Mild Amusement

I was hanging out with a few friends this weekend, and we ended up talking about sports at some point. I am a sports fan, so I have teams that I like to root for and teams that I like to root against. Now, the other people at the table weren't necessarily hardcore fans of any one sport, but they also had favorites. What got really funny, though, was when I asked why they liked those teams. Everyone at the dinner table had grown up in San Francisco, so I would have understood if they simply rooted for the local teams. This was not the case, though. Instead, they included Duke (college basketball), the Los Angeles Lakers (professional basketball), and the New York Yankees (professional baseball) amongst their favorites. These teams are powerhouses; they tend to compete for titles fairly regularly, and they have strong traditions of winning. So, I naturally asked why they liked these teams. Now, for those of you who don't follow sports, it might be hard to understand why this ...

I have a friend that I am going to start calling, " Litmus Test ." It's no fault of her own, but circumstances have just worked out that way. To be clear, I also don't mean it in an insulting manner. However, the nickname is just too fitting to pass up. Why, you ask? Well, gather 'round, children. I've got a couple of stories to tell. A long while back, I was dating a girl that I introduced to a few of my friends. The girl had actually planned a surprise birthday party for me, and it was the first time that she was meeting some of these people. She was both nervous & excited about interacting with all of these people, and I didn't really blame her. One of the people she met happened to be Litmus Test, and they greeted each other with a hug. Seeing that things were okay, I left her side to greet a few other guests that had shown up. The party seemed to go well, so I figured it was a success. Au contraire . Apparently, the Mild Ex had grievances ...

I wouldn't say that I have a ton of interests, but I do have varied interests. I have been known to dabble in physical activities like dancing salsa  or running distances , but I am just as happy to stay in and play with Legos  or   play poker with some friends . Really, I think it comes down to the fact that I get bored easily, so I'm usually game for trying new activities. However, over time, I have noticed that not everyone acts this way. Some people definitely have a "thing" that they prefer to do over anything else, so they spent time doing that at the expense of other things. That's fine, and I commend those people for having figured out what they like and then sticking to it. After all, why mess around with things you don't like if there is that one thing you do like? What makes it funny is when I interact with these people. They have their routines and their conventions for how to divvy up their time, so they try to stick me into their neat little ...

Lately, I've had a lot more meetings to attend at work. We're starting to get closer to completion of the project that I've been working on lately, so we have more things to hash out. I'd prefer to have more time to write code, but I understand that we need to have these meetings. So, I make sure to attend all of them, and not waste anyone else's time. By default, everyone who is attending a meeting sees a little pop-up 15 minutes before that meeting starts. The idea is to make sure that people have plenty of time to walk to the right room, use the restroom, or otherwise take care of last-minute tasks. It's a good idea, and it also serves as a way to make sure that people don't forget to show up. However, I've found that I have a decent grasp of what I need to get done in a given day, so I generally don't need a full fifteen minutes. So, I always hit the "snooze" button to be reminded five minutes before the meeting starts. For me, that...

I don't know why, but I don't walk like most people do. I can't quite explain it, but I have been told numerous times that I have a very distinctive gait. It's the sort of thing where if I'm walking down a hill amongst several people, you can probably pick me out based on the way I'm walking. It's not a conscious decision to walk that way, I've pretty much always walked that. Even when I was a kid, people would comment that I had a strut, and that I sort of walked like my grandpa. Given that my grandpa has age working against him, it was probably a bit odd to have my walk compared to his. No one ever said it maliciously, though, and it's not like I knew a different way to walk. So, I kept doing it. Over the years, classmates of mine noticed this, as well. However, their description of said gait has been slightly different. Various friends that I have known for a while have commented that I walk "like a thug." In fact, one of them used t...

I am all for playing fast & loose with language , but I still generally try to adhere to grammar rules. It's pretty simple, really; you can't communicate effectively if you can't string together proper sentences. It's not that I believe in the sanctity of language or anything, since I don't really care how other people talk as long as I can understand what they're trying to convey. Really, I have this natural urge to not to anything halfway, so I try to hold myself to a fairly stringent standard. So, I might speak & write with all sorts of ornery language, but said language is going to be punctuated properly, dammit. Given all of that, I was curious enough to click on a random Reddit link about punctuation . I remember being taught at a fairly young age that you should put two spaces after a period, so that's what I expected the comments to reflect. Sure, there were those blasphemous one-spacers out there, but what did they know, right? Right? Actu...

In general, I've always gotten along well with people older than me. I don't quite know why, but I suspect it has something to do with my old school attitude. We probably have very similar outlooks on life, so it makes sense that I'd get along with older generations. Recently, though, I've noticed that other people's parents seem to have a particular affinity for yours truly. For example, I met my future brother-in-law's parents a couple of weeks ago. The two families got together for a meal as a means of introducing everyone to each other. Now, I've heard a little bit about them, and they'd obviously heard a little bit about us. But even given that, the dad spent something like half of the meal talking to me about school, work, and what I do for fun. Sure, I like to blab, but even when I would divert the conversation to other people, we'd end up back where we started. At the end of the day, it wasn't that big a deal, so I just left thinking we...

I was told that I would be in the bridal party for an upcoming wedding, so I had to get measured for a tuxedo. The bride & groom registered (is that even the correct verb?) at the Men's Wearhouse, so I decided to take care of it while running a bunch of other errands. That meant that a) I was dressed casually, in jeans and a t-shirt, and b) the results were funnier than expected. I walked in to the store, and looked around for someone who could help. It's not like I was there to window shop, so I figured I'd find the customer service counter and go from there. That counter looked like it was busy, though, so I just waited. Also, I had just gotten a text message about something that was pertinent to the tuxedo process (read: the group number for the bridal party), so I was slightly distracted. Now, there was a small group of sales people hanging out near the front of the store. They were probably about ten feet away from me, but they more or less ignored me at first....

The other day at work, I was talking with a buddy of mine as we were walking to the kitchen area.  I had to get some water, and he had to grab his lunch, so we were just catching up.  When we walked in, though, we immediately noticed a mess in the sink.  There was water all over the place, and someone had decided that it was okay to just leave it like that. I grumbled, and my buddy shook his head in disapproval.  However, I needed to use that sink, so I cleaned it up a bit.  It's not like it was hard: all I had to do was grab paper towels and wipe the counter a few times.  Of course, that made me even more annoyed, because the person who made the mess could have easily done the same. The worst part of it, though, was that someone had used the pop up " safety cone ."  If you've never seen one of these things, the link in the last sentence is probably a good place to start.  If you're too lazy to click on the link, it's a collapsible c...

I mentioned once before that I take issue with the way the bathrooms are placed in the new office.  There's not much I can do about how the building is laid out, though, so I just deal with it.  Recently, though, I discovered another peculiarity about the bathrooms: every now & then, it will smell like food in there. Now, I don't know about you, but I don't eat in the bathroom.  Ever.  So, this turn of events confused the heck out of me.  The first time I noticed this, it was later in the afternoon, and the door to the little cleaning supplies room was open.  I kind of figured that someone from the cleaning staff was running late or something, scarfed down a quick bite in the supply room, and then went about their business.  It wouldn't have been an ideal situation, but it seemed plausible. However, I noticed that it kept happening.  I can understand one meal in that supply room in a pinch, but multiple meals?  Eating in a room that ...

We moved into a new office building a while back, and everyone is settled into the new space by now.  It's not as nice as the offices we used to be in, but it's not like it's a horrible place to work.  It's a cubicle farm, it is what it is. It's a long, narrow building, so there are four elevators.  To either side of the elevator, there are also stairs that take you to the other floors.  So far, so good.  However, the bathrooms are also laid out to either side of the elevator.  One side has the men's restroom, and the other side has the women's restroom.  This, I have discovered, results in a couple of little quirks. If you are taking the stairs, you have to walk directly towards one of the two bathrooms, and turn off before you actually enter the bathroom.  I'd guess that the door to the stairs and the door to the bathrooms are probably about two feet apart.  Given that, and the fact I don't really want to cause any awkwardness with some...