"I might need that"

Living in a serviced apartment in Abu Dhabi has been a really great experience. The apartment itself is very nice. It has enough of the basics that we are quite comfortable. But, of course, there are a few quirks.

There are things like pictured below, when I was eating lunch at the table when housekeeping came, and they inexplicably left me slippers:

It was probably 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I was barefoot, but I didn't need slippers!

Or there is the saga of the ice. There isn't an ice maker, we have to call room service to deliver a bucket of ice. But you never really know what you will get. Sometimes it's a small container and other times it's an enormous bucket. For comparison:

The bucket on the right is from the previous request, with only melted water. The bucket on the left comes with a lid. When we get the larger bucket, about half the time it will come like this:

I've been tempted to keep the plastic wrap, for later use, which leads to a quirk that I've learned about myself - I do have a tendency to save odd things "in case I want them later." (I've refrained from keeping the plastic wrap only because Craig bought me an entire roll of it.) A small selection of such things:

Yes, I kept all the half empty water bottles, even with the enormous water cooler in our room. Why? Well, I might want to take a bottle with me. And Craig purchased most of those for me with a meal, I wouldn't want to let them go to waste. (Note: I did buy a double-walled aluminum bottle and I've stopped saving such bottles, as I wasn't really using them.)

In this cabinet, I'm saving a few different things. I've got the boxes for everything we've purchased - so that I can pack things back into the boxes for storage. We will be in the States for a month before our return, so we're leaving a few things here. I've also got plastic bags, in case I need them to pack shoes or anything wet. And I've got paper bags, for, you know, some reason.

And then, there are room service "left overs". Our apartment came with two different sized glasses, four of each. It may not picture well here, but there is third size that I've collected from room service. What can I say? I like having a variety of glasses.

Once again, it's hard to tell in the picture, but one of these plates was supplied with our apartment and the other is from room service (same manufacturer, different lines). We had four large plates, now we have nine. (Super fun fact: we prefer to eat off the medium sized plates, of which we only have the original four, but I keep saving the big plates just in case!)

The silverware in the bin was provided with our apartment. I've collected one fork, one small spoon, three medium spoons, and four large spoons from room service. Once again, these are the same manufacturer as provided, but a different line. Most of the spoons have come with ice, oddly enough, though I have also collected a number of sets of tongs from the ice buckets (Craig keeps sending those back, but I think I've saved three in addition to the set we started with).

Surprise! I wasn't actually trying to collect ice buckets when I took this photo. Room service and housekeeping seem to be divided as to who should come and collect them. I had all of these one day when I called for ice - so I actually had six of them before I convinced someone to take them away.

What can I say? I'm something of a magpie.