Mild Amusement

In case you've missed the last few blog posts, the Mild Wife and I headed to Argentina. Now, this was a work trip, so there were a few shenanigans related to speaking Spanish in the office . I was not the only one responsible for these language-related stories, however. In some cases, some of the others caused a lot of laughter when dealing with the fact that we didn't all quite speak the same language. In this particular case, the laughs occurred when we all went to lunch. Since the American coworkers  obviously didn't know the area as well as the locals, our in-country coworkers picked the place and led the way. All I knew before I got there was that we were going to a sandwich place. It actually took a decent walk for us to get there, though I didn't really notice this since I was busy making small talk with someone. I probably would've done the same thing if we'd been in the States, but I also figured I should make an extra effort to practice my Spanish....

Once we actually arrived in Argentina and managed to settle in to our hotel , it was back to business. In my case, that meant that I had to help train some of my coworkers on some technical work. There were actually a few of us that went on this trip, because several heads are better than one. The in-country coworkers hadn't seen this particular technology before, so we were just there to show them the ropes. However, this also led to the interesting fact that I had to communicate with these coworkers about software development stuff. In my case, this presented a bit of a dilemma. I had two languages to choose from. Now, I am fairly fluent in Spanish, but I think about my day to day job in English. English is clearly the easier of the two languages for me to communicate in when it comes to my day job. Of course, the exact opposite was true for my coworkers. They were far more comfortable with Spanish to discuss the work at hand. Sure, they could understand me if I spoke in Engli...

Let's continue on with our tales of the Argentina trip , shall we? In the first installment, I regaled you with the circuitous route our plane took to land at our destination. If you haven't already read it, we basically got re-routed to another country because visibility was poor and the plane didn't have enough fuel to stay in a holding pattern. It all worked out in the end, but it meant a longer trip than expected and more amusement than one would hope for on a flight. After all of that, we were happy to just arrive at our destination. We had some decent conversation with the cab driver, but even so, we just wanted to get to our room. First, though, we had to navigate one last obstacle. No, not the check-in process; that actually went smoothly. No, we had to use the elevators. I'm guessing that, like me, you don't generally think of elevators as a challenge, but there's a reason why I'm writing this post. There was a learning curve for this particular...

Recently, the Mild Wife and I went on a trip to Argentina. There were a few amusing stories that resulted from that trip, but the flight itself led to a bit of amusement. I don't think I'll do all of them in chronological order, but since this is likely to be a series of posts, I'll introduce the trip with the first leg of it: the flight. There were no direct flights for us to get to our destination, so we had to stop off in Texas for a connecting flight. However, this also meant that we had to take a red-eye, since the flight with the most reasonable arrival time that we could find involved leaving late in the evening. Well, c'est la vie . We've both done it before ( on our New York trip , no less), so we know we're capable of it. It's an inconvenience, but as a trade off, you have the whole day in front of you when you land. Fortunately, there were no problems with our connecting flight, so we got on the plane with no issues. Everything was going accor...

As I've mentioned once or twice on this blog, I crochet things for people . Specifically, I tend to crochet beanies for little people. It sort of started as a one-off thing for a good friend, but then it sort of snowballed into making beanies for any friend who was having a kid. The Mild Wife and I were going to get them a gift of some sort anyway, so it just became a matter of making that gift instead of buying it for them. Most people tend to appreciate this, because you have now put some effort into the gift. It's not just something you bought off the shelf or threw together at the last minute, it took a bit of dedication and forethought in order for them to receive that gift. If they happen to like the colors or think that it's a really nice gift, then that's doubly good. Basically, it works for people. Along with this habit of making the beanies, I also have a habit of posting pictures of said beanies on a social media account. I don't like to say who it...