That is not my name!

I was sure that I had made a reservation at the New Orleans Riverside Hotel for the upcoming National Championships of Irish Dancing.  Why couldn't they find my reservation!?!  

Now, there are lots of aspects of Irish dancing that stress me out.  Trust me.  I think I've managed to encounter most of them.  Not on purpose. 

My kid has messed up during a ceili competition before.  Oh, to avoid the awkwardness after your kid screws up the dance for the entire team!  Kids dressed in matching dresses wearing the same wig tend to look identical.  This can lead to a delay in registering whether or not 'the mess-up' kid is my kid.  'Mess-up' kids tend to dance in the wrong direction, start dancing on the wrong bar of music, or instead of offering a hand to a partner - offer it to no one - this is typically the result of the kid having danced in the wrong direction, now I partner isn't where he is expected to be.  Yikes.  I cringe thinking about it.

Getting lost or running into bad traffic enroute to a competition also creates stress.  What if your kid's group is walking on stage at that moment?  Forgotten shoes or costume pieces:  far from relaxing.  Since I'm an old pro at encountering mishaps, I wish I could remain calm and remember that no matter whatever is unraveling - it will all work out.  Not my style, though.  I'm more of an instant-diarrhea type.

I tried to remain calm as I dug out my credit card bill from February.  There was a charge there for the Hilton Riverside.  Unfortunately, that did little to settle my stomach.  It listed a date in early February as both the arrival AND the checkout date.  Eventually it was clear to me that because the hotel collects a two night, non-refundable stay during booking, my credit card printed those dates on the statement.  For a few minutes, while I was in panic mode, I believed that the woman taking my reservation mistakenly charged me for the room the day I made the reservation.  

Curly was the only one home.  She kept trying to chat with me.  I instructed her to leave the room to protect her from hearing the harsh language that I assumed would escape my otherwise clean mouth (if you believe that my language is typically respectable, then you haven't been reading my blog regularly).  

Now I took the time to page thru the crumpled pages of my handy-dandy, paper (not-digital . . . so not me!) notebook.  I came across a page from February and a minute later I had zeroed in on the correct page.  There was my Hilton confirmation number scribbled up towards the top of the page. 

My secret weapon in surviving life - my notebook.  I know, I know, how very high tech of me.  The info I needed is at the top of the page in a square right next to the defining title:  Friday. 

I called the hotel back.  They were able to pull up my reservation, but it was under a different name.  The address didn't match my address either.  So little miss out-sourced, who struggled to command the English language, had completely botched my name and address.  I had a hard time convincing the hotel that I was who I claimed to be.  I couldn't verify the name or address on the reservation, because the agent created it from thin air.  Yet, I had the confirmation number.

The credit card number I used to secure the room had been compromised a few weeks after this charge.  Fortunately, I still had that number memorized.  It took some time to convince the Hilton people to change the name on the reservation.  Eventually they agreed.  They emailed me a copy of it.

I checked the email this time.  Um, it still had the fake name created by the foreign speaking agent. I called back.  'Hello, I can't convince the dancing committee that I am staying at this hotel (it was mandatory to stay in their block of rooms or face steep fines) if they don't have the correct record of my name on the reservation!'  A moment later they emailed me the corrected reservation.  Meanwhile, I had lost a few pounds in sweat, not to mention an entire evening of my life.

So while I utilize the name Ernie Shenanigan for my blog, my real-life name is no where near Sarah Scaberg.  NOT EVEN CLOSE!

 This is a copy of the hotel confirmation.  What a mess!