Mild Amusement

For some reason, I find the "pick your top three" discussions pretty interesting. Heck, I wrote a whole blog post about having a new top contender in the dessert category . For me, the fun part about it isn't so much in hearing the actual decisions, it's in hearing the reasons why something is either in or out of that top three. Do you pick the item that you could eat every single day without ever getting bored of it or do you pick the one that's a delicacy that you almost never consume? Being forced to pick just three of something usually forces some interesting decisions about what you like (and don't like). Incidentally, that's also why I dislike sub-categorizing the choices. Your top three American desserts is no fun, I want you to actively consider about whether you like apple pie or kanafeh better. It's even more interesting if the items are nothing at all like each other. Is cold, creamy ice cream a better choice than a warm, gooey brownie? W...

Have you ever looked everywhere for your cell phone only to find that it was in your hand the whole time? Or hunted high and low for your keys without any success because they were snugly in your pocket? I have a feeling that this is a near universal phenomenon, only because people can be thrown off pretty easily. From what I understand, your brain optimizes so that it doesn't have to recall or process every last piece of information, and it's possible for things to fall into the blind spots as a result. If you've ever seen someone in front of a new laptop or computer, you've probably seen some variation of this. It's probably the same basic stuff, but it looks and feels different. That's just enough to throw off the mental optimization, and things grind to a halt. Well, I'm no different than everyone else. I generally know where we keep the cereal, for example, so I look for the box of cereal in the usual spot. If I don't see it there, consternation...

I have enough of a quirky sense of humor that I appreciate shenanigans and a little light mischief. I don't want anyone to get hurt or for things to break, but if there's a laugh to be had after an impish grin, I'm usually in. Heck, one of the reasons I like being around little kids is that they tend to do this sort of thing naturally. One might, hypothetically speaking, jump on sofa cushions that he's not supposed to . It's all pretty amusing to me. I've known this about myself for a while, but the Mild Wife has had enough time to experience it to intuitively understand when my sense of mischief is about to kick in. What's more, since she experiences this as a spectator, she can notice little tells that I've never really noticed myself. Specifically, there is a little giggle/laugh thing I do that tips her off that some shenanigans are about to go down. It surprised me when she mentioned it, but it also made me crack up that I giggle to myself about th...

One of the recent posts about movies (and the Mild Wife's reactions to watching one of the Lord of the Rings movies for the first time ) reminded me that I have a very particular quirk when it comes to watching movies. Basically, I always try to guess the plot. I'm not entirely sure why I think this is fun, but at the end of the day, I do. I think it may have something to do with my propensity for engineering brain , because plots seem like things that have to fit together in a particular way. So if I can understand what the author/screenwriter is trying to accomplish, I can try to piece together the way the movie might unfold. If you want a happy ending, make sure the knight rescues the princess. If you want a horror film, the princess was actually a demon in disguise and kills the knight at the end. The other thing that probably leads to this guessing game is the fact that I try my hand at writing every so often . I imagine it's sort of like a chef who goes out to eat...