Friday, 2:59pm

I am in my room, squealing like a two year-old who’s been given a Mickey Mouse ice cream, the kind with chocolate ears.

I am rolling in the layers of bedding, reveling in the concept of sheets with a thread count higher than my IQ. I now understand why dogs do that nose–to-the-grass thing in the fields of big parks. Before it seemed so queer.

I open and shut drawers and doors of thick, beautiful wood furniture. I turn on anything electrical, from the bathtub television to the iPod speaker set that, yes, can be brought right into the crapper. I thumb every piece of linen (then Google their Italian makers’ name).

Ooh la la.

The Grand Del Mar has given me this room for two nights in order to write about it. It is my first writer ‘spiff’ ever and I pondered not taking it for a little while, remembering all of thedebate last year about accepting free things and the fury of righteousness and vitriol that followed. I have decided to join Club Spiff because I have realized that I am not a journalist and that I’m a writer. A writer will write about anything that inspires and for me, right now, it’s an ottoman the size of The Ottoman.

—from Notes from The Grand Del Mar Hotel, San Diego

(Read the full article here)