Mild Amusement

Continuing with the theme of travel-related humor , Kazakhstan offered up a second opportunity for hilarity. The first time around involved a customs and immigration paper that I watched like a hawk. The second time involved some postcards, so it was far less official. However, it also led to more sustained laughter. As you can probably guess, I decided to send some postcards. I can't remember if this was my idea or the Mild Wife's idea, but I want to say that something she said inspired this plan. Specifically, I wanted to send postcards to our younger nephews and nieces. It seemed like a cool little souvenir, since it'd very likely be a unique gift. Also, they're old enough now where they'd probably appreciate receiving something in the mail. Even if they didn't actually know what the postcard said, they'd understand that the item was meant for them. As the Mild Wife has mentioned in the past, a little kid knows when something is for them, and they tend ...

Continuing with the theme of  travel-related humor , I recently had to travel to  Kazakhstan  and that led to more than a few chuckles. Now, Kazakhstan is not a place where I travel very often. It's in Asia, bordering both China and Russia, so it takes at least a couple of flights in order for me to get there. Essentially, it's far from home for me. To make things a bit more complicated, I don't speak any Kazakh or Russian, so I am very much a foreigner in that country. Sure, I'm very willing to try the food , but that doesn't quite help when trying to answer questions or hold a conversation. Similarly, I don't any of the local laws, because, again, I am a foreigner in that country. Given that I don't speak the language, this basically means that it is in my best interest to not run afoul of any regulations. I mention these two specific facts because they bring me to the focal point of today's blog post: the white piece of paper. When you arrive in c...

In the latest round of stories about our recent Argentina trip , I'm going to talk about pizza. It's not the first time that pizza has been the subject of a blog post , and it probably won't be the last time, either. It's just one of those dishes that shows up a bunch in life, y'know? First of all, I should start by pointing out that Argentina has its own special brand of pizza. There may actually be several of these varieties, but the one I kept hearing about was the fugazza . The first time I heard about it, the Mild Wife had had some during the day, and mentioned to me that it was both different than the pizza we got at home and tasty. Given that she liked it, I was more than a little intrigued. As it turns out, I was not the only one intrigued by this pizza. One of my other coworkers on the trip also had his curiosity piqued by this local pizza. I don't remember how it came up in conversation, but someone must have mentioned it at some point. Well, from ...

So, we were in Argentina for a while . Specifically, we were in the Buenos Aires area for a good amount of time. I normally leave off some of those details because I figure they won't really add too much to the story, but in this case, it might be relevant (I will allow you to decide). During that time, we got to explore a little bit and see a bit of the city. More importantly to the Mild Wife and me, though, that also meant we got to sample some of the food. We had actually scouted out particular dishes before we got there, so there was something of a list to try. Argentina is known for its steak and wine, so those were givens. However,  empanadas and medialunas  also made it on to the scout list, in part because the Mild Wife did a bit of homework (side note: in looking for good sites to link the two items in this sentence, I discovered a piece that says the pastry names are actually a form of political dissidence . Who knew?). Basically, we had a few items that we were i...