about poop, so I think my readers will adapt just fine to her stories.

So I guess that's it for now. Please feel free to email me at graveyardchicago@gmail.com or continue commenting on here whether I keep posting or not. Thanks again, everybody. I am sure I will see you around on the internet in one way or another soon.

So, yeah. Goodnight!

War Criminal

Some days I seem to have an accent. Tonight some guests from Italy insisted that I was from England. At other times I have been Australian or from southern USA. Born and raised in Chicago, I swear. I just mumble sometimes.

The same Italian guest compared me to a war criminal because I had to hold a deposit on his debit card for incidentals. I found this much more offensive than when people think I am from Australia.

Welcome Back

In a hotel at night, there is always a chance of spotting a naked and confused guest roaming around. You'll have to trust me that it is not like the videos you might find if you google "naked hotel". And sometimes, if you're lucky, you'll find a strange puddle in the elevator later. Thank you for bringing me back to reality after a nice long peaceful vacation, nude dude.

Snowpocalypse

It was after the fourth crack of thundersnow lightning when I realized that my years of forming a zombie swarm defense plan was for naught as the yetis started form in the distance. Yetis. I hate those guys. Soon they started to pound their clubs against the revolving doors and I knew someone had to take charge.

"Bellmen! Strike them behind the knee with your snow shovels, then decapitate them while they are down. It is our only chance."

Ok ok. No yetis. We did get our blizzard on Tuesday as promised though. Hundreds drivers had to abandon their cars on Lake Shore Drive, 174,000 homes lost power, almost 2000 flights cancelled, and one fatality of a 60 year old man who was pulled from the frozen waters of Lake Michigan.

Aside from a few friends who lost power or got stranded for a few hours, my loved ones made it out pretty much unscathed. Too be honest, it didn't seem all that bad from my end. I was working the PM shift when it happened since hotels don't know the term snow day. Watching the storm from the lobby was actually pretty cool. That thundersnow I mentioned earlier did happen. Lightning during a snow storm. I've never heard of that before so experiencing it was pretty neat. And I saw some almost take a spill while cross-country skiing across the sidewalk in front of the hotel. Falling is almost always funny and people trying not to fall is always funny. A few guests were upset that most if not all restaurants in the area closed down, but hey, us locals want to get home safe too.

While my 11pm train ride home wasn't full of smiles, it got me to my stop at almost the normal time. The hard part was swimming the four blocks home and trying to find and retrieve some items out of my girlfriend's car. On the way I saw some poor dude trying to push his girlfriend's car which was stuck in a normally fairly busy intersection. He was bemoaning how the city should have been more prepared since we knew this was coming. I felt for them, but at the same time we knew it was coming too and they really shouldn't have been driving anyway. I didn't stop to help them in their futile cause, but I did snap a quick picture.

Anyway, I got home shivering and wet, but my girlfriend had a cocktail waiting for me and put my hastily discarded clothes somewhere dry. She did ask for me to pose for a picture first.

Last night I left two and half hours early for my midnight shift to make sure I would be here on time, but it took my usual commute time to get here. It was a very quiet night with only a few stranded guests left in house. When I leave in an hour I get to look forward to trying to find whatever snow shovel is left to buy in the city so I can dig out girlfriend's car so she can try to drive to work in the burbs, which I still think is a bad idea. After that I plan to lock myself in the apartment until I have to work again on Sunday, leaving only to stop by the corner store or possibly the neighborhood bar if I want to swap some yeti stories with my fellow locals.

Feel free to comment here or email me any of your Snowpocalypse experiences.

Trade Secret

Want to know a secret?

When you ask for a 5:05am wake up call, I'm going to call you at 5am.

I just say it's 5:05.

Please dont hate me.

Christmas Night

Last night I was looking for my late night bellman and found him in a dark bell closet watching a video on his phone.

"Uh, what are you doing?"

"Oh, just watching dogs barking jingle bells."

Not exactly what I was expecting a 21 year old guy to watch in the dark, but he showed me his phone. Sure enough, dogs barking jingle bells.

Then he made me a sandwich.

I have a good staff here.