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: