Los Angeles: A deflated bed and fantastic sushi

I had to wake up at 7:30am today. Joey leaves for work at 8:30am, so if I wanted to go somewhere (anywhere) I had to leave with him. I didn't rent a car and I would have had to take a couple of buses to get anywhere on my own, so I just asked him to drive me to The Grove on his way to work and he did. Oh and here are some shots of Joey's place:

Some turntables:

And here's the outside of his place:

ANYway, Joey dropped me off at my favorite California health food store called Erewhon and I enjoyed a huge salad with kale, collards, brown rice, black beans and beets. Yes, I was eating a salad at 8:45am. See I'm not restricted by labels/titles, People. I eat when I want and whatever I want. And yes, I actually enjoy eating salads any time.  I also got two ounces of wheatgrass juice and a small quinoa tabouli. Everything was absolutely delicious. Suck. It.

I hung out at The Grove for a couple of hours and just people watched and soaked up the laid-back Cali vibe. After that I used Google Maps on my iPhone to get directions via bus to Joey's job on Sunset Boulevard. I would only need one bus, which seemed very doable. 30 minutes later, I was at Jo's job. He was in the middle of working on sound edits for a movie called Hanna, so I took a short video of him doing his thing. Here it is:

Cool, huh?

I hung around until he had to leave. His friend Russell stopped by to say hello:

Russell was hyped up on caffeine and...just excited that there was another woman on the premises. Joey works with pretty much ALL men. I only saw one woman working at the front desk in the lobby and that was IT. She must get hit on all the time. Good times for her.

Anyway, at 6:30pm we headed over to Joey's favorite sushi bar. And as soon as we walked in I recognized a famous person, but could not for the life of me remember her name. I asked Joey, but he had no idea. He didn't recognize her. I think she's on the WB or FX or SOMEthing. She's definitely famous. Besides the celebrity and us, everyone else was Japanese or Chinese or Korean. I took it as a good sign the food was gonna be good....or that the owner has a really big family. Joey ordered his favorite stuff: spicy tuna and California rolls. I ordered salmon, yellow tail, mackerel, and tuna rolls. We also ordered some edemame. The meal was super-yummy.

Here I am sexily holding one edemame pea on some chopsticks:

THEN we went over to Target to purchase a new inflatable mattress.

Here we are in the car listening to cool beats:

We got the cheapest inflatable mattress they had ($29.99), but then also had to purchase a separate pump ($19.99) with it. I also took a gander at the sock situation. Target has THE best selection of knee high socks, so I couldn't leave without purchasing some. I bought six pairs at $2 each, a journal, and some G2 gel pens in a pack of three. Joey bought some detergent. (Lame!)

We put it all in the car and made our way back to his house to try and catch Jersey Shore. Joey hadn't ever seen it before, so I was very excited to be the one to introduce it to him. Well, he wasn't impressed and didn't laugh once. He just kept shaking his head from side to side and saying, "Really?" I was starting to get a little wheezy at that point (I think the couch still had residual dander and cat hairs on it), so we just watched 30 minutes of the Shore and decided to go to bed. I inflated the mattress and put my bedding on it. When Joey and I said our goodnights, I went to the bathroom and brushed my teeth and washed my face and took out my contacts. When I came back to the bedroom the mattress had deflated to 20%.

:/

What. The. FUCK.

I quickly whipped out the pump and filled it with air since Joey had just gone into the bedroom and couldn't be asleep already. I pumped it up again. Seemed fine. I was really starting to wheez at this point. Like I thought to myself if my breathing gets even 2% worse I might have to leave. I'm still on NY time and was pretty darned tired, so I just ignored the wheezing and went to sleep.

Guess what happened next?

I woke up at 2:30am to a 100% deflated mattress.

What's happening here? Am I too fat to sleep on an inflatable mattress? Am I too dumb to properly inflate one? I do not understand. I spent the rest of the night wheezing and tossing and turning on the hardwood and plastic mush. I finally decided at around 5am to get on Priceline and book a hotel for the rest of my stay. There's no way I could take another night of this. So for the next four nights I will be staying at a four star hotel and paying a two star price."Thank you, Priceline!"

When Joey woke up in the morning I told him the new plan and asked if he wanted to stay with me in the fancy hotel for the next four nights and he said he would like that very much. I mean, since there are two queen-sized beds it seems like a waste to not share the love. Now....I just hope Joey doesn't SNORE.

Stay tuned...