I enjoyed work this evening

After all of the heartache the past few weeks it was nice to have a peaceful day at work for a change.  Props to Noriko, in all the ways my name has been misspelled (Banjamin, Benajmin, Benhamin, etc.) I don't recall anybody ever doing Beanjamin.  I like it.  My family called me Bean for a while in my childhood, and sometimes still even to this day.  Yet nobody thought to go for the full Beanjamin until this evening.

After work Noriko and I practiced driving stick shift in preparation of her getting her first car this coming Saturday.  I'm super envious that she's getting a super cute cabriolet, so I'm giving her stick shift lessons in hopes that she will let me ride shotgun in her cool new ride.  I'm going with her next saturday to pick it up because she thinks she needs me to bail her out if she can't end up driving it home.  She'll be fine though, there is no way I am letting her go in her mom's car so she can give up and make me drive her new car home.  For security I'm bringing Mike so we can take my truck and then I plan on riding with Nori in her new car and making Mike drive my truck back to her apt.  Muahahahaha.

All in all she did pretty good with her lesson this evening.  She's definitely better than she was last year:

07/02/13

We drove around the parking lot for a while, which was hilariously busy on a Sunday night.  Seriously, it was an empty parking lot at the mall but for some reason there was some angry woman in a BMW around every corner, raging at Nori for her experimentation with 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gears.  Once she got the hang of it we moved on to the traffic circle around the mall.  That lasted us a couple of laps before she was getting a little too cocky.  It was time for the starting on a incline challenge.  

"But why do I need to learn how to do that?  We live in Miami, there aren't any hills!" she said.
"So what are you going to do when you get stopped by a drawbridge and the person behind you pulls up right to your bumper?  Call me? "
"Yes.  Or I'll call a tow truck."

She figured it out though.  There was only a few moments where I worried we were going to roll backwards through the cement and over the edge of the parking garage.  Only a few.  But she got the hang of it eventually, and then when we drove home she was a regular Mario Andretti.  We only got one horn honk and one car passing us on a double yellow.  All in all, I think she's going to be A-Ok.

It was fun to have fun at work today and after.  My life at work lately has been best described by the scene I walked in to when I went to the bathroom tonight:

There was a moment when we were driving Nori home that she was asking me about the mini cooper.  We both had a good laugh about how our job security is so uncertain.  : /

At least I have the day off tomorrow.  They can't fire me over the phone.  Can they?

one of the perks of living in south Florida

A sweet woman at work brought me mangos today!!!  Fresh from the tree in her yard.

I can't even tell you how good they smell.  I was SALIVATING the entire drive home.  I'm posting now because my hands will be sticky and covered in juice for the rest of the evening.

TTYL.

the things I do for Yeti

I dedicated my day today to doing yard work for Daniel, which really means doing yard work for Yeti.  It makes me happy to know that I can provide her with a safe well manicured environment to live in, an environment suitable for princess Yeti.

Gary gave her a tiny piece of asparagus which occupied her for quite a while.  For Some reason she insisted on chewing it but since it was so small that proved extremely difficult.

Jonathan said I was being mean for taking pictures of her and not helping her.  WHAT WAS I SUPPOSED TO DO?!   Chew it for her?

Trust me, if I could have done anything I would have but this was her journey.

I never stuck around to see what happened.  I'm assuming she finally ate it, I could only watch her struggle for so long.

I love her.

this was really hard

Moises FOOLISHLY told me that he didn't like any Mariah after her #1's album.  I told him he was mistaken.

When I first sat down to make this mix I thought it would be easy as I had room for a lot of songs since I wouldn't be including the standards.  No Emotions, no Vision of Love, no BREAKDOWN!  So I started with Rainbow and just dumped all of my favorites in to a playlist, intending to organize them and then burn the CD.  Unfortunately my original playlist was way too long for one disc : /

This is even after I eliminated a bunch:

As you can see I had to get down to the very basics to get it all on one disc.  I messaged Kyle and Jonathan for their approval and got, "What about For The Record?!" and, "What about Migrate?!"  Yes, clearly, I could have just burned every album and called it a day but my goal was to get it down to one mix cd.

I will be delivering it today, it will be hard to not listen to it on my way to work.

she is not messing around

A girl who works around the corner from me was in my section borrowing something and I caught a glimpse of something when she moved her hands.  I don't know how I hadn't noticed sooner.

Those are pretty much my ideal nail design.  The only thing that would make them better is a 3D butterfly or lollipop or bow.  Anything to render her hands completely useless for any kind of manual labor.  But still, I love them.  The colors, the jewels, the gold.  UGH.

The first thing that came to mind when I looked at her nails was this girl:




That one with the bubble is really too amazing.  Her posing at the end is so good.

the rest of the day

It was literally lightning and thunder with the rain all afternoon.  I was still so tired that after I ate I fell asleep and completely missed 5:00.  I'm submitting this as the best approximation:




I had set my alarm to wake me up at 6, though I could have slept through the rest of the day and long in to the night.  But I forced myself awake at 6 and when I opened my eyes it was to this guy all curled up next to me:

I'm telling you, it was one of those kinds of afternoon.  But by 6 the rain had let up so I gathered myself and rode my bike over to Wilton by 7:

My favorite part of the parade was the marching band that played mamma mia.  I stayed until after 8 to see my friend Victor who was in the parade but not much longer after that.  As you can tell, by 8 I was really feeling like it was the longest day of the year:

Not the most exciting longest day of the year but judging by costume changes alone I did ok.

I made it through yesterday, now I just have to make it through tomorrow.

of course

When I left my apartment after posting it was the same bright beautiful day it had been all morning.  Literally 15 minutes later, maybe a half a mile away from my house, this is what it turned in to.  At first I stayed under the shelter of the Walgreens waiting to see if the storm would pass, then I remembered I had left the windows down on my truck.

So I had to return home, and get soaking wet.  Once back in my apt I couldn't help but feel the sun being covered by storm clouds was a sign that it was ok to take a nap.

I actually took that at 2:30.  I set my alarm to wake me up in case I overslept the 2:00 mark.  Oh I could have slept the rest of the afternoon.

But I've forced myself to get up even though it is still pouring rain outside.  I've decided to make myself some food and wait to see if the sun will ever return.

The oven finished pre-heating right at 3:

it begins

I'm actually doing it!  I was awake when it was still dark and made it to the beach in time to see the sun break the horizon!!  And I've so far resisted the overwhelming urge to get back in bed and sleep more.

The fact that it is the most beautiful day ever helps motivate me to keep going though.

Sunrise happened at 6:30 this morning so I stayed at the beach until 7:

Afterwards I required coffee.  Since Daniel RUDELY ditched me for our early morning coffee date I had to spend 8 all by myself:

After coffee I headed out for a run at 9:

Where I saw this:

And this:

10:00 got me as I was walking back home from my run:

And I had just enough time to shower and get myself together for Daniel to pick me up for coffee round two at 11:

By 12 we were ready to leave so I demanded a quick selfie:

And here we find ourselves.  At 12:30 and I am resisting the urge to take a nap.  The question is, do I go to the beach or do I go to the pride event that's happening downtown?

...or do I take a nap...

indeed

I have no clue what it means.

Mike and I were sent on a fools errand to check stockrooms for merchandise which obviously meant snooping around and laughing at strange discoveries like goo Justin.  Other highlights included finding baskets of tennis balls, and the mysterious non-working walk in freezer.

I took Mike to the corner of one of the stockrooms and made him figure out what was beyond the pants.

After much scrutiny he finally exclaimed, "It's the top of the weird freezer!"

I still don't understand how the ladder got there.  The short wall behind the pants is very permanent, and the only opening is that space mike is poking his head through.  It's like the building was built around the ladder, or the ladder was assembled in this space.  Like a ship in a bottle, so intriguing.

Sadly, I think my days of fun and games at work are over.  I'm nervous about going in to work today.  I just hope I can count on the spirit of goo Justin to protect me.

he helped

As Daniel pointed out, he's always wearing a handsome black suit so he doesn't understand why it takes me so much effort to get dressed up.  Hopefully it was all worth it, I mean, don't you agree this was the mall I was meant to work at:

Every time I go there I half expect to catch Betty and Rue coming around the corner, lost in conversation, shopping bags in hand.

Miami, Miami, you've got style.

In other news about the Detective, it suddenly started raining last night so obviously:

Like really?

After I took those pictures he tried to creep and crawl in that tiny space.  I don't know where he thought he was going to get to. When I tried to pull him away to put him under the bed or in the shower where I know he feels most comfortable, he fought as hard as possible to remain "under" the cupboard.  So whatever, I left him there.

Weirdo.

bath time for Yeti

Daniel needed the use of my pickup truck (I knew this day would come!) so I decided to dedicate an afternoon of hard labor since I was playing delivery man anyways.  The less exciting part of my day involved a lot of yardwork, although I did learn how to use a weed whacker.  It was only slightly terrifying, I feel with a little more practice I could learn to operate it without having to stop and fix it constantly.

Once I finished my chores I got to the best part of my day.

Haha she hated it!!  : (((

It took me about 30-45 minutes just to get her coat completely wet.  No sooner had I gotten the soap process started when a neighbor dog at the fence sent her bounding away to protect her turf.  You can't catch her off her guard, even during spa day!  Unfortunately the diversion also included a vigorous full body shake which you can imagine set my work back a good 15-20 minutes.  I didn't mind though, I enjoyed my quality time with her.  And I had no idea that the bath part was going to be the easy part.

Then Daniel wheeled out his industrial strength vacuum.

Sure sure, it was still all smiles at this point.  But then the time passed and I was still drying and she was still DRIPPING wet.  But I kept drying, even as day turned to afternoon, I kept drying.  Even after I watched Daniel give Zeejay a bath, and dry him completely, I kept drying.  Even as he got Gypsy up and prepared her for her bath...

Please note the amount of hair on the ground and  consider how much was flying around me and in to my nose, eyes, ears, everywhere.

Daniel kept saying, "You really want to give Yeti a bath?"

I LOVE HER I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR HER.

There were a couple of times where I saw the look in her eye that said, "I could take your head clean off in one bite".  Not unlike the look I'm giving Daniel in that picture.

the hardest job application I've ever filled out

First of all, it took  me literally days to get this far.  My employee referral meant that I got an email from the person responsible for hiring with a link to the online application I needed to fill out.  When I followed the link it took me to a screen asking me to enter my username and password for the online application but there was no link to take me somewhere to create a username and password.  Trust me, nowhere.

I tried going to the main homepage for my hopefully new future workplace but it's such a big organization that the main webpage was too broad.  I finally ended up having to google how to apply to this place before I finally found the place to create a username.  This is where I encountered my next roadblock, the impossible Captcha.

Am I crazy?  Does this make sense to anybody else?!  It didn't matter how many times I refreshed the image, it was always a picture of three numbers, and when I would enter them I would get this pop up:

If anything I should have been entering the security code!!  It's the two words I could never figure out.  I finally ended up clicking on the audio Captcha for the seeing impaired.  It proceeded to play a recording of different people saying a series of 5 numbers.  Mysteriously, it accepted the five numbers as proof that I was human and finally allowed me to create an account, JUST SO I COULD FILL OUT THE APPLICATION.

Little did I know I may have won the battle but the war ahead was a long and brutal one.  Imagine twelve pages (that's TWELVE) of questions like this:

I mean, that's deep.  It also said at the intro to the questionnaire section that the computer was designed to be able to tell if I was just trying to answer the questions in a way that would just make me look good but not be "honest" and also that it would time how long it took me to answer each individual question.  At first I didn't think it would be that big a deal, a lot of the questions you can see are pretty benign.  But then we got to the real existential ones and I felt my brow begin to bead with sweat.

There were also a lot of questions about what other people thought of me that were impossible to answer.  "Do your coworkers consider you adventurous?".  I have no idea!  I have never asked, and I really don't care if people think I'm adventurous or not so I haven't really given it any thought until this moment right now.  Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neither Disagree nor Agree, Agree, Strongly Agree.  There was a lot of N on that survey of mine.

Here's hoping the computer judges me well.

source

funky fresh

I wanted something new and different and Toni came up with the shaved in line.  She actually had never done it before so we had to bring in a council of hairdressers to get advice.  My favorite was the guy who had the shaved in part himself, and said, "I actually follow through with it all the way back to my bald spot.  My hope is people will think my hair loss is part of the look".

I really like it although nobody at work said anything yesterday.  Still, I was cool as a cucumber working in the stock room with the breeze blowing through my part.

Toni kept asking why I hadn't taken a selfie.  It's just kind of hard to capture without my face looking hideous...

But you get the idea.  I wonder how frequently I'm going to have to go back for maintenance.  If only JONATHAN lived down here and could do touch ups for me.

rabbit rabbit rabbit

source

Meghan already got me this morning but so far that's it.  I could use some good luck this month.  Also, thank you for sending me this:

source

He's got the right attitude.

I didn't end up doing anything about a car, yesterday was the day if I were going to.  I woke up yesterday at 8:30 but went back to sleep and didn't get up again until 1 in the afternoon, missing the appt I had at Volkswagen.  I took it as a sign from the universe that I wasn't that excited about it if I slept through my appt.

So I'm back at square one.  The good news is that I can play Mariah's new cd in my truck so that takes some of the pressure off to make a hasty decision.  Still, I would love to hear it on an amazing sound system.

But even if I were to order the mini cooper of my dreams I would have to wait 6-8 weeks for it to be delivered, aint nobody got time for that.  At the beginning of last month I looked at the calendar page and wondered how different things were going to be once I got to the final days.  I was right to predict change, but I had no idea what was in store for me.  As I look at the calendar for this month I'm a little more optimistic about how things will unfold.  And I like the theme for this month, so I'm taking that as a good sign.