Composed Elements

America’s Best Value Inn.

Yep, that’s where my friends and I stayed at while we were in San Diego. We wanted some place cheap and near the downtown Gas Lamp district. The name of the motel itself already gave us an idea of what it was offering: “best value” means cheap and cheap is what we paid for.

The neighborhood it was in didn’t look as bad as I thought it would be (but my expectations were already pretty low). It was in the middle of nowhere and across the street, there was a party with loud house music playing. When we checked in, my friend half jokingly asked if we could get a safe room. The woman said “sure,” but, of course our room was on the side that was not facing the street, but rather the ghetto. When we saw our room, my friend instantly said, “WTF? I asked for a safe room!”

We decided not to leave our bags in our room after noticing that somebody had already crow-barred the screen window. Upon seeing that, we tried locking our window, but then realized the lock was broken because that too had been crow-barred. We decided we could take shifts watching the window or sleep with one eye open.

When our taxi driver dropped us off, I asked him how bad our neighborhood was. This was our conversation:

TAXI DRIVER: I would never drive out here if I had a choice.
ME: Are you serious? Is it really that bad?
TAXI DRIVER: You see that bridge next to your place? That’s where all the homeless people sleep. Lots of crime, lots of drugs in this area. One of the worst areas.
ME: Oh.
TAXI DRIVER: It’s really not safe here. You should come sleep over at my place tonight.
ME: No, thank you. =/

On my first day back to work from my weeklong trip to China, I found out that I brought back a Chinese virus with me.  No, it wasn’t SARS or the bird flu.  I overheard one of my coworkers complaining to the IT department that he somehow received a virus on his computer that kept playing Chinese pop music.  And it would play a different song every time.  Really, it did – I heard it.  Apparently this virus did other things too…

Coworker:  There’s also the sound of this girl moaning.
IT guy:  OK…
Coworker:  No, really.  It sounds like “uhhh uhhh.”
IT guy:  [Silence]

Last night I dreamt that I was dating Obama…during a time of pirate warfare. It was kind of like that “Waterworld” movie with Kevin Costner where everyone stopped living on land. We were on a big ship and he was still wearing a suit while pirates were shooting cannons at us. He was quite charming. What a strange dream…

I was so hungry today on my drive to work and didn’t have time to stop by and pick up food anywhere. The worst thing was that I had to drive behind a lunch truck for a good portion of my commute, with the scent of bean burritos wafting into my vents.

When I was in yoga class earlier this week, I noticed a new addition to the rec room – a big fan blasting cold air at the class members. This girl went up to it to shut it off, but was blocked by this man who was standing close to it, guarding it. This is the conversation that took place:

GUY: You can’t shut it off.
GIRL: Why not? I can just pull out the plug.
GUY: You shouldn’t. I don’t like it either, but they put it here for a reason.
GIRL: What’s the reason?
GUY: (lots of mumbling)
GIRL: (rolls her eyes)

The yoga instructor walked into the room and was just about to turn off the fan when the man stopped her also.

GUY: You shouldn’t turn it off because of health reasons.
INSTRUCTOR: What sort of reasons?
GUY: We need to circulate the air. There’s a foot, hand and mouth disease going around. If you touch it, you’ll get infected. It’s really horrible. You get these cold sores on your hands and feet. Two people got it already.

Everyone looked horrified, but he just kept talking about it nervously, and at the same time had this know-it-all kind of look on his face. The expression said, “Go ahead and try to argue with me, but I’m not the one that’s going to get the ‘foot, hand and mouth disease’!” Just who were these two people anyhow and what gym did they go to??

For the rest of the class, all I could think about was how I was barefooted doing yoga and if I just slipped a little off of my yoga mat, I would get the “foot, hand and mouth disease.” My yoga instructor started teaching us a pose, but then stood up and said, “you guys can do it, but I’m not going to because I don’t want my head touching the floor.” I was paranoid for the rest of the class, thinking about how I should burn my yoga mat when I get home. But what made me really angry was the fact that this man left the class after 15 minutes! He came into class, left us paranoid, and then left, just like that. I bet he wasn’t even a member of the gym.

The other day at work, I was scouring websites, looking for the best cat picture to put on my computer wallpaper. I was so deeply involved with it that I didn’t notice my coworker standing behind me. He asked, “What are you doing?” I told him I wanted to be a cat lady, but the only problem was that I didn’t have a cat, so I had to stare at pictures of them instead. I do this with dogs too. In which case, I just found this adorable picture off of my new favorite website, The Daily Puppy.

I know! He’s so cute that you’re melting inside. Melting. Inside. So. Cute.