Spot the Iguana

You won't even believe it's there unless you really look for it.













So next time you get that eery feeling that you're being watched..... it's AN IGUANA!

Nature: Burger King Style!

The mosquitos are bad, giant buzzards are everywhere and there is an endangered crocodile in the lake. Welcome to the natural habitat around Ben's new workplace.

I've been moved to a new office in Palmetto Bay that used to be the old Burger King headquarters as part of the expansion that my company is doing . I found some giant ovens that they used to cook "test" burgers in. I also heard that everyone there used to just eat free burger king burgers all day long! (probably an exaggeration for story-telling effect, but still VERY cool!)

Anyway, the nature around this new building is amazing. I think the lake is connected underground to Biscayne Bay so it's entirely saltwater. Yet there is a suspicious alligator-looking animal swimming around in there. Alligators only live in freshwater though so I'm pretty sure it's an endangered American crocodile. Only about 1000 in all of the US apparently.

Enough of the jabber - here are some more pics:



Lot's of Ibis birds having a party... most likely feasting on the remains of old burgers in the grass.

DodgeBall

So I just discovered this video is not real after all and was officially debunked at snopes.com. Even so, I was totally blown away when I saw it so I hope you enjoy it!

Metar Bar mitzva

Today we went to Metar's bar mitzva. This is the first one I've ever been to. Being a Baptist girl, I know nothing about bar mitzva's. Here's what I learned... that "bar mitzva" means son of the covenant. For girls the term is "bat mitzva" and it means daughter of the covenant. Basically the whole ceremony centers on the coming of age for the boy in this case, to take on the responsibility for living the laws of the Torah. Also, now in the synogogue he can read the Torah. Whether you have the party or not, if you are of the Jewish faith, once you turn 13 you are bar mitzvahed.



This is Metar making his "I am a man speech". He was nervous, but he did great.


















Here are the men hearing the Torah. The women all congregated at the back seperate from the men. I found out I wasn't supposed to take this picture! Woops!














Barreth men being goofy... actually just Ben being goofy.

Thanksgiving

These are some of my favorite photos from yesterday. We celebrated Thanksgiving at my father-in-law's house in Aventura. There were many people there, many of them from Israel. This first photo is of a friend named Eli... he's funny.







Then Ben and I in front of the sunset!













Then Ben's dad giving the annual "pilgrim speech". (notice the keepa on his head)














Then we have Ben's dad and Luz cutting the turkey. She's from Peru and so cute!
















These are the Barreth men... from left: Jake, Ray, John and My sweet Benny.













This is Ilana's daughter Slil, with her baby, Roy. He's soooo cute














This is Ben's dad joking about cooking the dog, Minnie.

Animals in womb

An elephant in the womb

Thanksgiving Eve

Just when you thought hedgehogs don't have Thanksgiving dinners... I have the picture to prove it! Voila! By the way, I believe they are making apple pies. It CRACKS me up!

Barstools

Funny barstools. No disrespect intended, just thought it was funny.

Things I find funny

These are some pictures that I thought were worthy of sharing. Number one, you know you drink way to much wine if you can make a Christmas tree out of the bottles. Number two... sometimes I feel like holidays just are one after another! By the way... today is both my mother-in-law's birthday and also my brothers birthday. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! This upcoming week we are going to have Thanksgiving and also we are going to go to our first Barmitzvah! (look for the pictures in posts to come)

For Beki

Well... one of my loyal readers, Beki, has requested an update. Although life feels pretty regular, I thought of something to talk about. Being a music teacher and rehearsing Christmas music all the time makes you get Christmas fever early. So... Ben and I have been Christmas shopping for our families online and have been signing away our riches at the door to the UPS man. Tonight we went to CVS and got some wrapping paper and tape. I started wrapping some presents and we "put up our Christmas tree"... which means we plugged in our tree that is always there strung with lights. I know it's sort of redneck (how did we ever get that name?), but I like the ease of just plugging in our Christmas tree every year and then just simply unplugging it and waiting. Anyway... I made Ben take a shot with our Christmas tree and wrapped presents. He is doing his famous "Razamataz" pose. In fact, when I showed him the picture after taking it he said, "Razamataz"... whatever that is! Isn't he the cutest? See the boxes in the background? Those are my presents that have been delivered, but I'm not allowed to look in there. Last year I went by the grocery stores and got free Christmas tree branches just to get the smell in the house. Maybe I'll do that again this year and just live with my own version of the Christmas tree.

Random Feats of Destruction

What happens to a hard drive when it dies? I hear people asking me this question all the time... actually I don't, but just bear with me for storytelling effect here.


At my company, when hard drives die and go to that big motherboard in the sky, we beat them until they cry like a dachsund eating a hot dog.... just to make sure that the data is completely irrecoverable.

FYI: The goggles are for my protection, not just to show off my studly good looks.



















The problem with this technique is that hard drives can be tough little blighters. We had to bash them with a small sledgehammer for several minutes before they opened up. Then we salvaged the super-powerful neodynium magnets for our fridge and made sure the shiny drive platters had a few final dents in for good measure.

Here's the finished product: Two irreversibly damaged hard drive platters. You can also see the needle from one of the drives. Incredible engineering!

In case you haven't seen enough pictures of Ben-cho Libre yet...

Nacho Libre costume plus scooter equals fun! On my way home from work that day I even had a guy in a van shouting out calling me superman. Ahhhhh, good times!

Our Anniversary

It is our three year wedding anniversary today. It has been a wonderful three years for us. Because of our responsibilties on Wednesday nights at church, we went out last night. First of all, Ben got me a present of garnet earrings. I had a pair of garnet earrings that Ben bought for me in St. Thomas when we were on a cruise. I was very sad that somehow I lost one of those earrings. They were sentimental to me. So, these were meant to replace those that I lost one of. What a wonderful guy right? He also took me to the Red Fish Grill out on Matheson Hammocks. I'd never been to the restaurant, but the food was excellent and then we took a walk around the little lagoon they have there. From there you can see the Miami skyline and you are surrounded by water... very nice. It was the place where Ben and I had our first kiss too, so it was really nice. I was overwhelmed with the thought that he put into the whole thing. I love Benny!

Beethoven

Tonight I have a concert at Florida International University. I went there for my master's degree in voice. We are singing Ludwig van Beethoven's (1770-1827) 9th symphony. It's official name is "Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Opus 125", but most of you know it for the "Ode to Joy" tune. When I decided to sing it with this choir, I had no idea what I was getting into really. I've never sung this particular piece. Of course I've heard "joyful, joyful we adore thee", but this is 10 times more difficult. By the end of it, the sopranos feel like squeaking chiwawas! This piece is very popular, so popular that in 2003 someone bought an original manuscript of it for 3.3 million dollars! What is truly remarkable is that Beethoven composed it when he was completely deaf.

Here are some interesting Beethoven facts:

His father was an alcoholic and his first music teacher. His father would often come home after a night of drinking and drag Beethoven out of bed for him to play piano for him. His mom died when Beethoven was 18. Tragic!

Beethoven started to go deaf when we was 28. I've heard some theories that he was going deaf because of his father's abuse.

Beethoven didn't get along well with others. He never married, although he wanted to. Marriage was a complicated issue back then it seems. He had very unusual behavior such as wearing dirty clothes, but washing all the time too. AHH!

Wouldn't You Know

After Ben had put so much time and effort into making his own Nacho Libre mask, we went to Best Buy today and noticed that if you buy the DVD, you get a free mask. So... we got the DVD. Can you tell the difference between the homemade one and the store bought one? I think my Benny did a good job with the homemade one myself.

Costume Party

Tonight we went to a costume party that my friend Leah and I put together. We had great food and a good time. I went as King Tut, and Ben went as Nacho Libre. I told my students today that I was going as King Tut and they said "really? He's a boy" Then I told them that once for Halloween I dressed as Abraham Lincoln-- now THAT'S a stretch! I was so proud of Ben because he made his costume himself. At first the mask he wore was really long and stuck up on top and I told him he looked like a KKK member. We had a good laugh about that and then cut it to fit better. My friend Leah went as Miss Alaska- very cute. Good times!

Frogger Scooter Contest

Do you remember that old Atari game called "Frogger"? You had to get a little green frog across a busy road without getting squished by mean 18-wheelers? Well 2 weeks ago I entered the 25th Anniversary Frogger contest to win a free scooter, and now I'm in the finals!!! Unfortunately, I'm currently in 3rd place and I reckon I need another 400 votes or so to crush the other competitors.

So please vote for me! Just go to the URL below, click on the photo for "Benjamin, Miami Florida", click "Next" and then "Submit"! It's that easy!
http://www.frogger25.com/showfrogger/

Halloween

My mom sent me this photo. Somebody in the south is getting very creative with their scarecrows. I really like fall time. Here in Miami it is still 90 degrees during the day and no changing leaves, so I get a little fall sick. I always enjoyed October and the leaves and going trick or treating. The town I grew up in was small and so when I would knock on people's houses they would give me things like homemade cupcakes and popcorn balls. It wasn't like it is now when everyone thinks there are razor blades in everything. Why on earth would anyone do that? My friend Leah and I are having a costume party. I've decided that I'm going to go as King Tut. I tried convincing Ben to go as Cleopatra, but he wasn't very receptive. He is determined to be Nacho Libre. (if you haven't seen the movie.. you need to. It's hillarious) So, wherever you are, if you walk outside and see leaves changing and feel a chill on your skin, think of me because I am fall sick.

Email to Hershey's: Cacao Reserve 65% extra dark chocolate with cacao nibs

This week I discovered the Cacao Reserve bar by Hershey's. Without a doubt this was the most fantastic chocolate bar I've tasted in a very long time. I loved it so much I even wrote this email to Hershey's about my experience:

Dear Hershey's,

I just wanted to congratulate you on the perfection of an incredible
bar of chocolate. I have just experienced my first Cacao Reserve bar
purchased from my local publix supermarket. This was the first time
I've seen the Cacao Reserve bar and I thought I'd try it. The one
thing that sealed the deal for me though was the cacao nibs in the
"Extra Dark Chocolate with Cacao Nibs" bar. About 3 months ago I did
some research on chocolate on the Internet because of a party I went
to that had a chocolate fondue fountain. Several people on the
internet were raving about the chocolate purist afficionado's
affection for cacao nibs. I was disappointed that I couldn't find any
Cacao nibs in any Publix, Winn Dixie or CVS pharmacy. Finally here
they are! And I have to say that I was not disappointed at all. The
rich chocolatey taste blew me away as I had hoped. This is finally a
chocolate bar to rival the european brands I've been buying like Lindt
and Perugina.

Thank you for another life-enriching experiencing.

Sincerely,

Ben

You can find out more about these wonderful chocolate bars on the Hershey's website: http://www.hersheys.com/cacaoreserve/

Habitat for Humanity

I volunteered to help Habitat for Humanity today. Somehow I overlooked the small but cricitally important detail that I would have to wake up at 6am this morning to meet our group at church at 6:30. After arriving bleary eyed on my scooter we set off to the building site in Liberty city (one of the roughest areas of Miami, Florida).

In case you don't know - Habitat for humanity is a Christian charity that builds houses for low-income people. With the sky-rocketing house prices in the Miami area in the last few years, it has become virtually impossible to find affordable housing which has made their work all the more important. They sell the houses to qualifying families at little or no profit (also subsidized with government grants).

About 100 volunteers from different churches around Miami showed up to help. We were able to meet the future owners of the homes and lunch was even provided!

I was on "insulation" all day, meaning that we were stuffing sheets of fiber glass ceiling insulation foam into the attic space of the house we were working on. It was pretty grueling being covered in dust, sweat and fiberglass but we were surrounded by encouragement and friends... and knowing that the home is going to someone that deserves it even made the itching on my arms tolerable!