I am not bitter about being single on Valentine’s Day.

As I’ve mentioned before, I love holidays, and this is no exception. It’s my mom’s favorite holiday as well, which probably influenced me a great deal. She would always make us valentines and have some sort of surprise at breakfast. One year she made us heart-shaped pancakes for breakfast and served us orange juice out of mugs with hearts for handles (which I had not seen before, nor have I seen them since).

So, last night Talia and I got together and made mini-cupcakes for our coworkers. We decorated them with conversation hearts, which we both hate. They’re cute, but they’re disgusting. Anyway, in case no one else actually purchased any this year, I want you to know that the phrases on this year’s conversation hears include:
melt my heart
in a fog
chill out
nature lover
wild life
IM me (also, e-mail me and fax me)
heart of gold
Clearly there are lots more, but I thought those were the most ridiculous.

Anyway, at one point we got a little carried away and made this monstrosity.

Then, today, we had free coffee, cookies, juice, and cupcakes at work (in addition to my cupcakes). Plus, Talia had to work late, so Alex and I went out to dinner, which was followed by Rock Band and beer chez T&A.

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes things come up that make me a little sad about not having a significant other on Valentine’s Day. I am not immune. Like when I get some spam email from eHarmony telling me there’s still time to find a Valentine before Thursday! (How did they even know I was single? Is it that obvious?). Or this afternoon, when most of the girls in my department at work got flowers delivered. Out of the six of us in the office today, 4 are married. Three of the married girls got flowers, so the 4th one called her husband and whined, “The only girls who didn’t get flowers in the office today were the single ones and me.” Then the only other single girl in the office says over her cube wall, “No, Traci, even some of the single girls got flowers!” Sure enough.

But even when the interwebs and everyone in the office make me painfully aware of my singledom, I remember that I have incredible friends who will stay up late making silly cupcakes with me, who will take me out to dinner and play Rock Band, who will buy me hilarious Valentine’s gifts like this shirt. And then I remember how happy I am with my life, even if I don’t have a boyfriend.

Plus a guy riding his bike on the Park Blocks stopped to ask me out on my way home from work. And I’ll be damned if that doesn’t make a girl’s day.

I gave my first tour of the hospital yesterday. We give tours to school groups from around the state that are doing fundraising events for the hospital. They get to leave school for a day, come into Portland, get a tour to learn more about what their money goes towards, and then take the tram. Normally, an employee is supposed to shadow 3-4 tours before actually giving one themself, but since one of the girls in the office was sick the other day, I was the only one to give a tour. At this point I’d only been on one and pretty much had no idea what I was doing. I figured it’d be okay, until I walked into the room of high school kids and saw a bunch of very tall teenage boys staring back at me. I looked at Tessa, who said, “Oh, I didn’t tell you it was a basketball team?” Anyway, it went okay, except for when one of them asked me what stem-cell transplants were and I had to wing it. And I got lost at one point and had to ask a nurse where to go. Apparently I was a good sport, though, because one of the boys gave me a t-shirt at the end. Thanks, buddy.

My brother left for India yesterday. He’s going to be there for three months, hanging out with my cousin, her husband, and their new baby. Oh, and volunteering at a hospital. I’m assuming he had a layover in Singapore, though, because I got an email from him this morning entitled “Singapore = hot.” The body of the message said, “More later.”

Trying to plan a birthday celebration. Potentially either a string of brewery tours or a pub crawl. Any other fantastic ideas? I really wanted to get a party bus but it turns out they’re sort of expensive.

The last few days I’ve been testing out showering at night to save time in the morning.  It’s been great in the morning, too.  I have plenty of time to get ready, eat breakfast, make tea, and get to work.  However, it turns out showering in the morning is what wakes me up. I’m not entirely convinced my eyes fully opened the last couple days until at least 11 AM.  I may be up, but to say I’m awake is a damned lie.

Last but not least, the comments my friends have been leaving on my Mexico pictures have made my day(s). Particularly when Emily translated the Sol billboard.

Spoiler Alert: Jason and I didn’t kill each other.

We had a fabulous time. Needless to say, I didn’t have enough money or the patience to blog from internet cafes. Plus those keyboards are weird. Anyway, here are a few paragraphs I would have written.

First of all, we took red-eye flights to get there with the thought that it would save money and give us more play time. I wasn’t too worried about it because, God knows, I can fall asleep anywhere. The problem was that I had a two-hour layover in Texas. After I got some food and found my gate at Bush International Airport, I decided to try to get a little more rest by using my backpack as a pillow. My backpack did not have one soft thing in it, so I didn’t really think I’d fall asleep. The next thing I remember was hearing my name over the loud speaker, followed by a message that went something like, “If you do not get on the plane right now, we will leave without you and will feel no remorse.” I got up, ran to the gate, was chastised by at least four Continental Airlines employees, had to do the walk of shame back to the 24th row, and then promptly fell asleep in my seat.

When we got to Cancun, we picked up our rental car. It was a Fiat Palio stick-shift with A/C. Unfortunately Jason wasn’t a particularly good stick driver. Anyway, it became apparent almost immediately that there are ZERO rules when it comes to driving in Mexico. Speeding is expected. Want to pass on the right? No problem. Even if there’s no lane or shoulder there – just go ahead and drive on the grass. Wanna put 10 people in the back of your truck? Go ahead. Don’t have the right-of-way? Who the fuck cares. The only thing anyone seems to care about are “Topes” – speed bumps. And they are militant. The speed bumps are even smaller than they are here, but no Mexican person will go faster than 5 mph over one. They have them on small highways when you go through towns as well, which is moderately annoying. We had lots of adventures in the car, including Jason accidentally asking for the gas station attendant to fill us up with the most expensive gas because he got the words for expensive and cheap confused, the car getting searched at border patrol between states, Jason stalling in front of an armed guard at the state line and then accidentally honking… But by far the best was when I got pulled over by a motorcycle cop. It’s hard to explain without pad and paper, but basically I went into a parking lot at an “Exit Only” spot that wasn’t marked. Apparently all Mexicans just know when they can exit and when they can enter. The policeman told me at least 20 times what I did wrong, asked to see my driver’s license, studied it for 5 solid minutes, told me to be more careful in the future, and then let me go. Mind you, this entire time I was apologizing profusely and Jason was mentally adding up how much cash we had on us to bribe him.

Top two coolest things we saw:

1. Ruins. We went to Chichen Itza, and although it is one of the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World, I still didn’t like it as much as the ruins at Calakmul. At Chichen Itza, you can’t really climb on anything and there are tourists EVERYWHERE. Plus there are these really annoying street vendors who won’t leave you alone. At Calakmul, you could climb every pyramid and there was hardly anyone there. Plus, the ruins were right in the middle of a Biosphere reserve.

2. Cenotes. Pronounced Say-No-Tays. Small but deep freshwater lakes that are sometimes underground in caves. Think Goonies in Mexico. We saw two, but my favorite was an underground cave with a hole in the ceiling where the sun shone through on the water. There was also a tree growing near the hole and the roots went all the way from the ceiling into the water. All of our pictures turned out blurry and hard to see, but suffice to say it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

Some other fun things worth noting:

- One of the cities we visited, Campeche, is known as a “Pirate City” because it was attacked and looted by pirates so many times that the citizens of the city built a wall around it for protection. We went a little crazy with the pirate thing (see photos).

- We purchased 2 Reggaeton CD’s while in Mexico – one at a Supermarket and one at a street market. (They were each about $3.00 and were well worth it). We hadn’t heard of any of the artists on either CD except the #2 song on the one from the street market was “Umbrella” by Rihanna featuring Jay-Z. Apparently if you’re from Barbados, any music you make is considered Reggaeton.

- The free hotel room the last night in Cancun was incredible. Unfortunately we couldn’t afford to eat at the hotel (we were really desperate at one point and ordered nachos by the pool – they were almost $15.00). So for dinner we picked up a six pack of Sol and a Domino’s Pizza and enjoyed the beautiful view from our free room.

A few tidbits from my return drive:

There is a giant digital readerboard on 4th of July Pass (you know, the ones that usually say “Accident Ahead – Road Closed” or “Amber Alert” or whatever) that said “Experimental Snow Removal Operation in Progress”.

The sunset over Coeur d’Alene Lake in the winter may be one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen.

Somewhere in Washington, I saw a sign that said, “Now Leaving Apple Maggot Quarantine Area.”

I drove by a town called Tokio and an exit for Fishtrap.

I saw a sign along the Columbia Gorge smaller than an 8.5″ x 11″ sheet of paper that said “Evac Route.” And nothing else. It was the only one I saw.

Driving across the Hawthorne Bridge with studded snow tires is my new favorite pasttime.