This week I went to an “offsite” meeting for work. Offsite is in scare quotes because while I had to travel to a hotel and sit around a conference table in a room that smelled like Legionnaire’s Disease, the hotel and the room and the pathogens were here in Cleveland. The meeting was at the Renaissance Hotel, which is a faded – and still fading – old beauty. Her marble columns gleam, but her carpets need to be replaced.
In my magazine editor days, I came to this hotel a lot, mostly for charity luncheons and the like. I ate my hotel chicken lunches and collected my goody bags full of donated gifts, which is how I kept my 27-year-old face in Chanel skincare for so long: many hoarded jars of Sublimage La Crème Lumière. Courtesy of your friends at Saks Fifth Avenue Beachwood Place, book your personal consultation today. This time, there was hotel chicken but no free skincare. I did avail myself of the free meeting room pens.
Tuesday night, we had dinner at a shitty local restaurant that prides itself on being weirdly pro-coronavirus and anti-GMO. Yes, you can get keto-friendly chicken nuggies, but the sad truth is that this is just virtue signaling. The food is not actually good. But don’t tell that to local hero Bernie Kosar! He sat and baked alive on the patio while we baked alive indoors. When I drove home, the digital billboard on the Tri-C building downtown said it was 102 degrees. As a reminder, I don’t live in Phoenix.
Anyway, as my friend told me a few days ago, if I don’t get covid after this week I am officially immune to it. It is more likely I will come down with Legionnaire’s Disease anyway.