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My Mom had an appointment nearby this afternoon and I invited her over when she finished up. I was working from home, and I was still working when she got here, so I told her she needed to leave me alone (not talk to me while I was on the computer) until I was done with what I was working on.

She went outside to water the lawn and the neighbor’s garden instead. When she came back inside, I was just about wrapping up work for the day and she had something round and dirty in her hand.

“I found a quarter!” she exclaimed. “Your neighbor came home and thanked me for watering the garden because she hadn’t done it in so long… and then I found a quarter!”*

Then she looked at the muddy thing in her hand and she handed it over to Yoshi asking, “Is this a quarter?”

Hilarious.

(Yes, it was a quarter… Mom is up 25 cents!)

Mom and I hit the road to run a couple of errands… one in K-Town and then I convinced to come with me to check out the (somewhat) new Fresh & Easy neighborhood market in Hollywood with me. I had a $5 off a $20 purchase coupon that was expiring, so I thought I should go and check it out. The store is located just down the street from Hollywood & Highland and at 7pm, there was still a ton of traffic on the roads and it was a pain to get there.

The store itself was certainly clean: items were fresh and it was easy. But everything seemed pricey; I couldn’t bring myself to spend more than $1 on a small bunch of green onions when I am used to paying a dime or a quarter for a bunch at the Asian supermarket. My Mom said she didn’t need anything, so I said, “Let’s spend $20 on junk food!” which she agreed with surprisingly quickly.

We ended up buying boysenberry granola (mine… shut up, Efren! I haven’t had granola in ages!), blue tortilla chips (mom’s), peach flavored gummy candy (mine), white tortilla chips (mom’s), chocolate covered espresso beans (mine), a loaf of bread (mom’s), and a can of chili (mine, for yoshi). As I scanned the items (self-check out — which scared my Mom because she’d never done self check-out before), I realized the total was shy of $20… we needed to spend two more dollars to use the $5 coupon! I sent my Mom off to spend $2 more… she came back with ANOTHER bag of white tortilla chips for me.

Bingo! Total before coupon: $20.56! Final total: $15.56!

As we were leaving the store, I went to go validate the parking ticket. Except I accidentally stuck the ticket in twice (punched twice) so the validation wasn’t going to scan properly. The Fresh & Easy guy I talked to (boy, that makes him sound really slutty) said, “Oh don’t worry about that. Just show the parking attendant on your way out.” So we headed to the elevator to go down to the parking level our car was parked. My Mom was pushing the cart of junk food and as the elevator doors opened, she started pushing the cart into the elevator ahead of me but stopped abruptly when the girl inside started screaming. My Mom shrieked and jumped backwards into me.

“What happened?” I asked.

My Mom looked back into the elevator where a really loud-talking oblivious girl was yelling into her cell phone. “The girl startled me. I thought she was yelling AT ME.”

We got into the elevator when we realized the girl was just having an incredibly loud and obnoxious conversation on her cell phone. (I wonder if it occurred to her that the reason the person on the other line couldn’t hear her was because SHE WAS IN AN ELEVATOR AND GOING DOWN 3 STORIES TO UNDERGROUND PARKING?!) The girl continued her conversation (loudly and obliviously) until she walked out of the elevator on the same level we were parked.

“My heart is still beating so fast. That girl scared me!” Mom repeated.

I started insulting the girl in Chinese under my breath until my Mom gave me a look to stop it.

At the parking lot entrance, my f-ed up parking ticket wasn’t scanning properly (as predicted). The parking attendant was not amused and threatened to make me pay $6 for parking (we are supposed to get 1 hour of parking validated). No! That would negate my $5 coupon! So I asked him nicely if he could let me out since you could see the validation stamp. He debated for a second and saw the line of cars getting longer behind mine and said, “OK,” as he filled out a sheet of paper and used his super-secret letting people out card to lift the gate. Whoo hoo!

Anyway, we went back to my place after that and Yoshi was home visiting with our friend T. Mom had to hit the road, so after walking her out, I had a quick dinner and hung out with Yoshi and T for the rest of the evening.

A couple of days ago, Bossdude had said that he couldn’t write about his life in such detail (in reference to my Memorial Day post). I’m pretty sure the implication was, “OMG, Joz, how can you write about your inane life in such mind-numbingly boring detail?!”

Maybe because my life is so damn boring now that this is as exciting as it gets?

*Mandarin is in italics