Things I Like: Free Fruit!

It's the beginning of plum season! I've acquired free plums from not one, but two of my co-workers today! And! Because they are just ripening, I get the pleasure of running across the rare picked-yet-not-quite-ripe plum. This is quite the red-letter day for me, because I like plums like Lindsay Lohan likes getting arrested.

I've officially been at work for a year now, which is the longest I've ever held a job (granted, it's my first job out of college...), and I finally feel like I've been here long enough to enjoy the bounties of having worked with the same people 40 hours a week for an entire year. I'm enjoying the little things of work, like doughnut meetings, cake anniversaries, and other food-related reasons for celebration. My co-workers say I'm easily amused, but I prefer to just say I enjoy the little things at work. This is probably because it's really hard to enjoy the big things (It's not work if it's not, you know, work.).

I usually have doughnut meetings and cake anniversaries to look forward to, but the thing I really like about free fruit brought in by my co-workers is that it's always a surprise. I wasn't expecting anything special to happen today, yet here I am eating plums that were lovingly shared by people I didn't even know a year ago!

I love these unexpected blessings, and I keep forgetting that God continuously surprises me with bags of fruit I had no idea he had waiting for me. Fruit that has been growing for quite some time that I had forgotten was planted. Or maybe it was planted by someone else, and God just decided to give me bag so I could know about it and share in the harvest. Like an old friend coming to town wanting to hang out with me, or the opportunity to share my faith with someone, or getting a glimpse into a friend's life that I never thought I would get the opportunity to see.

Overkill

I'm not a huge fan of the coffee at work, but that's because you could call me a coffee snob. I loathe Starbucks because they've commercialized something that should have remained indie - sitting at a coffee shop with a friend chatting for hours, or as they say in Bosnia - chafing. However, the coffee at work is Keurig-brand instant coffee. I'll admit, it's probably the best instant coffee in the world, but it's still instant, and being a total snob, I abhor it. Coffee is meant to be brewed. The aroma should waft through the far reaches of the office, enticing the addictions of the workers. As Rockapella taught us:

It's the doo-wop doo-wop
In all I do
The mountain grown aroma
Always comin' through (always comin' through!)
Oh the best part of waking up
Is folgers in your cup.

Cue the falsetto.

Now, at work we have these Keurig coffee makers that use K-cups.
To brew your coffee, simply load up the coffee maker with one of these K-cups, put your mug underneath, and push the button. A high-powered hot-water nozzle will pierce the K-cup and shoot hot water through the instant coffee cup and into your mug. Somehow, water gets transformed into something resembling coffee in mere seconds, while it takes me 3-4 minutes to brew a cup in my french coffee press. Although this is pure, unadulterated coffee sacrilege, I still use it nearly every day to make it through days of making design diagrams. Last week, we had your basic, run-of-the-mill Keurig corporate coffee maker. One button. 8 oz. It worked! And then I came in Monday...

Behold! The Keurig B3000SE!
This office-monster is guaranteed to rock your morning with its ability to brew 4, 6, 8, or 10 ounces of instant joe! On top of that, check out its stylish exterior! It is fluent in 3 languages - French, Spanish, and English, and shines a blue light on your mug as coffee is blasted into your cup!

Golly gee! I'd pay top-dollar for this marvel of coffee-engineering! Do tell, good sir, how much will this Asimovian monster cost me?

Just the low, low price of
$999.99!!!

Are you kidding me?

I hope my company got a bulk discount on these. However, for now, I do enjoy changing the language every time I hit up this monstrosity.

Life-vomit

I run across a lot of randomness in my life. You probably do, too. My normal course of action when I encounter something totally (not) worth sharing is to cast it into the scurvy seas o' Ye Olde Facebook (I usually have my Facebook language set to Pirate...or Esperanto). I usually have something a bit more clever to say than the acceptable 140 character text that accompanies the average Facebook post (I know you can write more than that, but Twitter seems to have set a standard). So, that's why this blog is here. As I work, lead high school group, college group, or just careen around the Bay Area on daring adventures, I will inevitably run across (non-) share-worthy things, and this blog is where they will be immortalized!