Mild Amusement

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...