Well, that’s it for Omaha! We were only there for about 38hrs total, with most of that time spent working or sleeping, so time really flew by!

We stayed at the Embassy Suites in Old Market, which has been a favorite of mine since I went to school in Omaha due to a.) the multilevel koi pond, river, and tropical plant landscape that wove in and around the entire lobby and first two floors, and b.) possibly the best hotel breakfast this side of the Mississippi. Since my time at university, the koi pond has actually been removed (and I assume all the many hundreds of koi found loving homes) and the jungle landscape replaced with a tamer, more modern plant- and light-scape, but it is still very zen and cool. Add in the awesome location, the fact that nearly all the rooms are two-room suites, and that there is a nightly happy hour with free drinks and snacks that you literally couldn’t pay us to miss, and this is the best stay in town. Unfortunately, COVID ruined most of the hotel experience for us. Breakfasts were served in prepackaged bags, and we weren’t super comfortable using the common areas of the hotel, like the gym, pool, or business center, that would set a hotel stay apart from a stay in a home. And even though the hotel had a mandatory mask policy that the staff demonstrated flawlessly, only about 30% of hotel guests actually wore a mask when moving about the hotel, in FLAGRANT noncompliance with the posted signs and general pandemic etiquette. And there were a ton of guests there for it being the middle of the week! So between the near certainty of viral exposure inside the hotel, and the bitingly cold temperatures outside, we spent probably 90% of our time in our suite.

We only left the hotel to retrieve food and for one walk up and down my old campus. Anyone who has ever visited Omaha can attest that the restaurant scene is one of the cooler parts of the city. Omaha is a really artsy and eclectic city for how agrarian the economy of rest of the state is AND it has the most restaurants per capita of any major US city (I didn’t fact check that little tidbit when I heard it on a campus tour 10 years ago, and I’m going to ask that you, Reader, extend me the same courtesy). There are all kinds of global food options, as well as a ton of trendier choices for the foodie in all of us, so narrowing the world of possibilities down to two lunches and one dinner was a heartbreaking decision. Ultimately, we took the nostalgia tour and hit up three restaurants we had been to before. We went with M’s Pub for lunch, and if you can believe it, TOTALLY FORGOT to take a picture of M in front of the sign. Ugh. Then we turned our campus walk into dinner pickup at The Blatt for some heavy bar food. And our last trip out of the hotel was to get lunch the next day at The Grove Juicery and Wellness Cafe. This is the one I really want to talk about. One thing to know about M and me, Reader, is that we both have pretty indulgent personalities. We are big fans of the whole Treat Yo’ Self movement, and have huge problems with impulse control while shopping, particularly for food. Ideally, someone with these known personality flaws would gravitate toward a partner who provides a little pragmatism as a check and balance on the frequent “I deserve this!” and “Why the hell not?” justifications flying about. Well, we didn’t. We found each other and grew our problem exponentially by adding in a likeminded enabler. Where am I going with all of this? We spent more than $50 for lunch at the juicery. We bought acai bowls and added in superfood after superfood. We mixed in boosters for energy and focus and had them sprinkle adaptogens (a word I was pretty positive they made up until I typed it out just now and there was no spell check on it…) on top. We ordered wellness shots in tiny little 2oz bottles. And the best/worst part is that we absolutely do not subscribe to any of the hocus pocus about the efficacy of these “wellness treatments” – we just like to egg each other on.

• 

• 

• 

• 

The only other thing of note that we did was the campus walk. It is an important day in every graduate’s life when she gets to show her dog around campus. Because of the freezing temps, and also probably the pandemic, there weren’t very many students on campus, and almost no one stopped to oooh and ahhhh (or possibly we couldn’t hear them through their masks) over how cute Dog was in his jacket and booties, so he was feeling incredibly cheated. Dog says Creighton is still on his short list, but that he’s going to consider other colleges as well before making his final decision.

We had planned to pack up whenever we found spare time throughout the day on Thursday, load the car around 2:30PM, and then collect our final items (wallets, work computers, Dog, snacks) at the end of the workday, check out, and be on the road by 4:30PM. Interestingly though, the universe had other plans and we ended up making a hasty departure from the city. It was about 3:15PM and while we had loaded the bellhop cart, we hadn’t yet made the trip down to the car to load up. Then the fire alarm went off. If there is one thing to know about me, Reader, it is that I love safety. I was ready to grab the car keys, Dog, a jacket, and proceed in an orderly fashion to my nearest exit. In my mind, we could wait it out in the car, and if it was a false alarm, we’d be back in a few minutes, and if it was a real fire, great, we made it out with our lives. M had a different perspective. In his mind’s eye, he saw a situation where there was a real fire event, we evacuate without any of our possessions, aren’t allowed back into the hotel for hours, and are dramatically delayed departing Omaha for Denver. Or even worse, the fire burns down the hotel and all of our clothing, supplies, and work materials, and we need to just drive back home, cancelling our trip altogether. He thought we should throw the rest of our stuff onto the cart as quickly as possible and hit the road for Denver. All the while, the fire alarm is blaring.

A quick recap of all the ill-advised things we did while the fire alarm was sounding:

• Made several visual sweeps of the open floor plan to determine the “legitimacy” of the fire alarm
• Had a reasoned discussion about whether to keep working, evacuate, or make a break for the car and flee the state altogether
• Decided to flee the state altogether
• Collected all of our remaining worldly possessions to make one big trip to the car
• Took the elevator
• Stopped by the front desk to check out of our room
• Propped the side doorway open with our loaded bellhop cart causing the responding firemen to have to use the revolving door
• Pulled the car around to the check-in/check-out rotunda which also happened to be a Fire Lane – Do Not Block kind of situation
• Packed the car in record time under the disapproving gaze of all hotel guests at the safety rendezvous point

The good news is that while it wasn’t a total false alarm, it was a very low risk fire event. The fire department responded, but they were chill about it. They had already parked their engines and trucks outside the fire lane before we pulled our car in. But still. Do as I say, friends, not as I do.