From AOK team member Lynn, an attempted AOK (Editorial Note: Inspired by this act of leaving extra time in the meter for the next person, I added an hour to my meter on San Vicente before I drove off. AOK relay?)I pull up to the parking meter, and with kindness overflowing, I don’t just take a nickel out to put in the meter while I run for coffee, I take a WHOLE QUARTER!!! I snap a picture, to document my overwhelmingly kind act, and lo and behold, the damn meter is BROKEN. Mission NOT accomplished, this was an AOK No-Go.

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Last night I was awaiting a spot at my favorite sushi bar downtown. It’s a hole in the wall in the Little Tokyo area with the freshest, most delicious sushi and sashimi… I could wax poetic for ages, but back to the point: Little Tokyo, like much of the downtown area, has a large homeless population, and many of these men and women know a captive audience when they see one.My boyfriend and I were loitering outside the restaurant when an older gentleman approached and launched into his speech. He was homeless, and he wanted to sing us a Billie Holiday song in exchange for our ears and anything we could spare if we approved of his rendition.I am a notorious sucker for such requests – whether he sang or not, I would have readily given him a couple of dollars. I’m sure I get taken advantage of on a regular basis, but I think it’s worth it for the times I don’t. My boyfriend begged me to decline his offer, anticipating that we would attract a fair bit of attention from our fellow restaurant-goers. This man clearly wanted to sing, however, and I thought to ask him NOT to – just take some change and go away – was unkind. So, he sang his song, the boyfriend was a good sport about it, and we parted ways. But not before he told us to check him out on youtube under his stage name, Octave Fellow Soul.Unfortunately, a few hours later, I undermined my night’s karma by losing my cool – or rather keeping it a little too well – while at a bar a few blocks away. I had put my drink down on a sidebar on the crowded patio area and turned away for a moment. When I reached back for it, a girl wrapped dramatically in an ethnic-print scarf rushed forward….”NO NO no no no nooo,” she scolded. “That’s my drink,” she added, with as much condescension as possible as she tried to grab it from my hands. In a moment of out-of-character iciness, I gave her my coldest look in return. “This is my drink,” I said, moving my drink out of her reach, “maybe THAT ONE is your drink.” I injected as much venom as possible into this statement. “Oh,” she replied, seeing her mistake. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to be such a bitch about it.” Ah! An opportunity for reconciliation – an honest mistake. But alas. I shrugged it off and turned away, letting the bad vibes hang in the air.I have to say, I’m a little loathe to admit last night’s meanness, but in the spirit of the game….

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So it was really, really windy in Seattle today – I don’t know how many miles per hour or anything, but there was enough for people to be laughing nervously getting knocked of balance at intersections.There was also a college-age guy on 5th and Pike playing acoustic guitar and singing his own song, selling cd’s that he’d obviously burned himself. As I was walking by, enough wind came in a single gust to blow a handful of his albums into the street. He caught his hat and guitar case but he basically just had to watch all his music fly away and he looked pretty unhappy about it.But oh man, the street was completely empty, so I just walked out and picked them all up while he shuffled his sidewalk studio back together. He was really happy about it – I’m sorry to say I missed the photo op, but I’m sure he would have accepted an invitation to take a picture with him, he was smiling hard.

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Celebrating my father in-laws 70th birthday with the entire family at a luxurious hotel in Santa Barbara this weekend. After treating myself to a day at the spa….message, whirlpool, steam room…wrapping up with a nice long shower …. I noticed a glob of gross hair at the bottom of the drain. My ‘Confession’ is that normally I probably would have left this nasty business right where it was….or not even noticed it for that matter (or not wanting to notice it) with a mindset that ‘cleanup’ was part of the spa experience…where you walk around on a cloud and magical fairies (aka spa staff) take care of everything for you. Because I’m living the AOK life these days, I mustered my courage (very nasty business, remember) and pulled out a lovely mix of mine and past cloud floating ladies hair out of the spa drain.My ‘Act’ was recognizing that NO ONE wants to pickup someone else’s hair out of the drain…my husband can testify to this…twice. Even if a person’s job is to pickup after people they STILL don’t want to pick up hair out of a drain; they just do it because they have to. As I walked from shower to garbage with said glob of hair, I couldn’t help but notice a few spa ladies glancing my way. I like to believe they were impressed with my diligence and hopefully understood the kindness gesture I was making towards the spa staff, which would encourage them to do the same one day. Truth is, maybe they already do this sort of thing naturally, and I’m the lazy bum, who knows, but at least one person was changed for the better today. ME.

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