Mild Amusement

A little while back, the Mild Wife and I decided to take a short day trip to the Santa Cruz/Monterey area. We both had the day off, and it seemed like a fun use of a day. Sure, it was a bit of a drive for us, but we figured a day in that area would be a good time. Now, there are a bunch of places in that area where you could hang out, but the Mild Wife was especially keen on spending some time near the water. She's always appreciated all of the sights, sounds, and sensations that the water and the waves generate, so we made a point to find some water. That actually meant avoiding Santa Cruz and its Boardwalk because that tends to be crowded and dirty, but we did manage to find a spot in Monterey that fit the bill: Lover's Point Park  (go ahead, get the smirks and guffaws out of your system now). I'd never been there, so I thoroughly enjoyed climbing around the rocks and reaching the various vantage points. That said, we also just sat for a while and enjoyed the scenery....

When people ask what I do for a living, I usually tell them that I’m a software developer. Sometimes I switch up the words and say “software engineer” or something else that means I write code for a living (“code monkey” is a fun alternative), but the general sentiment is the same. I’m one of those people that spends a bunch of time in front of a computer to try to build a software-based solution for people. Now, as I’ve gotten more experienced, my actual day-to-day responsibilities have shifted a bit. I still have to work on those software-based solutions, but the solutions have gotten a bit larger over time. Basically, they trust me a little bit more. As a result, I do other types of work. I make decisions about which technologies to use, rather than just write the code in a technology that someone else decided we should use (it's a weird feeling realizing that you're the adult now, let me tell you). Generally speaking, the shift in work priorities is a good thi...

Like many people, the Mild Wife and I take advantage of online retailers. It's a pretty convenient way for us to do our shopping, since we don't even have to leave the comfort of our home. Heck, we can even occasionally find some good deals because the online retailers don't have as much infrastructure to maintain. It's not like they have to pay for rent for their stores. Sure, shopping online has its downsides. We can't try on clothing before we make a decision on it, for example. Sometimes, the pictures don't adequately reflect the item, or we can miss an important detail about the product. There's just something to be said for actually seeing and touching the thing we're trying to buy. Still, it's hard to beat the convenience of online shopping. The system just works well. We can decide to buy things, and they show up on our door. Well, they usually do. We put in an order recently that led to a much different experience. Everything started...

Last time, I mentioned that the neighbors seem to have engaged in some sort of a decoration-off for the holidays . Well, they're still at it, folks. I can't actually take pictures of the whole thing because at least one set of neighbors seems to always keep their door open, so they would see me taking pictures of the set up. I figure that'd be an awkward conversation that I don't want to have. So, I'll just have to describe it all to you. I figure I can manage that. To begin with, let me paint the picture with all of the relevant detail. We live in a complex where the apartments are clustered into groups of four, so we have three immediate neighbors. There are a whole lot more neighbors in the vicinity, but they're not the folks we see day in and day out. And of these three neighbors, two have been there since we've moved in. So, we saw what their apartments looked like last year, and we have that point of reference to compare against. Last year, the nei...

All of us have moments when we either do something good and look good in front of other people or we do something so embarrassing we pretend it never happened. It's just how it goes. No one is perfect, and we all have ups and downs. Every now and then, one of the ups happens in front of other people. This particular blog post relies on two stories of that kind. The first story harkens back to a time when I wasn't dating anyone, before the Mild Wife and I had gotten together. I don't quite remember what the occasion was, but I remember my parents, my brother, my brother's wife, my brother's mother-in-law, and a family friend of my brother's in-laws were all there. It was quite the motley crew. At the end of the meal, I ended up paying for it all. I don't quite remember what circumstances led to this occurrence, especially given my mom's penchant for grabbing the check before others can even see it. Regardless, this was deemed acceptable. I suspect tha...

These days, I tend to bring lunch to work. For one, it saves money. For another, we tend to meal prep our food days in advance , so lunch is usually just another meal in the mix. The last, and certainly most fun reason, is that it seems to make my coworkers think that I'm eating some sort of fancy, highfalutin gourmet meal that's only available to members of a special subsection of Filipino society. For the record, I make no attempt to encourage the thought process that leads to that last reason, but I include it on the list because it's pretty darn funny. Given that back drop, it should come as no surprise that lunch time at work can be an amusing thing. For one, I usually know what's coming several days in advance. Most of the time, I have either helped prepare the ingredients, cook the food, or otherwise pack my lunch. As with most people, I tend to have favorite foods, so this means that I usually know when one of my favorite dishes is in the mix. Just think of...

It's that time of year again when footballs are flying. Yup, the NFL is back. Actually, it has been for a few months now. So, you might be curious why I bring it up at this particular moment. Well, we've been playing fantasy football again this season, so there's another amusing story. First of all, I should mention that the Mild Wife and I aren't doing as well this year as last year. We're both somewhere near the middle of the pack, but we both had a pretty bad start to the year. I think at one point, I was at the bottom of the standings. What can I say? Some years, you just have some bad luck. Now, it's not like I can personally give these guys pep talks or otherwise control their performance, either. Ultimately, I just have to pick players and hope for the best. Even players who everyone expects to perform admirably sometimes have off years, so there's definitely an element of luck to the whole thing. Still, that hasn't stopped a whole indust...

One of the joys of married life is figuring out how to celebrate the holidays together. Sure, we've both individually celebrated holidays before, but now we have a family of our own. We get to decide if we go anywhere for Memorial Day, we decide what kind of candy to pass out on Halloween, we figure out what to have for Thanksgiving dinner, and so on. Yes, some of that is a matter of having our own place, but even so, we're starting our own traditions. Take last year, for example. For Halloween, we wanted to make sure that kids knew that we were passing out Halloween candy, so we put up this bad boy on our door: That's like a bright orange bat symbol for trick or treaters It was simple, but it got the job done. We had little kids knock on our door, and I passed out candy. In fact, the Mild Wife says I looked pretty happy doing it (there was a picture of the occasion, but I can't find it for the life of me). I seem to remember being the only ones in our corner of...

I've had pretty good luck when it comes to snacks at the airport , largely due to the Mild Wife's planning. In case you were too lazy to click on that last link, the Mild Wife both made and packed us some pizza to munch on during the whole airport process. I was both thoroughly amused and very content about my snacks. Put it this way: my exact description of the pizza was "breakfast of champions" and my exact description of the Mild Wife was "she's kind of awesome like that." This time around, though, I had a much different experience with airline snacks, but one that made me laugh just as much. First, let me set the scene: I was traveling on Halloween, to one of the smaller airports in the U.S. The actual location wasn't really all that important, but the two bits of information I just gave meant that the flight wasn't particularly full. In fact, it seemed like the flight was maybe half full. We were all just glad that we had more leg ro...

Somehow or another, I became an adult. I know it's sort of a thing on the Internet for people to talk about still feeling like a kid, but it's true. It's not so much that I'm a kid at heart (though I still thoroughly enjoy playing with Lego's ), but that I don't quite remember the passing of time all that vividly. Sure, there are several very memorable milestones that have happened in my adult life, like, say, getting engaged or getting married . But even so, I have been legally considered an adult for a long, long time now. I just don't remember over a decade of adulting. Now, I once read an interesting theory that basically says you notice the passing of time by relating it to memorable events in your life . As a kid, your first times come at you in a constant barrage: first step, first day of school, first crush, and so on. Heck, even something like high school has a built-in  deadline of four years. There are so many memorable events that you can po...

In many ways, I am a creature of habit. There are some restaurants where I consistently order the same thing, for example (as best as I can tell, this was a large part of the confusion behind " do you know you? "). I've also been writing weekly blog posts for something like six years  (the actual blog has been around for longer, though). I honestly don't know where the time went, and it blows my mind that that fact is true. Still, there it is. Like I said, a creature of habit. Now, I realize this fact about myself, so I try to take advantage of it. That's why I build in little mnemonics into my life, to help generate results that I like. I don't want to forget my wallet in the car, so I pat my pockets down each and every time (check that last link if you're confused). Basically, that helps reduce the chances that I might walk away without it. As it turns out, I'm not the only one. I've heard other people reference their own version of a self p...

Language has always intrigued me in various ways. I'm sure I could hypothesize plenty of reasons for that particular fascination, but sometimes, it just boils down to the fact that I like how words connect. You can paint landscapes in the mind's eye, you can convey emotion far beyond the actual words (" I have promises to keep / And miles to go before I sleep "), and you can find very creative ways to insult someone . Heck, even regional differences from the exact same language  can make things interesting (note, this holds true for multiple languages ). Like I said, I just like language. That's why I was incredibly amused to discover this on the Merriam-Webster website : Growing up, I was always told that "irregardless" wasn't a real word. In fact, I'm still not convinced that it's proper English, regardless of what the dictionary says. That said, I can't deny the fact that the dictionary does, in fact, have an entry for that word...

As I've mentioned before, the Mild Wife is Filipina. So, she brings her own cultural heritage and stories to the table, and that occasionally leads to some very interesting stories when our cultures meet ( for example, this one ). Let me put it this way: think about some of the amusement that results when my own two cultures mix , and now imagine adding a third culture to the mix. It gets pretty funny at times. The first, and most obvious, bit involves language. The Mild Wife's family speaks a language called Kapampangan , so I hear it thrown around at family gatherings these days. Before I met the Mild Wife, I'd never even heard of it before. Still, it's considered one of the major Filipino languages (note that it's not a dialect of Tagalog, it's its own language), so that just means I was ignorant about these things. As you can imagine, this meant I was starting from scratch in trying to understand people. You know who else is starting from scratch? You...

I used to participate in high school speech and debate (side note: I am a bit surprised that I haven't actually written any blog posts about this before, but I can't find any references). It meant a lot of very interesting research on policy and philosophy, and I thoroughly enjoyed my time. So, I have a bit of a soft spot in my heart for the activity. Well, soft spots sometimes lead to empty bellies and hearty laughs. First, you'll need a tiny bit of background. Ultimately, the events are competitions, no different than, say, a swim meet. But it's not like you can measure who finished the debate the fastest. Instead, you need to decide who was more convincing, or who won the argument. Basically, you need a real life person to make a subjective call; you need someone to act as a judge. To that end, each school that participates is responsible for bringing a certain number of judges to the competition. The more competitors you bring to the event, the more judges you n...

Cologne and I have a very interesting relationship. I have a " signature scent " that I like and that I have worn for years, but I've never been a connoisseur. When I first picked out that scent, I basically walked into a store and asked for help . I think that's probably a good representative moment for my attitude towards cologne: I like wearing it, but I couldn't pick something out off the top of my head. Other than my signature scent, I don't really know what the other options are. Well, that changed a little bit recently. First, I have to explain a little bit of back-story, though. A while back, my brother-in-law was on an international flight for work. He was flying on one of the nicer tiers, either business class or first class, so they handed him a complimentary care package thing. It's the sort of thing that has a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a few other amenities to make the flight and the time immediately afterward a little more comfortable. ...

I get the odd compliment every now and then, quite literally. Like I always say, it beats a straight up insult, so I'd rather hear the compliment than the alternative. Still, it usually makes for a fun story. There is one of those odd compliments, however, that I've heard repeatedly over the course of my life. Apparently, I have nice, long eyelashes. It's the sort of thing that I've never really considered, because that's just how my face looks. For better or for worse, that's what I've got, so I just take it for granted. Now, I fully realize that I can say that in part because I'm a guy. I'm not expected to curl my eyelashes or apply mascara to them at any point, so I don't. Incidentally, that's also why the people who tend to make comments about my eyelashes are women. They do  change the shape and length of their eyelashes, so they tend to notice those things. It's the same basic reason that I tend to notice when TV shows have ...

So, I lied just a tad. The Mild Wedding actually consisted of a couple of different events, rather than a single day's worth of festivities. One of those events was a Chinese wedding banquet, where they serve you ten courses of food . Yes, ten courses. Pretty much everyone left stuffed. Now, the Chinese ceremony was obviously a nod to part of my heritage. I've been to enough Chinese weddings and have enough Chinese family nearby that we figured it made sense to get married that way, as well. In fact, I remember telling people that I didn't really consider myself completely, thoroughly married until the paper work was done AND we'd done the cultural ceremonies. We don't do things half-assed around here. That said, I am a make up of several cultures (as has been documented in the past to amusing results ), and the Mild Wife brings her own, unique cultural heritage to the table. So, we decided that we would make sure no particular cultural would get left out. S...

Last time, we learned that I can actually pull off a Clark Kent to Superman style transformation if I put on a suit. It doesn't give me super powers, it just makes me look drastically different (apparently). That, however, was not the extent of the hijinks at the Mild Wedding. First, I should mention that the Mild Wife and I are not super traditional. I walked down the aisle hand in hand with both of my parents, because we wanted to honor them both. That's most definitely not the old school way of doing it, but we figured it was a nice way to do it. Similarly, the Mild Wife also walked down the aisle with both of her parents at her side. Again, we liked that better than tradition. However, one of the traditions we did want to adhere to was that the wedding dress should be a surprise for me. I'm not sure there was a deep meaning behind the decision, other than I thought it'd be fun to be surprised by how she looked. So, even though we picked up the dress in advan...

So, as I mentioned in the last blog post , I got married. I now have a Mild Wife. The whole process was very interesting, and there were all sorts of amusing stories along the way. Sure, there were moments of stress, but all in all, it actually went fairly well. That said, the first story that comes to mind came from the actual day of one of our ceremonies. As you can imagine, we had a lot to think about on the day of that ceremony. There were a few things we had to set up, and the Mild Wife had to do her hair and make up for the big day. Ultimately, we decided to stay in one of the rooms offered by the venue in order to make the whole process smoother. I mention that particular detail because it meant that we were hanging around the venue for longer than just the ceremony. We had at least a couple of meals there (we were feeling lazy about driving anywhere), and talked to a few members of the venue's staff off and on throughout our stay there. In fact, at one point, the recept...

I have a very interesting relationship with language. I speak at least two of them ( and bits and pieces of a few others ), so my brain is already going to be wired differently than a native speaker's. Moreover, I tend to prefer using very simple language and I'm curious enough to follow links that lead me to new vocabulary . The end result is a mish-mash of all sorts of language, from the fancy words to the old-timey sayings that I've read or heard (one of my favorites is "tweren't nothin', ma'am" in an aw-shucks type drawl from an old Western movie). Mix in some Spanglish or Chinglish , and ... you get the idea. So, when a friend of ours mentioned the New York Times Speech Quiz , the Mild Wife (yes, we got married. There will be blog posts) and I were both very curious to see what we would get. If you've never heard of it, it's a series of twenty five questions that tries to pinpoint where you grew up based on words you use. At the end, it...

A little while ago, the Mild Fiancée and I decided that we wanted fish for breakfast. Specifically, we wanted to make a poke bowl of some sort. It's not the sort of breakfast we have that often, but on this particular day, we had a craving for fish and rice. A poke bowl seemed like a good way to satisfy that craving. Now, we were up early enough that many of the actual places that serve this sort of food weren't open yet. It wasn't a ridiculous hour or anything, but usually you have to wait until closer to ten or eleven in the morning for restaurants like that to open. You can't exactly have a twenty four hour poke shop (the fish/seafood would go bad). That left us with one option if we wanted to satisfy our craving: we had to make our own. Luckily, the dish itself can be pretty simple. At its core, it boils down to fish, rice, and soy sauce. It's up to you how much or how little to top it with, and we weren't looking for a gourmet version by any stretch of...

A while back, the Mild Fiancée and I decided to have a joint birthday party. We'd never really done that before, but it seemed like a fun way to get our friends together. Some of these folks have already met each other, so it just seemed like a fun day. Well, as many of these posts have proven, things don't always go as planned. It's worth mentioning that the people we wanted to invite were people we hang out with on a semi-regular basis. And since we conceived of this idea well in advance, we mentioned it to a few of them. We even had the date picked out, so we gave them a heads up before actually sending out the invitation. Generally speaking, our friends were all in favor of this, and several verbally committed to being there. All in all, we were quite happy with the reception to this idea, and we started mentally preparing for throwing said party. Now, we probably could have sent out the invitation farther in advance. But since we'd already gotten some verbal ...

As you can imagine, the Mild Fiancée and I have been spending a lot of time corresponding with vendors and guests lately. There are florists, photographers, venue coordinators, and various other vendors to work with. We tried to do as much of the work as we could up front, but there's always something that comes up. It's not necessarily stressful, but it does require some attention. Now, the Mild Fiancée and I are both getting married, so we decided long ago that we would both participate in the process. Sure, there are certain things that I don't care as much about, much the same way that there are certain things she doesn't care much about. For those items, I tend to take a back seat. However, that doesn't get me off the hook. There's still quite a bit that I do want to concern myself with. That particular tidbit is relevant because we tend to send emails that include the other. In short, we CC each other on a lot of emails. It's the quickest, simplest...

As part of the lead up to the Mild Wedding, we've had to put a bunch of things together for the event. I don't mean "put together" as in plan them or hire a vendor, I mean more like assembling items that we'll need. Most of it has involved small things for the check in table, or a small sign welcoming people to our event. As is the case with pretty much everything on this blog, though, there was a little bit of unexpected hilarity involved with the whole thing. First of all, we had to purchase the supplies for our crafts. The Mild Fiancée and I did a fair bit of this shopping together, but for parts of it, I was on my own. The end result was that I had to wander the aisles of a Michaels trying to figure out what kind of construction paper, lettering, or stickers I wanted. In these cases, I had free rein to purchase whatever I thought we needed. Of course, the problem with choice is the responsibility that comes with making a good choice. If I bought the wrong...

So, the Mild Fiancée and I like to cook . We make all sorts of stuff, but one of her favorite things to say is that we should know how to make our favorite foods. After all, you like eating it. Why not learn how to cook it? That way, you can make it yourself. It's a sound enough plan, so we will occasionally venture into recipes rooted in our respective cultures. I mean, I like hamburgers and all, but the food that really hits the spot is always Peruvian food for me. Similarly, the Mild Fiancée really likes Filipino food. So, we've both learned how to make some of these dishes. In this particular case, we occasionally make papa a la huancaína. Never heard of it before? Oh, you're missing out. It looks something like this: Decorate it however you like, but the sauce is a must In our particular case, we added in some bacon because, well, we like bacon. That said, the real star of the show is the yellow huancaína sauce. In fact, I would argue that the potato and...