Childhood friend Sandy got her first professional massage today. The OC Spa & Wellness Center located in Huntington Beach, CA isn’t swanky with whirlpools, saunas, steam rooms, complimentary fruit and shampoos the way Burke Williams and Glen Ivy are, but it also costs less. It’s a service-only day spa that also doubles as a boutique selling new age things like organic vitamins and soy candles.

My pet peeve with massage places is that you’re practically paying $3 a minute, so they should give you your money’s worth, but some places (this happened to me in Cancun and this in Glen Ivy Hot Springs’ Corona location) will start late and end on time. I’m okay with that if the customer’s late. But when the massage therapist is 20-30 minutes late, or screws up the service, your time should be given back to you in the end. Today, my therapist was running late for my 5:30. Someone had come out to tell me, at about 5:30p, that my therapist will be out in about 5-10 minutes. She came out about 5:40p, and apologized for being late. When I got undressed and laid on the table and was ready to go, that was 5:44. In my head I was doing the math on what kind of a tip I’d give her if she still ends on time at 7p. She didn’t; she ended at 7:15. So I tipped her 20%.

Sandy did not have a light massage like my 90 minute Swedish which focuses on circulation and relaxation. She had a 90 minute deep tissue combination. She always said she wanted a firm massage because she knew she had knots from all her recent stress and lack of sleep, and the girl who gave her the massage went all out. Her therapist said that she normally has burly tough men as her clients, and she’d only put about 25% of the strength into what she was giving Sandy before the men would wimp out. Sandy said she was sore from the massage, but knew she needed it. Her therapist told her that she should get more massages, if not from her, then from anywhere, because she was so unbelievable tense with knots on top of knots. So I may have gotten her to be a regular.

Oh, and I thought I lost my watch there, because the last time I had it, I was taking it off to put in my purse as I undressed in the room. Sandy and I were sitting at California Pizza Kitchen before I realized my watch was not in my purse anywhere. I called OC Wellness and the receptionist looked around the front desk, in the room I was in, and in the restroom and couldn’t find it. She asked if it was possible it may have fallen out in my car. I said maybe, and she asked me to call her back after I check the car so that they don’t tear the crevices of the place apart looking for me. I agreed, and thankfully, it’d dumped out of my purse in the backseat, so I called back and let them know. The service there is sooo nice.

P.S. I Zainoed the car again this weekend. Wash, swirl-remover polish, deep shine polish. Both cars. Uh-huh.
P.P.S. Mr. W and I visited my parents today and my mom had made a black chicken stew with Chinese herb medicine. Mr. W’s sick, and he chowed down 2 bowls of soup. He also had a tablespoon of that Chinese herbal cough syrup made of honey and loquat, Pi Pah Kao. My mom said that he was turning Chinese. I said he started off more Chinese than me. (See here for just one example.) We’d also brought over some Vietnamese sandwiches, and my dad fed the bread crumbs to his ten or so gray fish in his huge fishtank. He does have actual fish food he bought last week; he told us how the fish store salesperson, being helpful, asked what kind of fish he had to make sure the food is right. My dad answered that he believes his fish would eat anything, because Dad was too embarrassed to admit that presently, his fish tank is filled with talapia he caught himself last month. My dad’s silly; last month when I visited, he asked if I wanted to see the fish he caught the day before. I said okay, expecting him to lead me to the freezer or maybe a cooler outside, but he led me to his giant fishtank where a ton of wild gray fish were confusing his one remaining bright orange parrot fish.