Mild Amusement

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 ...