Mild Amusement

Ever since our discovery that I will pick a grapefruit clean , the Mild Girlfriend and I have had a running joke about grapefruits. And should we ever eat any, it immediately becomes a source of laughter. But more importantly, she has insisted that she needs to work on her game so that we both eat a comparable amount of grapefruit. It's all quite amusing. Now, she's mentioned that part of her concern is that she doesn't want to get her hands dirty. That's ultimately been my advantage: I've been willing to roll up my sleeves and get in there to get at the grapefruit flesh. Given that we've sometimes worked with plastic spoons, this meant holding the spoon right near the oval part, rather than near the handle (it looks a little bit like a little kid trying to learn to use a spoon for the first time). Those spoons are pretty flimsy, and they can't exactly withstand a lot of pressure. So, I minimize the pressure on the thin plastic handle by grabbing the spo...

It's usually pretty funny talking to married couples. They hit you with all sorts of amusing advice and interesting stories. My sister in law, who originated the very concept of Wife Watch for me , loves to bemoan her married statues. I think I've heard, "oy, why did I get married?" from her a bunch of times after some (amusing) exchange with my brother. Like I said, it's pretty fun to watch. And even though this seems to hold across the board, for some reason it gets even more magnified when sugar is involved. Yes, sugar. The kind that goes into candy and drinks. One of the funnier episodes I witnessed happened when I had to stop in at a grocery store for cough medicine right around Easter Sunday. As I was getting in line to pay, I bumped into two (married) guys who were buying candy for the next day. Just to be clear, these guys were in two separate relationships, so this story is representative of two marriages, not one. One guy was in line with his bag read...

As I mentioned last time, the Mild Girlfriend and I headed down to Los Angeles a while back . We had a good time and we even tried a pretty tasty fusion BBQ restaurant . As good as the food was, though, it wasn't all that amusing. Tasty, yes. Funny, no. For funny, something much less mundane did the trick. All it took was two pieces of tape. You see, we were in the area for an event. The Mild Girlfriend was already part of the festivities, so she was front and center with a lot of the proceedings. I, on the other hand, was more or less there as moral support. There were a few tasks that I could help with, though, so I figured I'd try to be actual support in the process, too. As it turned out, there were a few of us in the same boat. We helped move chairs, pack stuff up, and generally just did small tasks so that other people wouldn't have to do so. It wasn't exactly glamorous, but I don't think any of us particularly cared. Of course, the people who actually kne...

A while back, the Mild Girlfriend and I took a quick road trip to Los Angeles. Neither of us heads down that way all that often, but she had to be down there. Originally, she was going to carpool with some other friends. However, they backed out, and she didn't want to do the drive by herself. So, we decided to make a road trip of it. Now, as we drove down to get to our destination, we inevitably made stops along the way. We had to eat and we had to use the restroom, after all. Sometimes, the two of those things lined up in a convenient mix, and we'd have a full blown restaurant of some sort at our disposal. Sometimes, though, nature's call was too strong, and we had to make a stop for the sole purpose of going to the bathroom. In those cases, gas stations and convenience stores were incredibly helpful. Most of the employees at those stores know you're only there to use the restroom, and they don't care. Still, though, I sometimes felt bad or awkward just standi...