Mild Amusement

Way back in high school, there was a male teacher that all the girls thought was attractive. It was an open secret that a bunch of them had crushes on him. In fact, the school newspaper even did an article about him that quoted some girl saying, "he's so cute, he even makes pink look good." Yes, he had worn a pink shirt to school one day, and it had apparently been a big hit. I was reminded of this story when my sister-in-law suggested that she would choose pink as the color for her wedding and bridal party. I don't think I've ever made a color look good before, but I remember thinking, "well, I know it's possible to not look stupid in pink as a straight guy, I guess I can try." And I think that's almost exactly what I told her. I also happened to own a gray suit, so I figured the combination would look all right. However, I was pretty much the only one willing to play along. My sister-in-law's brothers wanted absolutely no part of th...

A while back, I had a nice meal with my family. Both my brother and my sister-in-law were present at that meal, and all three of us thoroughly enjoyed our meals. As it turned out, I finished my meal that night, despite the waiter more or less telling me he didn't think that I could do it. The whole thing cracked me up, so I wrote about it. Truth be told, it's not like I was bragging about my eating prowess.  Maybe it's because I'm getting older and wiser, or maybe I'm just getting lazy, but t hose days are past. I've decided that I should try to eat smaller portions , after all . In fact, I had lunch with a friend of mine recently, and she commented on just how small my lunch had been. I'm not just all talk, I tell you, I really am eating a little bit less these days. Regardless, I told the whole story as it happened: I finished my meal, but my brother and his wife did not finish theirs. There were some jokes about the size of the bowl of the soup, an...

I'm a curious person. I like to figure out how things work, and I like to understand what words mean. I don't pretend like I know everything about everything, but I do usually pay attention when I hear new tidbits of information. It's a trait that has served me well over the years, but every once in a while, it comes back to bite me in the butt. This is a story about one of those times. To lay the groundwork for how this came to be, let me back up about half a year. I was talking to a friend of mine, and she asked if I wanted to go a firearm course. I'd only been to the range once before , so I was intrigued by the concept. My friend just so happened to sign up for the class through one of those social deal websites, where you can get a discount if several people also bought the same deal. So, I signed up for an account. This was where it all started. The class was a decent use of an afternoon, though I did end up wishing that we'd had more time to shoot at the ...

I live in a big city, in a part of town where the blocks have a bunch of houses all bunched together. I don't mind it, but as a result of this set up, I don't really know many of my neighbors. I've seen a few of them around, and I say hello when I do. However, it's not like they know my life story and I don't know anything about their lives other than the fact that they live on my block. It's somewhat unfortunate, because we lose out on the community feel as a result. Still, there are times when I realize precisely why things are this way. As one person put it, I have at least one " weird neighbor ." Well, the neighbor on the other side of our house isn't exactly tons better. Back when we were working on the shed with a million nails , he suddenly decided that he was going to be more social. Well, actually, it's more like he draped himself over the fence between our two houses and started to inspect our work. Mind you, he did all of this whil...

Earlier this year, a calendar appeared in my room. I forget exactly where it came from, to be honest. It might have been one of those calendars that you get from a store after you buy something right around the beginning of the year. It might have been a gift (or a re-gift) that my parents didn't want. Either way, this thing appeared in my room. Not wanting to waste it, I hung it from a hook. Now, this particular calendar was the kind where you tore off a page every day. That put the onus on me to keep the calendar up to date on a daily basis, but I figured it wouldn't be that big a deal. I mean, it's a freaking calendar. How difficult could it be? Well, first of all, I wasn't quite in the habit of updating a calendar on a daily basis. Much like any other habit, it took a while to learn. So, for a good chunk of the month of January, I had the wrong date showing on my calendar. I didn't actually notice, truth be told. It's not like the calendar was humongous ...