Office Depot Can Stick It!!!

So, there's this Office Depot in San Diego on Pacific Hwy, I believe.  Near the harbor where the cruise ships come in.  There's this woman that's a cashier.  I've seen her there in the morning.  She has jet black hair and thick makeup, older woman.  She is a nasty bitch.  She has a horrible attitude, and she's rude to customers and coworkers.  So if you ever run across her, just be nasty to her before she has a chance to be nasty to you.

So, nonrelated, unless it's a subconscious thing, I don't buy pens.  Rather, I haven't bought pens in a long time.  My mom was a physician, and she always brought home tons of prescription drug pens.  Some were cool.  Every once in a while though, I wished we could just buy normal pens.  Not the crappy papermates that my dad liked to buy for the office, but like the overpriced packs of 4 at the grocery or the pharmacy store.

Here is a pen I found in one of my boxes of old memorabilia.

It's the last pen from the ones I bought to write thank you cards for our wedding.  We got married 9 1/2 years ago.  That's an old pen.

Anyway, I've gotten into the habit lately of collecting the pens from hotels and other businesses.

Here's all the non store bought pens I could find.

So the diner's club pen - I have no idea where it came from.  I did used to have a couple diner's club pens from when I waited tables after we got married.  But I know this couldn't be from then.

The next one is from The Farmhouse Cafe.  Our friend used to work there.  I remember he brought this pen into band practice.  The FP needed to borrow a pen, and our friend handed him this one.  The FP managed to pilfer the pen - either overtly or inadvertently.  And this was probably 3 years ago or so.

The Hooters pen is from the Hooters Casino in Las Vegas.  Which is a very disappointing casino.  I thought it would be all Hootered up - lots of orange walls and Hooter owls everywhere or something.  It just looks like another plain dumpy casino.  And the wings weren't quite as good either.  At least I got the pen.

The next pen is from Super 8 at Disneyland (which we never went to when we lived in Cali).  It's a Super 8, but perfectly clean and respectable, if you need a recommendation for the area.  We stayed there when we went to see the Echo & the Bunnymen show, which sucked.  Ian was being the fussy diva that he can be, and he ended the show way too soon, little bitch.

The Comfort Inn pens are from the Comfort Inn by Silverlake and Sunset in LA, basically in Filipinotown.  So, this place used to look really scary, but it has been renovated, sometime in the past few years.  We stayed here when we went up to LA to see our friend's band play at the Echo.  It was one night.  I splurged on the suite for about $5 or $10 more than a regular room.  The rooms were nice.  Except there was an old TV in the bedroom that had a red hue.  The open air hallway outside the room was a little scary.  There were soft spots in the floor, that were just like plastered over.  So, when I stepped in one, it felt like I was going to fall through.  The cool thing though, was that you could see the Hollywood sign from that walkway.  Pretty cool.  The bad thing though, was that the entrance to the hotel was tricky.  We watched the cab that we ordered drive around several times before figuring out how to get to the hotel from the street.  The very good thing is that they are very serious about security there.  It's not the greatest neighborhood.  But there's only one entrance that is open at night.  And it's right by the front desk.  So, you have to tell the receptionist your name, room number, show them your key and your ID, and say how many people are staying there.  So, it's difficult to bring a big group of psychos to break into other rooms and rob and rape people in there sleep.

The Quality Inn pen is from our first night out on the road in New Mexico, coming from San Diego.  That was the smokey hotel room in Las Cruces that was totally booked except for one smoking room, for some unknown reason.

Unfortunately, I can't find the Econolodge pen to show that I lived through the night there to tell the tale.

The Staybridge Suites pen is from that very nice and comfortable, although not cool or hip, hotel that we stayed at in New Orleans for two nights.  It was more than I would have liked to spend, but there was more hotel room for the price we paid than the other more historical hotels that cost the same price.

And the Rare pen is from the fancy restaurant we ate at that was dead on Thanksgiving evening.  It's in Fort Lauderdale in the Las Olas area.  It seems to be in not a quite as good location, because it's on the more businessy, less cafe and barry side of Las Olas.  Our dinner was really good though, so I'm not complaining.

So, that's my pen collection.  Sorry I don't have fancy Mount Blanc or Cross pens to show you.  My mom every once in a while got a fancy pen from a pharmaceutical company, but you had to buy the ink most of the time.  So these pens would just sit in the box unused, until my parents would take them to the Philippines.  Several of my other pens have been lost.  We've stayed at a lot of hotels this year.  The most I've ever stayed at in one or two years in my life.

Guess I might have to buy some pens at some point, if we end up having to pay for and maintain a house.  We definitely won't have as much money (or credit on the credit cards) to stay at hotels as much!