Mild Amusement

A while back, the Mild Girlfriend and some of her friends wanted to go to a sunrise ceremony on Alcatraz. The problem, however, was that they all lived far enough away that they'd have to drive a fair bit just to get there. This was a sunrise ceremony, so they would've had to arrive at the crack of dawn. This sounded appealing to very few of them, so instead, they decided to crash nearby. Specifically, they crashed with us. I should also mention that both the Mild Girlfriend and her crew had occasionally lamented that they didn't have access to good restaurants. Well, that was a problem that I could remedy. I don't know all of the newest, hippest spots in town, but I can certainly point people to decent food. So, we went out to dinner at one of these spots the night before. Put it this way: one of them asked if she could have her birthday dinner AND her graduating-from-college dinner there. I figure we did all right with the selection. Now, the other bit of perti...

A while back, I helped the Mild Girlfriend move. Luckily, we had plenty of time to do so, so we were able to move all of her stuff with just our two cars. We also made more than one trip, spread out over a couple of weekends. All in all, it wasn't the worst move I've seen. It took time, but that's just how that goes. During the last weekend, we had to make one last push to get everything done. She had to be out of the apartment by about 11AM, and we'd parked the cars in a zone that ended up becoming commercial parking around 8AM. Since we wanted to be on the road by about that time anyway, that wasn't much of a problem. However, it did mean that we got up pretty early to pack the last of the stuff into our cars. Like I said, it wasn't horrible, but it just meant a lot more movement than most people are used to at that hour. We did get out of there when we expected to, but the process had a very unexpected consequence: I tore my pants. Even now, I have no ide...

Little kids tend to fall and bump into things quite a bit. It's what happens when you don't quite have control of your body. Heck, there is an entire class of milestones related to these gross motor skills . Put another way, that means that it's an achievement when a baby's body does roughly what the kid intended. So it's no surprise that there are a lot of bumps, bruises, and tears along the way while these kids learn these motor skills. That means that parents and adults around these kids constantly have to find ways to tend to and reassure these same little kids. You have to pick them up, wipe their tears, get them over the shock of the fall/bump, and even clean their wounds on occasion. Sometimes, all it takes is a little bit of attention to fix a scared toddler. Heck, I've even resorted to distracting a little kid with utter nonsense to make them forget all about the event that led to the tears. Say a kid fell and he's complaining about his knee; I...

This year, my family did two different Thanksgiving dinners. We had a small meal with my immediate family, and then one of my cousins hosted a larger meal with the extended family. As is often the case with stuff in my family, this led to more than a few laughs. The Mild Girlfriend and I always like bringing something whenever we're invited, so we started planning ahead days in advance. Well, actually, let's be real: she started planning days in advance. She just made sure to inform me of these plans so that I knew about them. I wasn't just an innocent bystander in all of this, but I'll give credit where credit is due: she did a lot of the planning. So, a week before the big meals, she suddenly wanted to try out a new macaroni and cheese recipe . I happen to like macaroni and cheese, so I was all for this. The catch, however, was that this was a much healthier version than usual. It was also a fairly simple recipe, by design, so that we could throw it together quick...