Back in Nebraska

I flew back into Omaha today, to continue the next phase of this trip - attending the BCCE in Bloomington, Indiana. I was going to go to this anyway, but Dave's funeral just changed the plans a little bit. I thought that since I don't have to be at the meeting until Saturday morning, I would fly into Omaha Thursday night and then spend Friday driving to Bloomington. This plan necessitates getting a hotel room in the Omaha area for Thursday night. Actually I decided to get a room in Council Bluffs since that's marginally closer to Indiana than Omaha.

So it was a long set of three flights, ending finally around midnight, and I decided - and this was a bad call, in hindsight - that before getting a hotel room maybe I should head on down to the riverboat casino. Well, an hour later and $59 poorer I'm back on the road looking for a room and...they are all booked. Apparently there's a Neil Diamond concert, deaf kids going back to school, and basically the perfect convergence of events to book pretty much all the hotel rooms in Council Bluffs. So I figure, it's 1:30 AM at this point, I will continue to drive east until I find some sign of a hotel room. The very next exit has a hotel! The parking lot also looks very full, so I hesitantly inquire if there is a room, and lo and behold there is exactly one room left - the "deluxe room", which goes for $89.99. Which, if you know me, is about 50% more than I expect to pay for a hotel room. But it's late and I'm desperate so I take the room. Ugh.

Between the expensive airport food, the outrageous parking fees at the Omaha airport, my foolish gambling and the overpriced room, it's been an expensive day. But at least there's wireless internet and "free" continental breakfast.