First Word

The perfect picture and view from the historical site lakeside.   Style, usage and grammar mistakes galore. Where did I see these mistakes? In a casual email? On a text? On a sign somewhere? No, not exactly. I saw these mistakes "littering" the historical signage sprinkled along a trail in Tahoe City to celebrate the town's 150th anniversary. At the end of the tour, I noticed that the local rotary club got credit for the signs. At that point I realized the "road to messed-up signs is paved in good community intentions but weak grammarians." Now to the average eye the mistakes wouldn't necessarily leap off the signs, but to the well-trained eye the errors flew off those plaques. Misused commas in strange places, no hyphenation on words that should have been hyphenated -- those two mistakes were the most common. I can only imagine how many corrections a professional editor would have left behind on that copy had one only had his or her hands on it. I imagi...

When your room sucks, leave! We ended up playing games at Squaw Valley. Let me qualify my little review of this grimy hotel. First, I do believe you get what you pay for. However, if I pay $60 then I feel I invited a fleabag hotel experience. If I pay $110 my feelings change in proportion to the dollars invested. Most hotels that charge over $100 usually offer a decent experience. I (unfortunately) booked my room at the Quality Inn on south shore Lake Tahoe (3838 Lake Tahoe Blvd, South Lake Tahoe) via Hotels.com (which is not good because they don't have a good cancellation policy). The exterior looked fine, and the rooms appeared nice. Upon arrival, I was still satisfied. The exterior looked good. The lobby was nice with a granite fireplace. All good. Then we went to our room. Uh-oh! The rooms were not remodeled or updated and the wallpaper looked circa 1980. Dated wallpaper isn't a problem unless it's smudged in dirt. Okay, and then the bedspreads were also dingy a...