Hotel Lobby Fresh Baked Cookies

The human olfactory sensory system is hard wired to the primordial reptilian brain, deep, deep, down inside, from millions of millennium ago (or 6000 years ago to quick creationists). Remember the fabric softener or laundry detergent used in your house where you grew up? I've got pungent memories of the East Chicago sewage treatment plant odor that surrounded my paternal grand mother's home, my uncle Tom's pipe tobacco (he died of throat cancer), and Tester's cyanoacrylate glue and olive drab model paint... embedded in my brain.

Well Hampton Inns (and Double Trees, Hilton Garden Inns, and others) bake chocolate chip cookies for their guests, and put out a free plate of them at reception. The macadamia nut, chocolate chip, and peanut butter cookie fragrances, are so tempting... and my last business trip, last August, when I was still eating high doses of carbs daily, I indulged in said cookies nightly, in the 2s and 3s, one of each flavor. MMMmmm. Enticing.

But this trip, wherein I needed to drill a 3rd hole in my belt to keep my pants from falling down last Saturday, and people who have not seen me in 6 months have said things like "you're 1/2 the size you used to be" and "you look good, are you feeling well?" ...on this trip, I think about the high fructose corn syrup that is likely laden in the pre-packaged / non-homemade cookie dough the hotel reception workers are baking, and the greasy paper towel cookie outlines that used to soak up on past trips to carry them to my room... and I resist grabbing a free cookie or two or three as I pass through the lobby. I've taken to using the non-lobby stairway exits (taking the stairs instead of the lethargic elevator? plow on Sunday!).

...and the Lindt 85% cocoa chocolate bar (much tastier than the 90% variety in my perspective) I've got stashed in my luggage is pretty yummy too, followed by a few ounces of Bas Armagnac from my Coleman flask I packed along this trip. Alot fewer carbs, and much better for me.