Letters From The Loft
Stuff From The Desk Of Chuck Thornton
DAY ONE...CONT'D
And then there were really good costumes….
The latter part of the day I spent at a couple of panels with comic-book writers and editors. Before going into the first one, I decided I had better silence my cell phone, which is accomplished by holding down the * key for a few seconds. The trouble is, still suffering from whatever Alan gave me, I held down the # key, which I quickly discovered locks the phone so that the user has to enter a four-digit access code to make any outgoing calls. Of course, I had no idea what the access code was. Since I was just now discovering this function, I figured it had to be some sort of default code, so I tried “0000” and “1111” and “4321” and other permutations to no avail. Even throwing the phone down the hall didn’t work, and it wasn’t like I could call Verizon for assistance. Finally, in a moment of lucidity, I tried the last four digits of the phone number and it worked. Now I know there must be some reason to equip your cell phone with a button to make it quit working, but I must be having a relapse, because I can’t figure out what it is.
After returning to the hotel, I located
my credit card. Apparently at some point, I had decided that rather than
putting it in my wallet, it would be much safer to drop it on the floor
of the car and push it into a remote location under the driver’s seat.
American Express should really change their slogan to the more useful
“Don’t leave the car without it.”
That was the end of day one. It’s going to be a short night, since it’s taken me till after 11 pm to finish this, and Sam is supposed to arrive here at about 2 am, and unless I tape the key card to the room door, I’ll have to be awake to let him in. Come to think of it, I’ll probably get a call from him first, asking me to talk him in as he approaches the hotel in his car. This will involve me looking out the room window and utilizing the tried and true “getting colder/getting warmer” technique.