Went on vacation. Various travails ensued:
Get halfway there, hotel in Portland. The roads in Portland are all one-way and stupid. Driving is a challenge. I'm sure, like rats in a deathmaze, anyone who grew up there endures without complaint and may even find it normal.
Next morning, Powell's Books is a city block of half new books, half used books. In my opinion Half Price Books has it right with a 90-10 mix with the new book minority segregated in aisle-ends and tables. But they've begun pricing all their RPG materials at collector's prices, and ignoring shabbiness of cover and writing in the pages. Despite my bibliophilia I purchase nothing. This comes after visiting a half dozen bookstores in the past week in which I'm also disappointed by the newness/full-priceness, and lack of selection.
Girlfriend buys these restaurant.com discount things, but the restaurant we go to refuses to honor it because it's a holiday (Valentines') even though no such restriction is listed on the printout.
Arrive at Seaside, OR, find that it's raining horizontally. Children are blowing across the beach, their flesh stripped by abrasion by driftwood logs and the scouring sand.
The hotel bed is, as usual, very hard and the pillows are way too thick. Hotel staff manages to find reasonably thin pillows in the laundry room.
Try to get room service, find that while the menu says hollandaise sauce they in fact have none. Decide to go out to eat instead. This works out well, and of course they take our discount tickets. Pfft.
Visit an antique mall. For those not in the know, it's where an old lady brings a ton of crap and rents a stall, but she's not there: the front desk handles purchases and passes the money on to the seller later. As is almost universal with antique malls specifically and shops in resort towns in general, the bathroom is not for customer use. My deductive reasoning and spatial sense tells me where the bathroom is. They just don't want people to use it. Except the lady they allow to use it. Girlfriend needs to use the restroom: we ask where the nearest one is in a passive-agressive attempt to get them to let us use theirs. Nope, visitor center 200 yards away. Fine. Go outside: it's like a rainy version of the Fellowship crossing the Misty Mountains. Hail strikes our faces and the wind forces rain into the depths of my ear. We make it there and back, completely soaked. We enter the antique mall and are half-assedly offered a paper towel. The front desk lady makes a snide remark about how tough it is to get to the bathroom in this weather. We leave to get back to our room and dry off. Girlfriend wants to return despite the shitty customer service because there's an inexpensive gold necklace she likes.
Return the next day. Less rain. Girlfriend asks the desk lady to open the case with the necklace. I finish my walkthrough of the mall, finding nothing interesting (as expected), but girlfriend approaches grimacing. Needs to use the restroom again. THIS time, when she tells the lady at the counter she'll be right back, counter-lady's eyes glow with the thought of a sale and she offers to let her use their restroom. "It's not up to code" she explains, although I believe if it's not up to code then it doesn't matter whether customers use it or not: your employees use it, you heartless crone! You just don't want to pay for people flushing and using toilet paper! End up leaving without buying the necklace. Hah! I can hear her seething.
Find out someone in the hotel parking lot hit the back of our car and drove away while we were gone. Insurance has a $500 deductible and girlfriend is unwilling to just let it go unfixed.
THIS IS MY PRIMARY GRIPE ABOUT CARS. YOU NEED TO HAVE A METAL BUMPER THAT LOOKS LIKE SHIT. I am so goddamned sick and tired of seeing cars with fragile plastic bumpers that get cracked and need a $500-$1500 replacement. That is bullshit. It is as the shit of the bull. As a culture, as a civilization, we need to demand wraparound metal bumpers that we accept will look banged up and scraped, and never need replacement.
Police report, insurance claim, etc.
The rest of the trip, including food, was fine. But the weather never really let up and it was dismal and we're never going to Seaside again. All further trips will be flights to California or Florida.
Author
Topic: Things that made you RRRRRRAAAAGGGGEEEE today: Trust-o-nomics Edition (Read 3748817 times)