{Cheese and Beans}

I ate burgers for dinner every night last week while staying in the hotel, and then on friday capped the week off with a pizza. Not exactly good for me.

With that in mind, I’m trying to eat a little more healthily this week.

Holy crap I’m tired though… apparently we’re heading out in half an hour, but I’m struggling to keep my eyes open.

It’s Monday evening, and I’m in the Hilton again (I wonder if Paris Hilton’s boyfriend says that? Does she have boyfriends for longer than a week?)

Work is going well. It’s one of the only things I have control over, meaning I can force what I am doing to succeed. Anybody who knows the hours I am capable of will at this point start to shake their head.

I’m sat in the hotel room killing half an hour before I wander down for dinner, listening to a podcast, drinking coffee, and typing this. It struck me recently that I just don’t watch television any more. Actually, I will watch the occasional movie, or half an episode of Bones if it’s on when I’m taking a break, but otherwise I will invariably work, blog, or surf.

I finally got on the scales at the weekend, and discovered the previous three weeks of living in hotels have added about 10 pounds to my weight. This is where my colleagues find out the true extend of my “take it or leave it” attitude to most things – I will be drinking fruit juice, and eating salads.

Burgers, pizza, steak and beer are all well and good, but if you are used to a balanced diet, it actually ends up making you feel pretty ill – as it has me for the last week at least. Getting home last weekend reminded me just how good our normal diet is. We routinely hit all the food groups during the day – steamed vegetables, fruit, lean meat, and so on. We don’t even think about it; it’s just the food we buy and make stuff from.

I’ve also brought my running shoes with me this week, and will be doing half an hour on the treadmill before breakfast each morning.

As you might have gathered, I’m not very good at doing nothing…

Do you ever lose track of which day of the week it is?  I have this evening. While staying away from home, I have begun counting the days  by the number of sets of underwear I have left.

I know I left the house with a set for each day, and I can look in the case to see how many I have already worn – therefore I can figure it out. It’s shocking,  isn’t it – to think I have been reduced to devoting thought to such mundane idiocy. I’m starting to understand how Tom Hanks character in “Castaway” felt.

While walking through the hotel this evening wearing jeans and a hooded sweater, I couldn’t help people watching – comparing the various clothes people wear in hotels.

Lots of people seemed to be in very smart business dress – obviously relaxing after some conference or other. The ones who interested me were those wearing “smart casual” clothes. I’m probably making some grossly inaccurate, sweeping generalisation here, but I think all managers wear short sleeved shirts and trousers all the time. I think they’re born wearing them. They always seem to fall into stereotype where you expect them to have a pocket protector on their shirt, or at least aspire to owning a pocket protector.

While walking past the hotel bar, I couldn’t help noticing the skew towards men versus women. I remember talking to a female colleague years ago who hated staying in hotels on her own because she would invariably be chatted up repeatedly if she tried to eat or have a drink in the hotel bar.

Of course, if I didn’t wander the hotel in scruffy jeans, and a casual GAP top, I might get chatted up too – I expect I don’t fit the “first impression” of “he looks like he has money” that the shirt and tie’d version of myself conveys…