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

locker room

after going swimming tonight, i was brought back to a very strange place in my head--the chinese locker room. i don't think i will go into details, but it is the complete opposite of an american locker room. i always felt like i was at a spa** when i was in the chinese locker room because you can bring and do whatever you want in there. while people would often annoy the crap out of me in the pool trying to chat or get free swimming lessons, everyone pretty much ignored me in the locker room, like i was a chinese person. it is one of my happy places.

**disclaimer, i have never been to a spa before, and my idea of what one is is probably strange and not very accurate. :)

tonight, while a line of sixteen year old girls waited to use the public showers, a small (presumably) chinese woman came in with her toothbrush and spent like 10 minutes brushing her teeth in the shower. i was about to die. imagine all the positions you could put yourself and your toothbrush in while showering and this is what she was doing. at one point she completely outstretched her arm so she could hold her toothbrush very close to the shower head and rinsed it off for probably over a minute, did something else, and then did it again. i also looked over one time and she was facing the shower, gritting her teeth, and the letting the water pour all over her face.  she was trying to rinse the toothpaste off her teeth and clean her mouth, but i think the water was too hot and she had a maniacal look on her face.

i would have thought nothing of this in china, but seeing that in america is hilarious. if i had been one of those 16 year old girls i probably would have been dying of laughter. get your clean on chinese shower lady!

save a gato in san juan

everyone clap your hands, zach and i made it back safe and sound from puerto rico! it was a trip well done. this is the first time that we have done some really serious travelling on our own--getting through puerto rico's interior on remote mountain roads is not easy stuff. zach has apparently been describing our itinerary as "aggressive", which i kind of have to agree with. but it was worth it, and we were smiling on the shuttle to the airport, unlike the grumpy couple sitting behind us who had already botched their trip within 1 hour of being in puerto rico. sucks to be them...so here begins the tale of our one week trip to puerto rico, which had enough adventure in it to fill several trips to puerto rico :)

us in culebra, a small island off of Puerto Rico

DAY 1 and 2: SAN JUAN!

as zach will probably mention to anyone he recounts the trip to, we were up before 6am three times during the trip. the first time was to catch our uber-early, direct flight out of DCA into san juan. because of this, i was very tired on the plane ride. i've found that on most planes i am just about the right size to use my arms as a pillow on the tray table and lay my head on them so i can sleep. i'm not sure if this is considered rude or not, but the only thing i can see that's bad is sometimes my arm slips and hangs over the tray table into someone else's space. however, if i'm not feeling the tray table, i might lean back, take off my shoes, and squeeze my feet in between the seats in front of me--just enough to hold them there but not so much that the person in front of me can see my feet. i'll sit in a number of strange positions on planes trying to get comfortable. if that's rude, then so be it.

this is a good depiction of how i look on a plane, i happened to find it in san juan

so i did the tray table trick on this plane ride and fell asleep, which i know for sure not only because when i woke up my arm was hanging near someone, but also because i had a dream. usually i have pretty unusual dreams, but this dream was probably the most boring dream i ever had. my dream was that the plane landed.   that's it.

view of San Juan from the plane as you land

so actually it really wasn't a boring dream because i had really been looking forward to this trip. especially right after the planning was done, i was so excited to get out of here and go. usually zach and i make all our our plans last minute but this time i made sure to get everything done far in advance so we could have our prime choice of lodging, prices, etc. this experiment worked out perfectly except that i wasn't used to waiting so freaking long for the vacation to come, and that was hard.

but once i got there it was marvelous

san juan is a beautiful city! old san juan, which you can see in the picture above, is small small small. you can easily walk across the entire thing in like 15 minutes, and the tip, which again you can see in the picture above, is an old spanish fort.

el morro, the spanish fort

i ended up booking a hostel in old san juan. i was a little wary about lodging in san juan--i wanted a step up from couchsurfing (which is what we did on our new years vacation to charleston/savannah) but i didn't want to get sucked into the whole caribbean resort thing and pay $300 a night so i could have as many yellow and white striped towels as i wanted. and no i am not just making random things up, that is the deal at the caribe hilton, the resort that zach and i snuck into.

yes caribe hilton, i will swim in your giant pool

it wasn't our original plan to trespass into the resort. in fact, we spent the majority of the day at a very low key beach popular with locals, sharing one very small bath towel from the hostel to lie on. however, after accidentally rolling into the sand for the 5th time, i thought it might be nice to take a walk and check out the rest of the area.

part of the local beach

very quickly we realized that resort heaven was right around the corner from our modest little beach. the receptionist at the front desk of our hostel had already planted the seed in our heads about sneaking in--she had suggested that we do it and told us that caribe hilton couldn't do anything about it.

the balcony was the best part of the hostel

forget you caribe hilton

so we walked up to the gate on the side of the hotel and tried the door, but it wasn't opening. to complicate matters, a hotel worker was coming up behind us with a big crate of towels. zach, being his devious self, asked me if i had the key. not knowing what to do, i stood there and shook my head with a guilty smile on my face. luckily the hotel worker didn't seem to care if we were actually staying there or not, and pressed some button to open the door. suddenly, zach and i were guests at the caribe hilton.  we spent the rest of the day lying in a hammock under palm trees and relaxing in a jacuzzi. the only thing i was worried about was that we were the only people there with out a yellow and white striped towel, which was slightly suspicious given that each person there had like 5 towels all to themselves. i eventually went up and asked for one, and was granted it. when we exited, the towel did as well. we didn't really go into any gift shops while we were in PR, so it turns out that the towel was our only souvenir from the whole trip!

no caption needed

the resort was nice for a few hours, but i'm so happy zach and i didn't spend our whole time there, which i'm sure many people do. there is so much more to puerto rico (and san juan) than the caribe hilton. zach and i took a walk on a mostly deserted beach and found part of the spanish fort crumbling into the water. ever since living in ireland and seeing the old castles there, i am obsessed with crumbling things, especially ones that are just being left to themselves, so i was very happy to find that.

i should issue a word of warning about san juan (and puerto rico in general)--there is a lot of trash, there are lot of stray cats, and there are a lot of dogs that are likely not stray but wander around everywhere as if they were.

the cat issue is an interesting one. on the first night we were there, we unknowingly went for a walk into el gato's prime territory. there were cats EVERYWHERE. at first it was just a few, which we thought was weird, but after a while we realized the place was infested with feral cats. it was really creepy because it was starting to get dark and there were rocks lining the shore, so they were hiding in the rocks and randomly popping out. to make matters worse, zach and i are both allergic to cats, and not really big fans of them in general. it was the most uncomfortable i have felt in a while.

los gatos

it was clear though that these cats were not really feral in the true sense--they were much too healthy and pretty looking. this is all thanks to the most powerful non-profit in puerto rico, the Save A Gato foundation. the Save A Gato has an "exclusive agreement" with the National Park Service to manage the cat colony. according to their website: 

Save A Gato manages the colony of cats on the Paseo del Morro and the rest of Old San Juan. We manage them through T/N/R. This stands for trap, neuter, and release. Cats are first trapped, then with the help of local vets we are able to neuter, vaccinate, and de-worm the cats. The cats are then returned healthy to the Paseo to lounge and sunbathe on the rocks.

painting depicting old san juan's cat infestation
that you can buy on Save a Gato's website

the whole thing is really hard for me. on one hand i understand that this is a very humane thing to do, on the other hand, this organization is expending a lot of energy and capital on a bunch of nasty cats. personally, unless i was working to save endangered animals or something like that, it's really hard for me to imagine working in the non-profit world and trying to better the life of a cat rather than a person. maybe i don't know anything though because they are definitely doing a good job:

non-profit dollars are at least not needed for efforts to revitalize the slums in the city--leave that to donald trump, who is apparently buying a portion of them. that is what a man from the slums told us as we were overlooking them. he said the area was donald trump's "new toy", and ended by saying, "we are going to kill him." donald might want to rethink his new toy. at any rate, these are the prettiest slums i have ever seen:

the last thing i'd like to add is that it's very important to eat some mofongo while you're in puerto rico. if you know the right place to go, which zach made sure we did, it will look like the picture below. mofongo basically consists of fried and mashed plantains filled with your choice of meat or vegetables. it's so yummy, and as i'm writing this i'm getting a mofongo craving...hmmm might have to go to new york for that.

and that is the end of the easy part of the trip where we walked everywhere or took the bus. then comes the car, and the trouble begins...muhahah

so in conclusion...

san juan is a place where you can find giant murals of birds on buildings, and everything is brightly colored. 

if you want to paint your house bright pink, go for it. 

but beware of the park with spiky sculptures, it will give you a fright. 

instead, find the park where the palm trees reflect off the wall in the setting sun. oh wait, it was the same park!

things i hate about maryland

their ugly brown signs

their ugly brown signs with weird city names on it like glen burnie and cabin john

maryland, how i hate you!

feelin free in albuquerque

i hate staying at nice hotels. of course, i like the big, comfy beds and the nice little bottles of shampoo that i can steal for upcoming trips to puerto rico, but there are many reasons why they are no bueno. here is a good one: when i ask the receptionists at nice hotels how i can take a bus to a mountain off in the distance, they don't know.  thanks for nothing.

sneak peak, i didn't need them.

in fact, when i asked them in albuquerque, one of the receptionists thought i meant that i wanted to go to a casino. it was very strange having to clarify- no, when i asked how to get to the mountain, i didn't actually mean to ask about the casino and somehow mountain slipped out. or maybe it was because my arm was acting up that day--sometimes it inadvertently cranks the air from years of playing the slot machines.

but the minute i got to albuquerque i saw the mountain off in the distance and i knew that one way or another i had to go to it. i really didn't want to work at all, i just wanted to go to the mountain. it was so tempting.

painting of the sandia mountains during
albuquerque's annual balloon festival

luckily i had the foresight to arrange my flight out of albuquerque on friday for 3:45pm instead of 6:15am when my co-worker left. since i was leaving so late, i probably should have worked from my computer, but ehhh. there were more important things to do that day.

so i loved the mountain, but i wasn't willing to pay like $80+ to get to it by taxi roundtrip (sorry mountain). that's why i asked the receptionists about a bus option. as they were incompetent, i saw that i was going to have to do this on my own.

so in typical victoria fashion, i looked up just enough to see that it was potentially possible to take a bus to the mountain from where i was, and headed out on my way.

weird chalk drawing on an adobe building

after walking a short distance, i found a bus stop. however, i was so excited about the whole ordeal before i left that i forgot to check my wallet and see if i had money for the bus. luckily, i had a 1 dollar bill and a 5 dollar bill. there was a bank of america kiosk in the parking lot behind me so i thought, "sweet, i'll go get some more dollars." no dice, the machine would only give me money in denominations of $10.

when i got back to the bus stop there was a woman waiting there with a stroller. she asked me something about the bus, and i told her that i wasn't from albuquerque. she asked where i was from, i told her, and she was (incredulously) like, "why the hell did you come all the way out here?" haha.

elementary school we visited for work. their schools are more
like campuses, i like.

a few minutes later the bus came and i saw there was an option to buy an all day bus pass for $2, but the bus driver said they could only take exact change, so my $1 and $5 didn't cut it. i bought a one way pass with my $1. i asked the bus driver about the possibilities of getting to a place where i could hike the mountain via bus, and after thinking about it for a bit, he suggested the same route i thought would get me there. he told me he'd tell me when to get off and transfer buses, so i took a seat and enjoyed the ride.

for some reason after living in china, i love riding the bus and prefer it over all other forms of transportation. yeah it was crowded there sometimes, but it kept me on my toes (no pun intended)--there's always something interesting on the bus.  i like the feeling of watching the world go by outside with of a bunch of other random people, it's very calming. yeah, the bus is a very calming place for me, unless there is a passenger threatening "slim" the bus driver because he insulted the passenger for sleeping on the bus, which as a human being he apparently has the right to do, and wants to go "toe to toe" with the bus driver outside to settle the dispute. fun times on the bus in DC.  i did see a bunch of passengers in albuquerque that looked like jesse pinkman though, and we drove past the biggest car wash i have ever seen, heheh.

adobe restaurant

the ride ended at the bus depot where i needed to transfer to a new bus. the bus driver was so kind, he got off the bus with me, showed me where to catch the next bus and told me what stop i should get off at to catch a trail. he also slipped me an all day bus pass because he said i would need it and he had an extra. such a little thing, but so nice. i hadn't even thought about the fact that i still didn't have the right change for the next bus, and there was nowhere to get change at the bus depot. this was definitely dejavu of china--thank god for random people looking out for me all over the place.

so an hour later (1.5 hours in total from start to finish) i made it! the trail was in a residential area right off the stop. say what you will about albuquerque, but if i can get to a mountain that is 20 miles away via bus, they clearly have an awesome bus system.

i'd like to live in an adobe house by the mountain

of course the day i climbed the mountain was the coldest, grayest, and windiest day there had been since arriving in albuquerque. i didn't check the weather before i left but luckily i had a few layers on. however, besides a pair of running shoes, i didn't bring anything very useful for hiking. before starting, i flagged down a few hikers who had just finished up to see if they had any tips for me. they were decked out with backpacks and walking sticks and legit hiking apparel. they must have thought i was an idiot with my peacoat, purse, and thin cotton pants--the guy actually made it very clear that he thought i was an idiot--he was very concerned that i was going to get lost on the mountain and kept emphasizing a hill i could use as a reference point. aiya.

my designated reference point, the hill

path

made it

the hill and the city as seen from above. i feel like this picture makes
the hike look like an easy, straight shot up, but not so much.

the hike was definitely harder than i thought it was going to be--it was really steep, the trails petered off as you got higher, and the terrain consisted of little pebbles and rocks that tested my balance several times. if i had fallen i probably would have landed on a cactus :( :(  so i essentially meandered my way up, trying to avoid the really steep passes and also trying to avoid places where there were a lot of rocks piled up. i was afraid i might run into a cougar or a snake or something *shivers like a baby*

the mountain was definitely worth the trek out there, my only regret is that i could only hike around for about 1.5 hours because i was nervous about having issues with the bus back to the hotel and really did not want to miss my flight. so i guess that is the downside of the bus. but seriously, $80 vs. $1....the same bus driver who dropped me off on that line and pointed me to the trailhead picked me up and i don't think he was expecting to see me again so soon. everything worked out though!

me at the top in a peyote haze

when i got to the albuquerque airport, i was so hungry that i ate this:

it's a sopaipilla (a puffed bread new mexicans either put meat in for a meal or honey in for dessert)!  it was huge and really tasty, which is good because my flights were a mess and i didn't end up getting home until 3am.

so that concludes my adventures in albuquerque. at some point i'm sure i will return to the southwest and explore it more properly. maybe i can even finish up this mountain :)