Smokin'
Greetings from San Francisco!
For the next few days I will be based at the Hotel Nikko San Francisco, attending a business conference. I neglected to install photo editing software on my new laptop, or I would show you the lovely view from my room.
Unfortunately, there was a mistake in my reservations, and I have ended up with a smoking room. They have assured me that they will move my belongings to a clean room once one becomes avaialble, but last night was fairly awful. When I got off the elevators oon the eleventh floor of the hotel, the scent hit me immediately, and my face started to swell. My sinuses closed up like a prison lock-down. When I tried to stay up to acclimate myself to the time change, I couldn't do it because my eyes burned too much, and I kept waking myself up coughing.
Frankly, this annoys the hell out of me. This shouldn't be more than a minor inconvenience, so why is my body betraying me with this? I can't understand it. I grew up in a house of smokers, and I have even dated smokers. Why is it getting harder for me to be around cigatette smoke?
Ah well, at least I'll be out of it soon. Of course, my clothes will probably smell like smoke from being stored in the room; somehow I'll survive.
Anyway, depending on how fascinating I find the discussions at the conference, Hidden City may be light on posting until I return to Miami's humidity. Odds are, though, that I'll find the time.
8 Comments:
Like you, I was raised in a smoking household, but I have no more tolerance for it in enclosed spaces. I avoid it from distaste when outside or in a large area, but in a hotel room, I'd be in major trouble. My sinuses run so heavily that they begin to drain down my throat. This tends to cause me to choke, as my throat swells closed, too. Eventually it gets difficult to breathe at all. There's also the headache and the general feeling of nausea.
I just avoid it. It's not worth it. Someone else's habit causes me misery. I don't condemn them, but I don't want to be in the same room.
You can't visit my apartment. Ever. Your head will explode.
Smoke has never bothered me, but then again my checkered past includes being stuck in a room full of CS gas, so perhaps my sinuses no longer exist.
Nic, when I wrote that post I was thinking of you.
ew shit. :( you know that i'm a smoker - but i can't stand these hotel smoking rooms either...
i guess you're better today, right?
As more places ban smoking I find it's become more intolerable when I do smell it. It's gross!
It's funny, even though I've had asthma for years, in college I could sit around while my buddies smoked all manner of vegetables and it hardly ever bothered me.
Even today I smoke the occasional cigar - I'd say one every two months or so. No bother.
But when I'm in a hotel room that is full of stale cigarette smoke it becomes a chore to breathe. And I have to break out the inhaler.
I was on a road trip a couple of years ago, driving from my then home in Milwaukee to visit my family in Virginia. I made it to West Virginia, before I got too tired, got on my cell phone, found a hotel to my liking and booked a room. I made it there an hour later, and pulled into the lot exhausted.
After I'd checked in and was walking away from the front desk to my room, the desk clerk called after me "Mr. Burnett, I forgot to mention. We didn't have a non-smoking room available after all. Will smoking be OK?"
What, I had a choice? I made the mistake of saying it would be fine. I'd open the window, crank the AC up, etc.
Didn't matter. Even w/the AC on full blast and my window cranked open, the smoke remained. And I didn't sleep a wink.
Anyway, I feel your pain. Glad you got another room.
I don't smoke at all. Used to smoke a pipe from about 1980 to 1990 but then I quit. However, I can't stand all the little-girl "suffering" of people like you. You sound like a drama queen. Sorry.
Anonymous, I don't even know if you are calling me or any other the other commenters drama queens. But while I don't usually bother to respond to the cowards who post anonymously, on behalf of the others who have posted here, let me invite you to fuck right the hell off.
Sorry.
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