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?

it was a bad day for Benjamin

When I got to work there was a newsletter in our work inbox and I found myself in the list of top sellers for the week.  It was a little bittersweet as they misspelled my first and last name, but either way I was glad I put Boca Raton on the map.  If they hadn't included our store location I wouldn't have been certain it was even me.

To celebrate I got myself an afternoon starbucks.  I think the girl taking my order got distracted...

That unsteady scribble at the end is my favorite.

Ever since Jenny found out my middle name she's been really fixated on it.  Maybe I should start experimenting with it, to see if people understand it better.

I'll let you know how it goes, knowing my luck I'll get Lucy.

from my father

Or Robda, or Boughta!

I will say that as much as I've grown to love my name there will always be a part of me that wishes my initials were BEN.

hey what have you been up to?

Oh me?  I Benjammin.

This was written by the same girl who described my hair as whimsical.  I told her my hair had never been described that way before and she said, "really, well it is, so welcome to your new favorite starbucks".

I was a little caught off guard, I blame the lack of caffein, otherwise I would have tried to keep up with her sass.

Either way, I look forward to a return visit to what is, in fact, my new favorite starbucks.  I will find out if she intentionally misspelled my name or not.

close enough

I just noticed how she wrote my name on the cup this morning.  It's pretty similar to my own signature.  I do the 'b' pretty good but everything after that is hit or miss depending on how much energy I have.  Similar to her, I usually try to make a show of it by throwing the 'j' in there so it's not all just obvious scribbles, but beyond that it's pretty much just obvious scribbles.

I give her an 'A' for effort.