DAY 278: THE ETHICAL PURSE

     I’d admired my friend’s shiny gold Michael Kors satchel bag for months.  So when I saw the smaller version of that bag in the nickel color at T.J. Maxx this past weekend, I bought it.  Well “bought” is an interesting word to describe my experience.  

     I shopped the store for a while finding more and more items.  When I finally lugged three pairs of shoes, a pair of pajamas and the purse to the checkout counter I’d created a small mountain of goods between me and the checkout person.  He rung up my purchases and I gave him my credit card.  Normal transaction, right?  Wrong.  When I checked my receipt later I noticed that he didn’t charge me for the purse.  He’d removed the security sensor from it, but he forgot (I presume) to ring it up.  I’d left there with a free bag! 

     It wasn’t that much of an ethical dilemma.  I knew I had to go back there and pay for it, even though I really didn’t want to.  Of course I wanted to keep it without being charged for it, but that was wrong.  When I went back the next day, my unpaid for purse in tow, I asked for the store’s manager.  I explained the situation to her and she couldn’t believe I had brought back the purse and wanted to pay for it.  Come again?   She was flabbergasted that I didn’t take the purse and run.  She told me I was “the nicest person” and that “good karma would be coming my way.”  At least I’ll be using a really cool purse when that karma finally gets here…    

DAY 277: KOREAN KARAOKE

     Last night my friend and I went to Korean Town for a birthday party.  We started with dinner at a Korean bar-b-que place and ended at a Korean karaoke place.  We knew it's be a long drive to get there, so we took a cab.  We take this kind of stuff very seriously.
     As soon as we got to the restaurant the drinking began.  I ordered a bottle (yes a bottle) of Korean black raspberry wine.  It had a 15% alcohol volume.  Then I ordered a second bottle.  This wine is like port and is poured into small shot like glasses.  I kept purring myself a shot of raspberry wine about every 5 minutes.  At karaoke, I moved on to vodka--it really helps with the singing.  If you've never been to a Korean karaoke place, I highly recommend it.  You and your friends get your own room.  Ours had nice couches and T.V.s on each wall.  The place provided several song selection books and three remotes.  You select your song while sitting on the couch.  There's no line or slips of paper or some guy in charge of selecting the songs.  you and your friends are in charge.  It was awesome.  So much fun.  We had such good time that we ending up having to go through the McDonald's drive thru at 2 a.m.  Now that's a good night.

DAY 276: HOLY COW...EAR CANDLE

     I went to the new nail place that opened across the street from me.  I planned to only get a manicure and a pedicure.  Then I read the menu of service.  Ear candle caught my attention.  Why?  I have no idea. could it be the ear infection my sister had when we lived on 110th and Broadway in New York that had her waiting in a Harlem ER waiting room for half the day to get something done to her ear that involved a wick?  Again I'm not sure.
     But I decided to splurge and get the ear candle done.  Why not?  Let me start by saying a neck and face massage was included with the ear candle.  And Michael, the guy who had given me my pedicure, had also given me the best foot massage/leg massage I've ever had in life!  So when he said he did the massage and the ear candle--I was in.
     I asked Michael if a lot of wax came out of my ear.  Of course I asked that; and you would too.  You know it.  He said yes and then showed me.  All I can say is DISGUSTING.  Who knew I was walking around everywhere with that much crap in my ears.  No wonder I can't hear that well sometimes.  Ear wax.  Well problem solved.  I adore you new nail spa across the street from my apartment.  I can't wait to go back.  Oh and it was so relaxing there.  No TVs, no satellite radio, just calm, relaxing waterfall sounds and peace.  What a gem of a place.

DAY 275: FAMOUS SIGHTINGS

     My dad had a thing for famous people.  He was excited that they were filming one of the Ghostbusters movies at the St. Luke’s Roosevelt hospital in New York where this woman he was dating worked.  She invited him to one of the filming days.  Everything was going splendidly, until Bill Murray tried to lift up my dad’s girlfriend’s sweater.  Yes, Bill Murray really did try to do that and my dad was none too pleased.  However, I don’t get to say my dad punched Bill Murray or started an altercation.  Dang it!

     Then came my sister’s move to college; Stanford to be exact.  She was in the same class as Chelsea Clinton.  Now, my dad didn’t move me out to Ann Arbor.  He saw me off at the Albuquerque airport with my then step monster (the lady whose bra Bill Murray tried to see), my sister and my first grade friend—well until he started to get teary eyed and left to go back to work.  But he moved my sister to Palo Alto.  And he wasn’t doing it to be helpful to my sister.  He made that “college move” trip to see President Clinton, who was president at the time.  Dad found the President in Chelsea’s room ratcheting up her bed so that she could store clothes and other junk underneath it.  He didn’t do anything like that for my sister, but instead came running into her room while she was doing manual labor to tell her he’d just seen Bill.  Good going Dad.

     And when my dad found out I met Jerry Seinfeld in Spain, well in two words, he went ape shit.  Literally.  He was floored.  This was back when cameras took film and you had to develop it to see the pictures.  I developed the film from my camera housing my photos with Jerry, had double prints made and priority mailed them to my dad.  I missed my sister’s high school graduation since I was still in Seville, but Dad took those photos with me and Jerry to the graduation ceremony and passed them around like candy.  He wanted everyone to know I’d met a T.V. star.  I’m sure my sister was reeling over this.  I would have been.  It was her graduation for goodness sake.

     And don’t forget when my dad attended law school in Denver (he went to law school after he retired from his career as an engineer at age 58) during Kobe Bryant’s sexual harassment trial.  While shopping at the Cherry Creek Mall he saw Kobe Bryant’s defense lawyer Pamela Mackey.  My dad went up to the petite woman and told her what a good job she was doing defending Kobe against the rape accusations.  Hey, what can I say, he was a huge basketball fan. 

DAY 274: TENNIS ANYONE?

     I may not be able to play tennis right now due to my injured elbow, but my USTA membership came in handy today.  That USTA membership allowed me to participate in the US Open Advance ticket sale and I bought my sister tickets to the tennis.  What’s that?  Is that applause I hear?  Yes, thank you; I am a good sister!  The sale’s actually been going on since Tuesday, but she only asked me to get her tickets today.  So even though they are far back I was still able to get early tickets and in my book that still makes me a pretty good sister.

DAY 273: THE SAN FRANCISCO SCHOOL OF WAITRESSING

     Years ago my dad took my sister and I on a vacation to San Francisco.  The woman my dad was dating (and later married for a short period of time) flew in from New York and met us there.  I turned thirteen on that trip and I'll never forget getting to our room at the Millefiori Inn and seeing a carafe of wine on the bedside table.  I tried some--hey it was there--and I almost spit it out.
     But one of the more memorable things from that trip was all of the waitresses we had.  They were terrible.  They were mean.  They were rude.  And for some reason they all kept telling us whenever we ordered something that there was a minimum. We got it.  Why keep telling a group of four "there's a minimum?"  We're most likely going to meet the minimum-there's four of us, we need to eat and we don't have a refrigerator back in our hotel rooms where we're storing food thereby not making us hungry.
     After the first two times a waitress hissed "there's a minimum" to us, it became our joke.  We'd get to a new restaurant and see if the waitress would spew the same line as the last one.  And low and behold she would.  My sister and I'd end up cackling and almost falling out of our booth because we were laughing so hard.  We decided that all of our waitresses had attended the San Francisco School of Waitressing, because where else and why else would they all have been saying the exact same thing?

DAY 272: MALE PANEL

     Man, I’ve been making the rounds lately to talks and speeches.  Tonight I saw a panel of the male actors on the show Modern Family.  That show is in my top 5 (of shows currently on the air).  It’s well written and the actors are hilarious.  And those guys live did not disappoint!

     Funny thing is one of them; the actor who plays Mitchell grew up in my hometown of Albuquerque and acted in plays at the Albuquerque Little Theater.  I might have seen that redhead when I was little.  Small world.  Who said the Burque doesn’t develop actors or have anything going for it?  (You know that t-shirt that reads: “New Mexico Cleaner than Old Mexico.” My sister and I think this t-shirt is hilarious.  My sister had planned on buying it, but when she went to visit business schools a group of Latino students was staging a protest and protesting that exact shirt!  And what do you think happened next?  She didn’t buy the shirt.)  Freddie Prinze, Jr. and Neil Patrick Harris both attended high school in Albuquerque with my first grade friend.  And there’s your random factoid of the day.