你可以读汉字吗

最近我想想为什么我的博客没有很多人读。因为我找到了一个很笨的博客，名字是“我在工作穿了瑜伽裤” 这个博客有大概三千人读。我不理解。博客的作者是一个傻瓜，她的文章没有很重要的话题。我觉得我的博客的话题又重要又有意思，但是我的男朋友不同意。他说别的人不在乎我的博客的话题。他说我应该关心读者。我反对他。我要写什么就写什么. 因为这个原因，我用汉字写，现在没有人可以读！哈哈哈

Exotic Planterium and Card & Comic Collectorama

***All of the pictures from this post were found on the internet except for the picture of my plant, I do not go into people's stores and take random pictures of them...I would only do that in China.

If you want to go to a very, very strange shop, go to the Exotic Planterium and Card & Comic Collectorama in Del Ray, Alexandria.  I'm not really sure if it is a hidden gem or just an out-of-place shop in a trendy little neighborhood.

The store basically consists of so many random piles of comic books and other memorabilia that you can barely walk around, open doors, etc. It also has a small collection of plants by the window in the front. I went there for the plants, but it's hard to ignore the rest of the store.

The plants did not seem very exotic, but maybe that was because they were so small. Personally, when I think of an exotic plant, what comes to mind is something very large that is growing uncontrollably, like a force us folk accustomed to non-exotic plants can't manage.

However, I did see one plant that caught my eye--at 3 inches tall it towered above the other plants and it didn't look like grass (like some of the other exotic plants did).  The storeowner, a very, very old man, was peering at Zach and I from around a stack of comic books, so I inquired about the price. He picked up the little plant ever so gently, and told me that it was not ready for sale, and that we should come back in a few weeks. 

Not ready for sale?! I wouldn't be surprised if the storeowner went days with out selling one piece of merchandise, I couldn't believe that he wouldn't sell it. He wanted to make sure that the plant was rooted well and that it was growing nicely before passing it along. I don't think he trusts anyone but himself to bring this baby plant into the world.

So that was fine, but I went back again yesterday to buy the little plant, exactly one month after first trying to buy it, and he told me that it still wasn't ready to sell, although several other people had inquired about the plant too, which he seemed proud of. Now I know for sure that this guy is a kook.

But... a very friendly kook who clearly likes his plants and wants them to be well taken care of, even when "business has been slow lately". I ended up choosing 3 other small plants and while he seemed reluctant to let at least one of them go, he consented. I am so grateful he let me purchase his plants :)

on the windowsill of my office where the owner should be happy to
know they are getting plenty of light. i am happy with my little plants.

The kicker was when he rang up my total--he gave me too much change back. In 99.9% of cases I would say tough luck to the seller but there was no way I could take money from the Exotic Planterium. He pulled out the receipt from a decrepit cash register and it definitely was reporting the change due back incorrectly, so we figured it out in our heads. He was very grateful I pointed out the problem so he could be aware of it for future sales. I wonder how much revenue he has been losing due to his faulty cash register, in addition to his refusal to sell merchandise. 

I looked the store up on Yelp and people's opinions were overwhelmingly polarized, with one reviewer going as far to say that it was "One of my favorite places on the planet...it's the most incredible retail store in the United States", and another saying "The elderly man behind the counter and the condition of the store made me wonder whether his mother's desiccated corpse was propped up in a back room like in "Psycho.""

I plan on going back to buy another plant if these 3 work out, although I don't know if I'd go as far to say that the shop is my favorite place on earth. I won't stop going until I at least get that plant he refused to sell me. So 3+ plants later, I guess his weird sales tactics have more than been effective on me. I'm invested now. Plus in some weird way...I feel like he deserves my plant money. What a hard-working old man :)

storefront and owner

So, come join me in my quest to get the exotic plant at the Exotic Planterium!

krampus

for those of you who think christmas has always been a jolly wintertime holiday for all, then you clearly haven't been introduced to krampus, "a beast-like creature from the folklore of Alpine countries thought to punish children during the Yule season who had misbehaved." wow, how did that not make its way to america?

so if the prospect of receiving a lump of coal on christmas morning isn't enough incentive to make your children be good girls and boys, maybe you need to bring out the big guns--tell them that if they are bad, krampus will put them in a sack and carry them away to his lair. 

when i was little, i accidentally saw the beginning of "tales of the crypt" one time with the skeleton guy and was traumatized for months. i'm pretty sure that if someone had told me about krampus i would have lived in terror all of my childhood. maybe alpine children are made of tougher stuff than i was though.

i found krampus on buzzfeed. usually buzzfeed is pretty inane but sometimes they have really weird articles like this one, and you can learn interesting facts on a variety of topics, like the beasts of germanic folklore. how would i have known about krampus otherwise? thanks buzzfeed.

the little quirks in the homemade krampus costume, such as the off-center eye holes and asymmetrical horns, make the costume particularly distressing. 

that poor, poor boy. i wonder what he did to deserve a visit from krampus.

This post on Krampus is dedicated to my boy Zach.

it has been a rough week. remind me to never work anywhere that is undergoing a change in "association management software." really couldn't care less about that, yet part of my job performance depends on it. i would happily go live in solitude with nothing but a cactus to give me comfort over doing this.

in more interesting news, while sifting through my old stuff tonight at home, i found out that when i was in middle school i identified as 71% libertarian, 71% reform, and 57% green party. my life...one big ball of confusion.

welcome to my house

zach and i looked at buying a condo for the first time yesterday. no friend, that was not a typo. the place was verrrry pretty. and i could find many special uses for the extra height this space would afford me that would not make zach happy, like an indoor trampoline.

however, there were apparently already offers on the table and we needed to get a bid in by the next day? uhhhh yeah i don't think so. probably couldn't afford it anyhow. but it's good to start looking now. 

the more i look at it, the more i want it. i think i have finally become an adult.

seeing strfkr

i had 4 tickets to go see strfkr.

i bought my tickets off craigslist.

i tried to sell 2 tickets back on craigslist.

i made too many promises.

there was a girl waiting outside with her dog. and a guy with a blue cap.

i messed up.

i have 0 tickets to go see strfkr. and i broke even.

i'm thirsty, give me my coconut

day 3 puerto rico: luquillo beach and el yunque rain forest

things started with a bang once we got the rental car, literally, i crashed into a guardrail.

okay i am exaggerating, but that would have been a far more respectable way to scratch the paint off of the front bumper.

what actually happened is that i was pulling into a parking spot at the "kioskos" at luquillo beach so zach could get his food fix and i wasn't accustomed to the length of the car yet, so i slowly but surely rammed into a wall in front of the spot. this confounded wall spanned all of 5 parking spots; at least 100 spots were wall-free. WHY

luquillo beach

i was so mad at myself. i started obsessing about how the people at the rental car company were going to be big jerks about it when we returned the car and ruin the end of our trip. they had a $500 hold on my credit card...and they seemed kind of disorganized and shady. i was prepared to have the battle of my life with them, the same way i have been battling speeding and parking tickets with the DC government that i am equally as guilty for. if i'm going to go down, i'm at least going to go down with a fight. why is life so hard?

but the crystal blue water at luquillo beach and delicious ceviche we had at the kioskos soon made me forget my troubles. the kioskos were cool--imagine a long row of 60+ small restaurants that line the beach, all attached together but have no front or back walls. my guess is that the kioskos started with some little shacks with snacks and then caught on and expanded. well, it's a good concept, and i'm always looking for good concepts (more fodder for my "get rich quick" schemes. i need the money to fund my driving mishaps).

do not trust me with the ceviche, i will eat it

we had to walk by every kiosko before making a decision

after we were rested on the beach and had our fill, it was on to el yunque national rainforest, the only tropical rainforest in the US park system. 

with the steep ascent up the mountain and all the esses we had to make, driving into the jungle was hard work. luckily we found a place to stop and refresh ourselves with some coco frio. 

zach couldn't be happier about his coconut

i am proud of my coconut

we also got a chance to take a dip in the pool of a waterfall. being very high up in the mountain and under the shade of many trees, the water was freezing. i figured i hadn't come all this way to just look at it and nod though, so i made my way in. there was another guy in the pool and he showed me the trick for getting under the waterfall. using the best peer pressure we could, we coaxed zach into getting into the water too. zach is much more sensitive to water temperature than i am, but he also made his way under the waterfall, and came swimming out like a little doglet, which is captured very vividly in my head but unfortunately not on camera :)

me under the waterfall

so after a few minutes zach was happy to get out and take my picture under the waterfall. the pool was deep but there was a little rock sticking out that you could stand on. ahhh it was loud! and the water was spraying all over my eyes. 

so after that i apparently chilled on a rock for a while and basked in the radiance of the waterfall, which is proved by this photo which was taken by a much better camera than i have. when we were getting our stuff to go a guy approached zach and showed him the picture and asked if he wanted him to email it to him. how nice! this might easily be the coolest picture i have of myself.

when this photo goes up in art exhibit it can be called "content with the world"

then the sun started getting low in the sky, and it was time to go. 

there were many things waiting for us in fajardo--

the secret of the lizard

(my temptation to rhyme that line with wizard)
an encounter with what "island time" is really all about
and seeing how our stay with mr. robinson would play out :)

this music video is really weird, and it works so well...it's strangely coherent