Mild Amusement

I like to do the CrossFit thing with folks at work , in part because it always throws new challenges at me. It always leads to all sorts of amusing stories , though, and this is one of those stories. First of all, one of the hallmarks of CrossFit is that it the work outs change constantly. You don't necessarily know what the work out is for that day (your mileage may vary, of course), but that means that you're constantly facing new challenges. Long story short, you pretty much always learn something new. To someone like me, that can be a lot of fun. Lately, I've been doing more Olympic style lifting than before. In that process, I've learned about a new way to grip the bar: the hook grip . That manner of holding a bar gives you a stronger grip and makes it less likely that something will wobble or slide, so it can be helpful when done properly. Unfortunately, I don't necessarily use it all the time. It still feels a little awkward to me, so it's never my fi...

At this point, it should come as no surprise when I post a story about kids. Between the daycare stories  and my friends with kids , I have plenty of stories to go around. Throw in the occasional story about younger relatives , and you can understand why a good chunk of my blog is dedicated to stories about people who are a small fraction of my age. Now, I'm no parent, but I've seen enough younger folks to have a rough idea of how things go down. Still, even with that in mind, there are times when one of them manages to surprise me. This was one of those times. Let's start by introducing the protagonist of this story (hint: it's not me). This kid happens to be one of the Mild Girlfriend's nephews, who I only recently met. Like most kids his age, he likes to play with toys and can be easily amused. On the day I met him, we played with trains, plush doggies, and his pop up fort  (his looked different, but you get the basic idea). I was even invited into his for...

I had a rough couple of weeks recently. It was all completely accidental, but for about a two minute span split over two different encounters, I saw (female) friends and acquaintances of mine give me some downright dirty looks. Luckily it all blew over, and eventually everyone had a good laugh about it, but, oh man, were those some hard-earned laughs. Let's start with the incident at the bar. I have a couple of friends who live overseas, so I never get to see them. They're good people, though, so when they stopped by in the area, I jumped at the chance to see them. I'm not their only friend, though, so they decided to just hang out at a bar and have people show up to spend some time with them. Now, "they" happens to be both a guy and a girl, so I couldn't look for any one particular person; I pretty much had to look at everybody in the bar to figure out if that person was my friend. Luckily, I spotted the female half of the couple pretty quickly, so I didn...

This, my friends, is the story of a long con . It involves some relevant background information, so bear with me while I explain. The pay off is worth it, trust me. Without further ado, I have an old friend that I have known since high school. And as with all good friends that you've known that long, I've spent a lot of time hanging out with this person. During those occasions, we have shared stories, talked about the latest happenings in our lives, and occasionally reminisced about years past. That last part is the relevant bit for this story. She swears that there used to be a rumor of sorts circulating about yours truly. I'd never heard of it, but she assured me that people used to say that my first English word was "octopus." English wasn't my first language (that'd be Spanish ), so I got to learn while going to school. I don't really remember much about it, though I know that my teachers and classmates were kind enough to try to pronounce my n...

A little while back, I got a Fitbit as a gift. I sort of knew what they did at the time, but I hadn't really paid that much attention. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. For those of you like me, the basic idea is that it will track how many steps you take in a day, how many minutes you are active, and (roughly) how many calories you've burned that day. I've heard some people tell me that the step counter isn't 100% accurate, but the basic idea still holds. So with that in mind, the sign up process asked me for my height and weight. I didn't really think much of this at the time, but keep this in mind. In a way, it makes sense. If you want to know how many steps I'm taking, my height is a pretty good approximation of how far each step will take me. Now it's just a matter of measuring how far I've traveled, and you can give me a pretty good idea of how many steps I've taken. I'm sure there's a lot more smarts to the device ...