Is This A Compliment?

From Co-Worker to Mingle:

"Do you know what makes you good? You're a hard-ass."

Only In The City...

...will a man on stilts walk up to me and say, "Now, I can relate to you...", as he did today.

Happy Valentines Day

We Could Have Saved So Much Money

A friend from my old company forwarded this to me today. It was an actual announcement on their internal website. Names and company were changed by me, but everything else is exactly as received:

Wedding Announcements On Thursday January 25th at 1:00 pm

Mary James of St. Petersburg’s Customer Operations was married to Assan Nazrallah. Mary and Assan were married at Mingle's Old Company in a conference room, during Mary’s lunch hour. She is such a dedicated employee that she was back at work at the end of the hour. One of the MOC security guards who is also a Pastor, officiated the ceremony. Below is a comment from Mary (along w/pictures -(unfortunately I have no pictures)) as to why they chose to get married during her lunch hour, at work.

From Mary: The reason why I married at MOC is because I had been sick for two weeks with bronchitis and the second week of February I’m off all week because I’m going on a cruise, so I felt that requesting additional time off for the wedding was not appropriate, especially during peak season. Another reason was that since my husband speaks Arabic and his English is not that well, we needed someone to translate for him and the court wouldn’t allow it. We believe that a big wedding is a waste of time and money, so instead we will use the money to buy a house. Marrying at Mingle’s Old Company certainly was different, and I’m glad I did it here because a lot of my nice co-workers were able to attend, even one who was off on that day came in! My husband and I enjoyed it and appreciate everyone who attended. I hope they enjoyed it too!

Considering Mr. Mingle and I met at this very same company, we really could have saved money by doing this too... Now why didn’t we think of this before????

Loco for Lemons

Do you like lemons? I mean, really, really like them? Over the weekend Mr. Mingle and I picked lemons from the tree in our backyard. Bags of lemons. And once we were done picking, the tree still looked full. We plan to give lemons to the landlord, and anyone else who wants them. Today we started by bringing in bags of lemons to each of our workplaces. I schlepped about 40-50 lemons with me on the bus and didn’t think I’d be able to get rid of them. Turns out I was wrong – very, very wrong. First I stopped at my favorite little coffee place, and the lady there took 10 lemons off of me, calling them “organic”, which had not occurred to me. Then I got to work and distributed them between the break rooms and sent an email advertising – “take lemons!” Within an hour they were gone, and some people were upset they missed out. Turns out I’ll be hauling a few more bags of lemons on the bus in the coming week. The CEO came to my desk with his hands filled with lemons and asked,
“Are these Meyer lemons??”
“Um.. I’m not sure…they came from a tree in our backyard (we rent)”
“Because these look like Meyer lemons, and if they are – you have a gold mine! I’ll try it out tonight, and if these are Meyer – I’ll take all the lemons you want to bring!”
“Um..ok…will you give me a raise too?”
(Just kidding – I didn’t say that last part.)

My big boss (that’s the boss above my direct boss) emailed me:
Him: “What type of lemons?”
Me: “I don’t know…’backyard lemons’?”
Him: “We have a lemon tree too.”
And another email from the same man – “Your lemons look more uniform”

Seriously, these people are Loco for Lemons!! Although as one coworker pointed out, “you could bring in dirt, and someone would take it home…”.

Stop by for some lemons – I hear they’re worth their weight in gold.

Subject to a Special Search

This week I was in Oregon for two nights. My customer is in Salem, so that is where I stayed, but I spent the first evening in Portland visiting with JP & JD and the second evening in Eugene with BeattieBeattieBeattie. Other then two great evenings with friends, I spent the rest of the time either driving or at the bank where everything was going ‘not quite right’. (sigh)

When I got to the airport to come home I found out that my flight was cancelled, but fortunately I was able to take another one about an hour later. When I walked through airport security I found out that I was the “subject of a special search” (randomly selected). This included standing in a machine that blasted me with puffs of air and then waiting while all of my things were searched. After listening to the chatty TSA agent comment on my stuff -- purse: “This is a blackhole”; jacket: “Are you going to Siberia?”; Computer: “A laptop was once dropped and busted into pieces when a TSA agent handed it back to the passenger” -- it was finally determined:

I am, in fact, very special.