Hey! I’m back. Did you miss me?

I had to travel for business this week. A shout-out to Beth and Paul is in order; they took care of Nate for three nights. He had a blast, he says, and did not miss me at all. Same to you, brat.

The last time I took a business trip was also the first time, in 1999. Since then, my Corporate AmEx has been collecting dust in a drawer. Periodically it expires, and they send me a new one. About four years ago, I received a letter that said:

Starwood Preferred Guest® is pleased to offer you Corporate Preferred Guest® status in the world’s most distinguished hotel rewards program.

Well, la-di-da, I thought, and stuffed it in the drawer with my AmEx. Maybe I can earn dust points or something.

Our corporate headquarters is in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Our group uses a lot of acronyms, and the first time I heard someone refer to USR, I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about. Do they mean US Robotics? And if so, are they talking about the modem company, or the one from I, Robot?

Amadis travels to USR all the time, so when I learned I would be going, I asked her advice as to how to get there. She said it would actually be way faster to drive than to take the train or fly, because none of the terminals are anywhere near the office. She also recommended that I stay at the Hilton Woodcliff Lake, because they welcome you with fresh-baked Tollhouse cookies. When I learned that I was expected to stay at the Sheraton to help maintain our volume discount, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I would bring my own toaster oven and a tube of Pillsbury cookie dough and just hand out cookies to everyone in the lobby of the Sheraton.

Scott and I left Boston at 7:00 p.m. on Monday in an effort to skip rush-hour traffic. He didn’t ask about the toaster oven in the trunk. We rented a Dodge Stratus, mostly because the dude at Enterprise didn’t feel like cleaning the Neon I had reserved. I am not used to driving such a zippy car. Scott noticed before I did that we were doing 90 MPH on the Pike. We shot by four state police cruisers at that speed, but they didn’t see us, because there just happened to be a big tractor-trailer in the center lane, blocking their view. Scott said, “Okay, you just used up all your luck for this trip. You need to slow down before you get arrested for felony speeding and I have to walk the rest of the way to USR.” I put on the cruise control.

We got to the Sheraton Crossroads (in lovely Mahwah) at 10:30 p.m., and damn if it didn’t look just like the Death Star: huge, black, and threatening. This hotel is ominous. The guest elevators went from the lobby directly to the 12th floor, and I am 100% certain that floors 2 through 11 are populated entirely by Imperial stormtroopers. I was pretty fried after driving exactly nine miles over the speed limit for three and a half hours; by the time I walked up to the registration desk, I could barely move or speak. I saw a shiny gold sign, Starwood Preferred Guest Registration; by golly, I guess that’s me.

I should have picked the other line. The desk clerk was way, way too nice to me. I just didn’t know how to cope with it. When she said, “Good night, sir!” in her sweet, breathy voice, I almost burst into tears. She had no way of knowing how fragile I was at the moment. You’re nice; will you tuck me in?

I did not encounter the same problem at breakfast. The hostess glared at us, sending a telepathic message: go eat at the diner. Grudgingly, she seated us. “You all want the buffet, right?” I looked it over. Eggs Benedict is not my thing. There was an omelette station, but no one running it. Um, no, I need a menu, please.

Twenty minutes later, when only one of us had given in and gone for the buffet, she came over to take our order. When my omelette finally arrived, it contained a handful of mushrooms at one end, and a quarter-pound, inch-thick wodge of cheese at the other. I didn’t have time to send it back, so I ate it, but I immediately wished I hadn’t.

Eventually, the waitress brought the check for the entire table, but we were mostly novice travelers, and we weren’t sure if that was a good idea; separate checks, please; sorry we didn’t tell you that up front. I hate you all.

Fully half an hour later, she was still wrestling with the register. The manager was there, and I think they were on hold with the cash register helpdesk. As we are all senior support technicians, this struck us as riotously funny. Scott could barely restrain himself from walking over to the register, and saying, “You know what? We’ll take it all on one check after all,” just to see her head explode.

The drive back took a lot longer, mostly due to rush hour traffic. I got home at 11:30 p.m. on Wednesday, and my cat was dangerously excited to see me. “MEOW! MEOW! MEOW!”

“No,” I said. “Mahwah.”