Mamby Pamby and the Supremes

April 26 , 2008

The Supremes first - since that was the first major item of the week.

On Monday morning at 9:30am a whole bunch of us all stood in an auditorium in Santa Fe as the Supreme Court of New Mexico was called to order. The five justices filed in from the right of the stage, took their seats and we all sat down.

Then the head of the New Mexico Board of Bar Examiners made a motion to admit the following candidates to the bar of New Mexico, please rise when we call your name....

My name got called, I stood up, got a nod from the Chief Justice and I sat down.

After all the names were called we stood and took an oath and that was that. Each of the justices then spoke for a few minutes and it was a very nice ceremony.

What struck me was that one of the justices said to us... "You are now our colleagues."

Woah, I'm a colleague with the Supreme Court Justices, not only in New Mexico, but even the big guys in D.C. That's an impressive thought.

So I spent a quick couple of days working and then jumped on an airplane on Thursday way too early am to attend a meeting in Chicago. My plan was to fly on to Detroit today as soon as the conference was over and start to work there Monday morning.

Come to find out that after 6 or 7 years of attending meetings across the country, Mrs has a meeting in Chicago that starts with a reception tonight so we decided to get a room Downtown and I'll fly on to Detroit on Monday.

Ok, so we've all heard the guy... for what... LIKE FOREVER....

Priceline.com, priceline.com, name your own price..yadda yadd.

Since I had just been downtown in Chicago I though, ok, let's give this a try and see if it really works. I'll stick to 4 star hotels and give it a whirl.

On the TV ad Capt. Kirk chides this guy down to the 50% point through a series of snide remarks, one of them being "mamby-pamby" when he won't go low enough. When he hit the 50% mark he says "Now you are negotiating."

Using tabbed browsing (if you don't use this you are in the net stone age) I opened tabs for hotels.com, travelocity and orbitz. True to form, they all had the same hotels for basically the same price - 300 a night plus for a 4 star hotel downtown.

Forget the mamby-pamby - I put in my bid at a hundred and twenty bucks...

and the machine churned

and said it was checking my price...

looking for a room...

and then said..

Congrats, your price has been accepted.

The hotel... the Swissotel...

And the cheapest rate we could find online..

$350.00 plus tax - making it just under $400 bucks a night.

With tax I pay just one-fifty a night - a savings I'll take to the bank all day (and night) long.

When I have a chance I'll write about how you can be sure to get the lowest price possible, I figured that out on the next hotel booking.