March 25
The big call last night happened in the garage. About 2330 I get a call from the only girl I’ll ever really love.
– Security, Gaylon.
– Gaylon! Silvia!
– My darling, good morning!
Silvia, the object of my first crush since high school, is one of the great chatterboxes of all time. I was hoping she’d demand I marry her, but no such luck.
– Hey, we got a report of a dog running around the garage. Fourth level.
Normally, there is always a unit in the garage, but with our shorthandedness extending to outside as well, there isn’t right now.
– Control, to a 10-8 unit near the garage.
Ted answers up.
– Mary 2, sir.
– Mary 2, 85 to the garage, level four. There’s a report of a loose dog.
– Copy.
A couple of minutes pass.
– Mary 2, control.
– Go ahead, Mary 2.
– Found him. Southeast corner. Hanging out near a Ford Bronco.
I pause for a second. I really don’t know what to do.
– Control, seven-seven.
77Dwayne answers right up.
– Seven-seven.
– Seven-seven and Mary 2, go to two, please.
I have them go to security channel two because we don’t need the whole crew to know I don’t know what the hell’s going on. It’s academic, really, because half the crew goes to two in these circumstances anyway, so the word’ll get out.
– Hey Dwayne, I need help. What do we do here?
– Boy, I hate to call animal control. Ted, what’s the dog doing?
– Sitting under the Bronco right now. Probably came from it.
After a bit more chit-chat 77Dwayne decides we can’t have a loose dog running around the garage, which is true. You simply don’t know what the dog is going to do. My suggestion to have Ted shoot the dog is rejected out of hand by 77Dwayne, though it did garner modest interest from Ted.
I call animal control, but they’re closed, so I call the non-emergency police number. They take the info and ask for our number and say they’ll call animal control and see what they want to do. A few minutes later the phone rings.
– Security, Gaylon.
– This is Officer Duncan, animal control.
Officer Duncan decides this needs to be dealt with and says he’s on the way. Eventually, the dog is taken into custody.
The owner shows up a couple of hours later and she is pissed because it’s plain we’ve got her dog in some top-secret room, probably gassing it or something. I get a call from the bell desk, where the lady is making her ruckus.
Hey Gaylon, Bob here at the bell desk. This lady with the dog, she says the number you gave her to claim her dog isn’t any good. She’s pretty crazy.
Ted had given her the regular animal control number which, of course, wasn’t being answered. I call up the camera for the hotel lobby and swing it around to the bell desk; you can see her carrying on.
Bob, put her on; I’ll take care of it.
The lady, who never would yield her name, gets on the line, blabbing incoherently. Evidently this all one big conspiracy.
– Ma’am…I’m sorry…that number…
– &$^%*!”
– …isn’t being answered…
– %$#%*!”
– …here…try…this…one…
She would not shut up! She was an animal activist. Nobody, but nobody, does more for animals in this town, maybe the whole planet, than she does. Christ, this is tedious, because the world hasn’t shut down so I could deal with her. Calls need to be answered and the radio needs to be paid attention to. Fortunately, years of sports officiating has taught me to keep my head in times like this.
– …ma’am, if you’d stop yapping for a second, I’m in a position to help you.
That helped. Soon enough she pipes down, and I give her the non-emergency police phone number.
But that wasn’t the end of it. She had more yapping to do at the bell desk and eventually I had to send Ted and Jeffrey in and it took 15 minutes to get her out of there.
The remodeling of the EDR is complete, and I am pleased to report that it looks really good. The carpeting is a nice, dark brown and the walkways are wood, or wood-ish, at least, and the tables and chairs match and the salad bar has been remodeled somewhat.
The food was pretty good, too. I had a chicken fried steak sandwich – tuff to beat – and it was fresh and everything else looked like it had been out less than three days, too.