yep, this terrifies me

I try not to think about sinkholes because of how much it scares me but I got sucked in (no pun intended) to a documentary about them on tv.  Of course I needed to google videos of sinkholes caught on camera during the commercial break.




HORRIBLE!!!!

Can you imagine?!  They said the motion sensor alarms were set off and that's why the fire department showed up.  I wish I could see their reaction upon finding that the earth had opened up and swallowed a handful of corvettes.




Apparently that's a "wash out" not a sinkhole but still.  STILL.

Of course on this documentary I'm watching they mentioned that Florida is a sinkhole hotspot.  Maybe it's time for me to surrender and return to New York...

you and me both

Why didn't I think to get this in the back window of my truck?

Of course I was with Mike when I saw this and he immediately reminded me of the Assman:

Obviously this is my future.

wtf is this window?!

I was walking through the mall today when I saw this and literally had to do a double take.  I was so focused on figuring out what was going on I didn't even look to see what store this was.

I mean really though, how did anybody think this looked attractive?!  She's holding a champagne bottle behind her, which is what the butterflies(?) are shooting out of, because that makes sense.

Everyone I showed it to thought the same thing I did, that she was having some kind of explosive bowel movement all over the other mannequins.  Even the way she is standing supports that theory.  What's the most disturbing is that the other two are facing in to it.

That's some kinky shit right there.

this seems like something you would notice

Nobody seemed concerned, there were no three wheeled vehicles down the road with their hazards on.
I mean, even if it was the spare tire on the back don't you think you would hear something or feel something when it fell off?  I just don't understand.

wtf is this?

He was traveling with traffic too, as if he wasn't riding on a glorified skateboard.

I love Florida.

charming

Found this note on the floor of the mail room when I got home just now.

Part of me wonders what the story is, another part of me feels it's better left just the way it is.

no explanation necessary

Saw this on my bike ride today and had to stop for a picture.  I think the most disconcerting aspect is how it's so small and kind of faded so you probably wouldn't even notice it, especially if you were driving.

That doesn't make it any less true though.

why are they all wearing the same thing?!

I got in line at Starbucks on my break behind this group of girls.  It was so bizarre!

They were attracting attention from pretty much everyone around.  They didn't seem to notice that I was taking pictures.  

When I showed the pictures to Jenny she said, "maybe they're in a dance troupe." 

I don't see why not.  

Jon said his favorite was the tall one with the ponytail, that, "she looks like THE QUEEN B".  

After trying my best to get these photos I was really tempted to just ask them if I could take a picture of them all in a row, but I was scared the matching floor length skirts and belly shirts were coincidental and I'd have to explain why I wanted a picture.  

So you'll just have to be happy with those.  Just realize how many girls there are actually are.  SO MANY.  

why would today be any different?

I woke up this morning to the sun shining blindingly brightly in to my apt.  Finally, no more rain, back to life as we knew it in sunny Florida!

It was not meant to be.

I walked in to Starbucks with the sun on my shoulders.  I turned around after I ordered to discover that it had turned in to the end of days outside.

And it never stopped.

No like really.  

Notice the geyser of water shooting up from the storm drain.

By the time I took my break the water had begun to enter the mall:

By 8:00 pm the carnage was starting to show:

I don't know why I didn't see any horrible foreshadowing in this scene.

By closing time the tow trucks had started to show up.

And this is when things got out of control.

And as my luck would have it I had to abandon my flooded car in Aventura.  Will find out tomorrow if it can be fixed or if it really drowned.

fml.

really? seriously?

I actually went to turn in to the spot thinking it was empty.

I don't even really understand this.  It's not like it's sitting right next to a handicap spot because a person went right from the cart to their car.  So they drove this from home and then decided to walk through the actual store?

Oh Florida.

this just keeps getting more and more bizarre

While I was out today I got an email saying that I had overdrawn my account which was annoying.  I tried to log on to the wells fargo website but it wouldn't load on my phone.  I decided to just wait until I got home to try and do it on my computer.

When I get home there is a package underneath my front door mat (not exactly the best hiding place but whatever).  I open it up to find Mack.  Mack is a gift as a thank you for opening up a new account.  This makes me nervous, coming on the same day as I unexpectedly overdraw my account.

So I go to the website but it won't even load from my computer.  Now I'm getting worried and decide it's time to call.

The first operator I got was not very helpful.  She seemed personally hurt that I wasn't grateful to have received a plush pony at all, and didn't seem to grasp why it made me think somebody was dipping in to my cookie jar.  I finally had to ask to be transferred to somebody else, who after hearing my explanation of events promptly took off the overdraft charges.

Then we get to the issue of the stuffed horse.  The first operator had only offered the suggestion that I had originally opened a Wachovia account and so this was my welcome to Wells Fargo since my account got transferred about a year ago.  But then why wouldn't they have sent it a year ago?  Why does it happen to come now right at the same time as I am overdrawing my account.

When I asked these questions to the second operator she immediately asks, "is it a white horse or a brown horse?"  It really caught me off guard.  When I told her brown she says, "Oh a brown horse!  You must have made an impression on somebody at the bank".

I'm still not convinced this is the case and am waiting for the website to come back up so I can check my account history, but if it is just a gift, that's kind of weird too.  She even commented that she had a white horse on her desk but that the brown ones were special for the holidays so it must have been somebody at the bank when I went in last December.

So either my account got hacked or I have a secret admirer at Wells Fargo.  

THIS IS THE LOOK

No but really, what is the spatula for?

I forgot about her

As informed as I try to be about what's going on in my world I am always astounded by how long the list of Presidential nominees is on the ballot.  I got my practice ballot in the mail the other day and I was looking at the names thinking, "wow, I've never heard of any of these people".

Until I got to the third from the bottom and I cracked up.  I will say, I did hear about her campaign, and I do recognize that name.  I will also resist the urge to vote for her to instead, have my vote hopefully count in the sunshine state.  Though articles like this add to my suspicions that my vote isn't as important in Florida as I hope it would be.

Still, I'm going through the motions, hopefully it won't be for naught.  

I found my new ringtone

Thank you Kim for sharing this me.  I don't know where you found it but I'm thankful you did.

I love that pipe organ!

the dreams, the horrible dreams

source

I have been having the most intense, involved dreams lately.  It's really quite terrible, I wake up not feeling refreshed, but rather relieved to realize the events of the past 8 hours were just a dream and not reality.  They have been all over the place the past few weeks but for some reason I just can't shake the one from last night.

It started out that I was watching Charlie St. Cloud.  Why?  I have no idea.  I have never seen that movie, nor have I ever wanted to see that movie.  But still I found myself watching it, except the plot of my dream Charlie St. Cloud was far different than the actual Charlie St. Cloud.  In my dream it was about Charlie's faintly incestuous relationship with his mother, who was not played by Kim Basinger, but rather by Michelle Pfeifer.  A better casting choice if you ask me.

Somewhere along the line the mother disappeared and without transition or explanation I became Charlie St. Cloud, imprisoned in a child labor camp where we were forced to make pots and pans.  It vaguely resembled the child labor camp from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom except we were forging pots and pans instead of mining for the mystical stones for our Shaman leader.  In my forced labor camp we decided that we were going to break free by just all dropping our pots and pans at once and running like crazy, which worked out well for me.  I escaped the caves to discover that we were being held underneath an elementary school in San Francisco.

After running until exhaustion I finally stopped to rest in a park that I have never been to, but in my dream I remembered from visiting San Francisco last summer.  As I walked through the park I contemplated how the last time I was there it was summer and now it was winter and how much things had changed since then.  I also thought about Michelle Pfeifer and how it was weird that I was Charlie St. Cloud now.

It wasn't long after that that I woke up.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?!

I still love Florida

source

Thanks Meghan for passing this article along to me.

The next time somebody compliments me on my baby blues I am going to refer them to this article.  I mean, I got nothing on that softball size peeper.

I love Florida

source

Thank you Ariel for sending me that article.

all day with this

I literally spent all day today in front of a computer screen doing training for my new job.  It was generally absurd.  There were only a few parts where I was actually learning things that were applicable to my job.  The majority of my time was spent waiting for the stupid videos to load.

I mean, it's no wonder I need to verify their information before I sign them up for a credit card.  Look at her face!  She is definitely hiding something, and the expression on his face says, "you better not ask what she's hiding".

I also grew to HATE this woman:

Her face came up with a little speech bubble offering me helpful tips at various points.  It looks less like she is smiling and more like she had her jaw wired shut and she's trying to communicate that she needs help through her eyes.

My favorite part was the section about diversity.  They framed it around a fictional bookstore and used the 6 employees as examples to highlight how diversity comes in to play in the workplace.  At various points they would have the six different employees pictures and then next to them it would say something about them to show how they were diverse such as how long they had been with the company, or what their positions were.  My jaw hit the floor when they pulled up all six headshots and then next to them listed if the employee was heterosexual or homosexual.  Really?!  Shouldn't part of the diversity training be about how it's none of your business what your coworkers sexual orientation is?  Or am I supposed to make a roster of all my employees to keep track of their various sexual orientations.  You know, for diversity.

Aptly the final section I had to work on was about "difficult work situations".  This pretty much sums up how I felt after a full day of dealing with this nonsense:

Child please, don't even play with me.

the hits keep coming

Yesterday when it was time to take Jon to the airport I said, "I'm going to run the trash to the dumpster and then we should get going".  When I returned Jon was standing outside of the apt with his bags in hand looking at me expectantly.  It was then that we realized we both thought the other one had the keys, and Jon definitely closed the door behind him.  The locked door.

My upstairs neighbor Mike tried to break in for me but to no avail.  I guess I feel slightly reassured about the security of my apt, but still I was hoping he would be able to get in.  Instead I had to pay A RIDICULOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY for a locksmith to let me in to my own apartment.  At least we were able to get inside and Jon made it on to the last flight home for the day.

Since I now have zero dollars to my name until whenever I get my first paycheck for my new job I decided to go for a nice cost free bike ride yesterday afternoon.  You can imagine how I felt when I was about 5 miles from home and realized that I had a flat tire.

This being the 2nd time I had taken my bike out I was a little discouraged.  Thankfully the bike store was still open when I got back to it yesterday afternoon and although they weren't particularly compassionate they did fix my flat at an extreme discount.  They said they couldn't help it that I got a flat tire and that it was just an unfortunate accident.  I had to push down all my emotions in to that dark place deep in the pit of my stomach and accept that things are just not going my way.

But of course, when you bottle up all your feelings they inevitably come back to bite you in the ass.  Cut to this morning when I get my bike out to go get coffee and I discover IT HAS A FLAT TIRE AGAIN!

At least this time I got a, "I've never seen this happen before" from the bike shop guys and they did fix it completely for free.  They also gave me a new super thick tire tube that they said should prevent it from happening again.  We'll see.

I'm going to ride it to the beach now, hopefully without incident.  Of course, knowing my luck both wheels will just go flying off once I'm as far away from home as possible.

WISH ME LUCK PLEASE THANK YOU.

yum!

I noticed that first and was so grossed out.  Ugh, just thinking about it now again makes my stomach hurt.

Then my eye travelled down the road and landed on this flavor:

Jonathan, I didn't know you got a job at Grace in the "soup naming department"!!  Congratulations!!!

That's some pricey cock though.  Why is the cock flavor almost a whole dollar more than fish tea?  I'm left with more questions than answers on this one.