Mild Amusement

I have a quirky personality, so I hear all sort of random commentary about me. I've written about this a couple of times before (exhibit A and B ), but it's been a while, so the comments have added up. As always, these are actual conversations that I have had with people. "You'd be an awesome team lead, if you don't get fired" Apparently this is how some people react when I suggest we should be allowed to give out dunce hats at work. I figure that in most cases, the actual social shaming would be a worse punishment than a stern talk from a supervisor. Say someone goes out of his way to be lazy. He would be awarded the dunce hat, and the social stigma would encourage him to avoid this behavior. Win-win. The person with whom I was talking agreed with the idea, but suggested that I was slightly crazy for suggesting it in the first place. Great, thanks. "You're good at writing. That surprised her because you're an engineer" I don't t...

I've been playing a lot more basketball lately. I've always liked to play, but my nagging injuries seem to be disappearing, so I can push my legs a little bit more. Also, I recently stopped for a few weeks, and my jump shot seemed to magically disappear. Vowing that I didn't want this to happen again, I figured I'd make it out to the courts more frequently. Even if my usual basketball crew doesn't show up, I'll just go shoot around for a bit. It's decent exercise, and I like doing it. However, that means that I don't have to go to the centrally located courts that my basketball friends prefer. If they're not around, I'm free to frequent some of the other courts closer to my house. So I do. As I've realized, these particular courts seem to attract much more interesting characters. I'm not there to gawk, but my basketball adventures have suddenly gotten a lot more interesting. Heck, sometimes the adventures come to me. Last time I was t...

A while back, I noted that I've seen at least one really smart kid pass through my mom's day care. As of now, that list is up to three kids. I've always said that it's actions that prove whether a kid is smart or not. All little kids parrot what they hear around them. If they use big words, it just means someone around them knows the big words. If they find ways to accomplish things that you think are impossible for them, though, that's all them. And since little kids are constantly trying to do things that they shouldn't be doing, that means the real test is in what kind of mischief they get up to. So, gather 'round, because this is a tale of mischief. There are a pair of twin one year old boys that really like to climb on stuff. It's not like this is a new phenomenon, either; they've always liked to climb on stuff. Luckily for us, they just didn't have the physical capacity for the longest time. Their legs couldn't reach high enough, a...

A little while back, I joked that I should get in the habit of twiddling my thumbs so that I don't show up late for meetings. It was just a joke, since I really can't handle sitting around doing nothing. I get bored very, very easily, and intentionally putting myself in a position to be bored sounds like one of the outer circles of hell to me. Of course, life has a funny way of throwing you curveballs . It all started when I was sitting in some random meeting where I wasn't expected to say much. In those situations, I tend to move my hands around. You can think of it as fidgeting if you like, but it's more about keeping myself from tuning out than it is about nervous energy. It's not exactly like status meetings scare me. Anyhow, I was doing my usual thing. However, I became a little self-conscious about moving my hands, so I made an effort to keep more still. I figured clasping my hands in front of me was a decent plan, so I went with that. For the clever am...