Mild Amusement

The Mild Fiancée and I are getting to the point in the wedding planning process where we have to taste/sample some of the food. At the end of the day, you want to make sure that you like the food that's being served to you and your guests. Of course, everyone has a different definition of what tastes good (more on that later), so it makes good logistical sense to try the food. It's also one of the parts in the process that people look forward to, so I expected some laughs. I did not, however, expect some of the other shenanigans. First of all, I should explain the general structure of the food tasting. For this particular venue, they do it in bulk. They open up one of the ballrooms, and invite dozens of couples. That way, they can cook all of the food, and have a big buffet. You try as much or as little of the food as you want, and you can go back for seconds or thirds of any items that you're unsure about. Well, that's the theory at least. If you're just flat out...

We've all got preferences. We have favorite colors, favorite TV shows, favorite foods, and favorite drinks . For the purposes of this post, let's talk about my favorite adult cocktail: the Moscow Mule . It's a really simple drink to make, but that's part of why I like it so much. You don't need fancy ingredients or an hour to prepare the drink. Vodka, ginger beer, and lime. That's pretty much all you need. It tastes smooth and clean, but it doesn't taste like fruit juice. All in all, it's a good drink. I mention this all so that it's apparent that I have had plenty of those drinks over the years. I have even had the individual ingredients by themselves several times. In fact, the Mild Fiancée also drinks this particular libation, and we have gotten to the point where we have a few favorite ginger beers. We're hardly connoisseurs, but since we've sampled a bunch, we've settled on some favorites. Some are spicier than others (it is ginger...

A little while ago, some of my cousins decided to do a White Elephant gift exchange. Unfortunately for us, we had a conflict on that date, so we opted out. We wouldn't have been able to get our gifts into the pile, and there would have been a mismatched number of gifts to people, so it didn't make much sense to us. It was a bit of a bummer, but we figured there would be other ways to hang out with the family. Well, fate has a funny way of mocking the best laid plans of mice and men . As it turns out, our other plans changed at the last minute, so we did end up showing up on the day of the gift exchange. We didn't find out until fairly late, so we figured we'd just watch and cheer people on. Even that plan, however, was not to be: a couple of my other cousins couldn't make it out, so the numbers didn't match up anyway. They were two people short, and there were two of us sitting on the sidelines. It worked out. Now, they had set a $5 limit on their gifts, so...

A little while ago, the Mild Fiancée and I decided to set a weekly fitness goal for ourselves. It started before the new year, so it wasn't quite a new year's resolution. Still, we wanted some way to hold ourselves accountable, even if we weren't going to the gym super regularly. Every week, we set a target for ourselves. It's not meant to be a ridiculously high number or a complex movement that takes lots of equipment. No, we pick something simple that you can do just about anywhere, whether that be our apartment or the gym of our choice. Something like squats or push ups (incidentally, those happened to be the exercises we picked for the first couple of weeks). However, the idea was that it had to be a high enough target that you wouldn't reasonably do it all in a single day. For example, the very first week, we said that we had to complete 1000 air squats that week. That works out to, on average, a little more than 140 squats every day. That's the sort of...

As you are all very much aware, the new year is upon us. That means that the new year's eve celebrations are now done (unless you're really, really going crazy this year). As it turns out, that's a good thing for us. It was somewhat more eventful than we expected. This year, the Mild Fiancée and I decided to stay in to celebrate and ring in the new year. We've been on a bit of a fish kick lately, so we decided to make our own poke bowls  and get some sparkling wine. We figured it'd be fun, and we got a bottle at the local store. It wasn't super fancy or anything, but it did the trick. Just barely, as it turns out. See, I'm getting old, so I was actually starting to feel a bit sleepy by the time midnight rolled around. I wasn't falling asleep, but I certainly didn't want to stay up to finish up a bottle. I also didn't think it'd be wise to pound half a bottle and immediately fall asleep. So, I poured us each a glass, and then I tried to...