Heat Wave

I haven’t posted in a few days because, well, I guess not too terribly much has been going on. Things are still going well here in Minnetrista, my job at Choice is looking like it’ll be a solid 36-40 hours per week on just 4 days of work (or 4 1/2) per week. Not too shabby, especially when it’s an enjoyable job overall.
I’ve already made plenty of the little mistakes that new people typically make at a job like this, like putting the keys in the wrong (or simply unexpected) place, forgetting to write down someone’s birth date on a rental contract (so the office has proof of them being over 21), you know, little things. Well yesterday I made a much larger mistake. I rented a car to the wrong person. I was just told to get over to this one dealership’s body shop ASAP to rent a car, so I got over there, and out walked a couple, who replied in the affirmative if they were there to rent a car from Choice. So I got the paperwork all filled out, got the lady into the car, and meanwhile gave my boss Rick a call to let him know I was done with it, and to ask what he wanted me to do next. His response was something like, “Where the hell are you? [as it turns out, I’d accidentally gone to the Service Dept., which is just around the corner from the Body Shop, oops] I keep getting calls that the renter is still waiting for you to show up. Who’d you rent the car to?” So I told him the lady’s name, and he’s like, “We don’t owe her a car, she’s not a customer of ours, get that car back!” So I flag the lady down before she drives away, and ask if she’s sure she was supposed to rent a car from Choice, or if she had an appointment with Enterprise. She had no earthly clue who she was supposed to be renting from or what was going on, so we went into the service dept, and they said they’d made a reservation with Enterprise for her. Argh!! When I’m told to go someplace ASAP and that someone (whose name I’m not given) is waiting for a rental, and when I run into a person there who says they’re waiting for a rental car from Choice, what am I supposed to do? Doubt that they have the slightest clue about anything? So anyways, I got the car back from her, told her Enterprise would probably be there sometime soon (they’re a minimum of 20-25 minutes late every time, while we at Choice are on time or early to just about each and every of our appointments), drove around the corner to the body shop, where the guy who was actually supposed to rent the car was patiently waiting. The renter and the body shop guy were understanding about why I was late, which meant Rick got over it and actually started laughing long and hard about it after he was done talking to me. I just decided to take lunch after that, I was a bit frazzled by it all, but at least everything turned out okay and the right person eventually wound up with the car. UGH. People.
It’s been really hot around here lately too, with today being the hottest day so far this year, with highs in the mid-upper 90s all across the Twin Cities metro, and with sticky dewpoints to go along with it. That’s a recipe for an absolutely sultry day, and that’s what we got. And I had to work outside in it for 9 hours cleaning cars. Not exactly the most fun job in the world when it’s so hot you’re scalding yourself on the car doorframes as you’re leaning in trying to vacuum out the car. Sigh. Basically ever since I got back from work I’ve been hiding in the extra-cool basement. I love air conditioning. It’s supposed to cool way down tomorrow, all the way to 86 for a high, lol. You know it’s hot out when the mid-80s are considered a “cool change.”
Yesterday was pretty hot too, which is why when I got back from work I joined Aaron & Eve and the kids for a boat ride on Lake Minnetonka and a little swim (in shallow water, since the kids are still really little and don’t know how to swim). But there was a rope swing hanging from a nearby tree, so I climbed up a couple times and swung out and leapt into the lake from that, that was pretty fun. 🙂 Unfortunately, our fun we had swimming was damped a bit when on the evening news last night we heard that a swimmer on another part of Lake Minnetonka, over near Excelsior Bay, drowned when he got entangled in the horrendously thick milfoil weeds that have taken over the lake. You hate to hear stories like that.
Seeing how I’m off from Choice tomorrow and Saturday, I’m gonna head up to Cumberland for the weekend, primarily to help my dad get the swimming raft, canoe and other things ready for use next weekend for the 4th of July, when I have a few people over. And I’m also hoping to get in a shift at the radio station in Rice Lake on Saturday night, that’d be nice.
Most of you have probably heard of the rankings released this week about the world’s most expensive cities, with Tokyo, Osaka & London coming in 1-2-3 in no great surprise. Have fun living in Japan, Josh. Other notables include NYC in 13th, Sydney in 21st place, Chicago in 52nd, Melbourne in 68th and Auckland in 69th place. And while Josh is living in Japan for a couple years and no doubt experiences several minor earthquakes (with the potential for a major one always there too), he might possibly miss out on a severe earthquake in America’s hotbed for quakes in — Missouri?? And apparently Australian intelligence services and law enforcement have arrested four people suspected of planning terrorist attacks in Melbourne. The article says that among their targets were two train stations (I can only imagine that they were wanting to blow up Flinders St and Spencer St stations, or possibly Melbourne Central, those are the two or three main ones in the city) and a couple other tourist attractions in and around Melbourne. It’s kinda scary to think that someone wasn’t all that far away from blowing up places you have been in many times, but it also brings home again that we must remain vigilant around the world, even here in the US and in Australia. And those poor Ruskies, they can’t seem to get much of anything to work right with their space program. Well, come to think of it, neither can we lately. So how ’bout let’s work together to build a sailing ship for space? That’d work, right? Wrong. So very wrong.