Mild Amusement

A little while back, I told the harrowing tale of mismatched coasters . If you remember, the Mild Wife and I have a set of green and orange coasters, and we alternate the colors. Now that I'm writing about it a second time, I realize full well that the alternating colors are simply a choice, but still, that's just how our brains work ("our brains" may or may not have more to do with my brain than hers). You wouldn't a run of the green ones knowing full well that there were perfectly good orange ones to be had, would you? Still, we looked high and low for the missing coaster. We checked all of the places we could think of: anything and everything near the kitchen, underneath the dining room table, underneath the coffee table, the desks where we do work, even the nightstands. We knew that it hadn't just walked out, but we could not for the life of us find the thing. It had apparently gone missing, and we had a mystery on our hands. Well, friends, I am happy ...

The Mild Wife is very, very good about wearing sunscreen. She's almost religious about it, making sure to apply the stuff whenever we head out. It doesn't matter whether it's sunny as all hell or it looks like a dreary morning. She will still apply sunscreen. It's good for you, so it makes sense (side note: I recently heard that Baz Luhrmann "sunscreen song" again, and it really resonated with me as 30-plus-year-old). She also reminds me to wear sunscreen myself, because if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. I mean, I get it. It's not like I want to get sunburned or to get melanoma .  In fact, I usually try to avoid damage from the sun, even if I occasionally fail and end up with really weird tans (see exhibit A and exhibit B ). The problem, however, is that I just haven't done it often enough where I've made it a habit. I do so haphazardly, and the results are understandably erratic. So, you can imagine the fun when ...

One of the classic conversations amongst a group of people who spend a lot of time with each other is where to go grab food. It happens with significant others, it happens with classmates, it happens with coworkers. In fact, it happens so often that enterprising folks have made websites, apps, and features that all solve this problem by randomly selecting a cuisine or restaurant for you (seriously, just Google something like " lunch decider "). In my case, this conversation started up among a couple of coworkers who happen to sit near me. They were talking about where to eat lunch, and a third coworker hopped into the conversation. Eventually, I was sucked into the conversation, and a tangent about nearby lunch places ensued. That's when the magic happened. One of the guys I work with couldn't remember the name of one place that he was referencing, so he grasped strands of his memory to come up with the name. I can't promise that I'll reproduce it perfec...

A long time ago, I remember walking by the common area on a floor where I didn't work. It was interesting to see their various artifacts and practices on display, in particular because they didn't necessarily line up with what I was used to with my team. It was like visiting another country, and I was a sightseer that got to visit for a little while. This was a while ago, so I don't really remember the little things. However, I do remember that they had a communal puzzle. The whole thing was set up on a table in full view of the entire team, and I got the impression that people were encouraged to work on it whenever they had a free moment. What's more, there were other completed puzzles in various places, so I could see that this wasn't just a whim. On the one hand, this puzzle thing made total sense to me. I was the one who had an ongoing chess game with my coworker , remember? Spreading the fun around seemed perfectly reasonable. On the other hand, though, ...