True Story

We meet a guy who appears to be traveling with his girlfriend. His name is Champagne. He gives us his card. His name really is Champagne. He is a traveling salesman and he sells seeds.

His traveling companion, Lily, is a Hooter’s bartender. She is also a real estate agent. It turns out she is not Champagne's girlfriend. The traveling seed salesman has kidnapped her. We decide to buy them a drink (why not?) and they tell us their stories.

Champagne speaks to Hubby while Lily bends my ear. When I tell her where we’re from, she tells me she has a golf tournament in our city soon. I ask her what her handicap is and she says it’s 7 or maybe 5. I think she must be a pretty good golfer until she says her handicap depends on how long the hole is, that she prefers her shorter irons to the the longer clubs. I wonder if she's as talented at real estate.

Champagne says Lily is a terrible bartender. Lily shoots back that’s because she’s just being professional and she doesn’t want him to get drunk yet it’s clearly apparent that they both are currently. 

They tell us they were drunk last night as well when they spent the night together (not sleeping together, she assures us, saying she is one-third virgin). The night involved being stalked by her ex-boyfriend of three months, six months ago, who kicked in her door and took her phone. Then there is something about how she couldn’t drive her new car, not because she was drunk, but because she bought a car with a manual transmission and she doesn’t know how to drive a stick shift. In any case, Champagne rescued the bad bartender by taking her to his house, possibly driving her car, where they drank until they fell asleep. 

He woke up early because he had to hit the road. He had to sell seeds but she was sound asleep on his couch. So he loaded her into his truck and took her with him with nothing but what she had on. It seems she was agreeable enough to the arrangement when she came to because she was still with him after a shopping trip to Target to get a bathing suit and a change of underwear.

As we take our leave, I remind myself to see if there's a Hooter’s golf tournament coming to our town in the next month. We say our goodnights. They are arguing about how there’s no chance they’d ever sleep together considering she’s such a bad bartender and he’s the doofus who kidnapped her which is okay as long as he gets her home before her next shift and she can borrow his phone so she can check social media to see what her ex is up to.

We wish them luck.

We bet they sleep together.

Hubby Is My Coffee Dealer

Hotel room coffee is sketchy, at best. You make it in a well worn seasoned coffee maker that pumps artesian, unfiltered water through a plastic pod containing wood pulp coffee grounds into a sterilized, plastic-wrapped paper cup.

Imagine, then, that we were presented with a choice whilst on the road. No, not like a choice between caffeinated and non-caffeinated wood pulp coffee but a between regular and dark roast wood pulp coffee. But here’s the catch. We had one regular wood pulp coffee pod, one dark roast wood pulp coffee pod, and one tea pod. (Which, upon reflection, was probably all the same wood pulp thing.)

We both wanted the dark roast (which, again, upon reflection, probably made no difference.) So Hubby, in a self-preservation, if he knows what’s good for him when it comes to coffee white knight sort of moment, went to find someone who could help him out. Don’t come back without the real deal! I shouted.

Housekeeping was done for the day so he went to the Front Desk.

The Front Desk only had the regular coffee-like stuff. Nervously, he accepted two pods. He headed back to the room with coffee but not the right coffee so he had to think fast. 

He tailed spotted a woman who was just dragging her luggage into her room. He approached her carefully saying, “I don’t want to scare you but do you drink coffee?” What ensued was a trade: his two regular coffees or her two (how is it that she had two?) dark coffees.

The deal completed, he returned. 

The monster within me was sated and the world turned.

Honestly? The coffee wasn’t that bad.

(This is just a draft - needs to percolate but I think it’ll get stronger.)

A thought that counts might not pay

In an effort to be less lazy at work, I got up early - before six. It was already too hot to think about working out (we're headed for 120 degrees today), so I found the coolest spot in the yard to drink a cold coffee and read the paper.

Then, as is my morning routine, I checked the emails on my phone. There were several interesting items that seemed to warrant further investigation. a Facebook post from a niece which lead to investigating a post from the Vancouver Beer & Wine Fest which prompted me to see what was happening at other northwest venues (Esther Short Park, Sunlight Supply Amphitheater, Edgefield). Of course, this necessitated looking at AirBNB to see where we might stay if we were going to get out of the hot desert in August.

Then, there was an article about Ajijic, Mexico, which, again, necessitated another investigation into AirBNB. There were e-mails from LaQuinta Brewing, and San Diego Beer News which both seemed important considering it's Friday and there's a whole weekend ahead of us. 

At 8, it was still early - an impressive time to log into work this time of year. I powered up my desktop and found more required reading at 76003.1414. There might have been some more AirBNB inquiries. A personal email. A chair at Ikea I was interested in buying. By 8:30, I was seriously thinking about logging into work, though, but I recalled that I hadn't brushed my teeth yet. Working from home, I attended to that easily when Hubby let me know the installers for the ceiling fans were on their way. Since one was to be installed in my office space, it didn't make sense for me to log in until they were through.

It was nine now. Still plenty of time to get to work at a decent hour (considering I haven't had much luck logging in before 10 since the tax deadline passed). I made toast for breakfast. Then a latte. Then, I considered the irony of waking up early and logging in late (the inspiration for this post). Writing this seemed to be a good use of my time while the installers finished their work.

And, like magic, it was 10 am and I was late for work again.

I should have just slept in.

Outsmarted, in the end.

There are some things I don’t want to do on a public wifi such as any kind of banking transaction. Or any kind of download of any kind regardless of the source. On a recent trip (and on many such trips), I find that WiFi is available but the security is - well, is there any? At least if I have to give up my name and room number, that’s something. (Isn’t it?) Sometimes there’s a password but it’s the same password for everyone. Do they change it on a regular basis? I guess if it’s a hotel you go to on a regular basis, you would know that but what if you’re just passing through?

Anyway, I had an idea for a post and I wanted to draft it so I opened my laptop and searched for a connection. No one is going to steal this post but, still, I didn’t want to open an open line to my what-feels-like-my-entire-life. So I tried to connect to my phone as a hotspot which I can do on Bluetooth but for some reason (which probably has to do with getting both a new phone and changing cellular networks), it wouldn’t connect via WiFi and since I didn’t want to connect on a public WiFi, I couldn’t look up how to resolve this on the interwebs. (I tried looking on my phone but didn’t type in the correct phrase to elicit an immediate solution.)

All I wanted to do was draft a post. I was about to give up and thumb tap it out on my phone when I realized *forehead slap* that you don’t need the internet to write.

Waaaaay back in the day, we called it “word processing.” It was made-up PR jargon that meant “typing on a computer.” And you know what? You can still type on a computer. Without the internet. It’s like writing with a pen on paper.

It’s so archaic.

But here’s the thing. It still works.

(And it’s secure.)

This word processor disagrees.