Skip to main content

The Litmus Test

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 with a few people at that party. I didn't personally witness anything along those lines, but I also had to be a decent host so I wasn't with her the whole time. This did not help matters any, and I somehow ended up in a big fight. The actual fight and the results are completely irrelevant to this tale, the point is that shortly after this party, I had a fight on my hands.

Fast forward a few years and a couple of Mild Ex'es, and a girl I was dating met Litmus Test for the first time. As before, things were fine during the actual event when they met. They exchanged pleasantries, and everyone seemed to be getting along well. A couple of days later, I once again had a big fight on my hands. Like I said, the details and the outcome aren't really the point (also, you should know by now that the point of my writing isn't to air dirty laundry). What is pertinent, though, is that some girl I was dating met Litmus Test, and then shortly thereafter, I had a fight on my hands.

I could understand this happening once, but twice? I'm thinking it's not exactly a coincidence. Also, Litmus Test has met exactly two women that I have been dating. She's batting 1.000 as of now. Now, to be fair to her, Litmus Test is innocent in all of this. But somehow, her mere presence is enough to trigger these events. Some people are considered good luck charms, some people act as muses for other people, and some people instigate fights. I just happen to be friends with the last one.

So, given all of this, you can see why my friend has earned the nickname. On the other hand, I've decided that if Litmus Test ever meets a girl that I'm dating and I don't end up in a big fight, I may have no choice but to marry that girl. I call her Litmus Test for a reason.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Backlog

I am an information junkie. Always have been. I'm one of those people that cares far more about the storyline in a video game than the actual game play. At work, I will spend time researching things related to solved problems, because I want to know exactly why it failed in the first place. And if someone learns something new, I want to go see what it's about, because I want to know what they know. I know it's not exactly the average outlook on life, but it is what it is. Anyhow, this mentality leads to my habit of tracking various websites, blogs, and other internet web sources to keep my information flow constant. Doing all of this manually is tedious at best, though, so I use Google Reader  to organize all of these feeds. It just makes things simpler to have a single source of RSS feeds, so that I can quickly browse through items related to my interests. Given all of that, it should come as no surprise that I also try to keep up with my feeds on a regular basis. I ...

Units of Measure

I mentioned it recently, but I have a bit of an opinion about valid units of measure. Specifically, I am a fan of the metric system when it comes to temperature . As I mentioned in that post, a system that tells me that the temperature is "negative four degrees" is much better at explaining that it is flippin' cold than one that tells me the temperature is "twenty four degrees." The negative sign matters. Now, as soon as I mentally conceded that the metric system made a ton of sense for temperature, I immediately started thinking that it probably makes sense for other units, as well. I mean, if I'm going to apply the whole "this just makes sense" standard to the ambient temperature, it makes sense to think about mass, volume, and length in the same general way. Why force people to remember that there are sixteen ounces in a pound? Or that, more confusingly, there are eight  fluid  ounces in a cup? The conversion rates just seem arbitrary at that ...

The Joys of Coding

I normally don't blog about what I do (I'm a software developer), because 1) I've already got a work blog that's more suited for that, and 2) I'm a software developer, so most of the time it's not amusing. Sure, I find it interesting, and I learn things every day. However, unless you already lean towards Computer Science, it's not going to be very amusing to you. So, for the sake of keeping my audience (all 4 of them) happy, I stay away. Today, I'm going to break that rule, because my work actually did cause mild amusement. So, without further ado ... I've got a deadline coming up fairly soon, so I've been coding away for the last few days. It's not busy enough where I'm stressing about it, but let's just say it's a little easier to concentrate on my work these days. In it of itself, that's not news-worthy, but because I've been more productive lately, I've also been generating more working code lately. That...