Mild Amusement

As the days of COVID-19 are dragging on, we are having to make more adjustments to our usual routines. Some of these changes are so mundane that I haven't mentioned them at all in this blog, while others have lead to some pretty funny anecdotes . That's probably par for the course, since you wouldn't expect a global pandemic to be all giggles. As it turns out, however, not all of the anecdotes happen to us directly. Having to socially distance and remotely do things has actually led to at least one goofy episode that we found out from afar. You see, it was our niece's birthday recently, but we couldn't visit her because of the aforementioned social distancing. So, we figured we'd ship her a present and call her on her birthday. We couldn't be there in person, but we could still wish her well and try to make her feel special on her birthday. Given that shipping times have been erratic the last few months, we ordered the present with plenty of time, and it arr...

I mentioned a while ago that a few of us had started doing push ups as a bit of a game . It was mostly just a way to add a bit of fun and poke fun at each other as a team-building thing, but at some point, it sort of ran its course. It wasn't going to be novel forever, and at some point, we realized that for some people it might actually impede their work day. So, we switched it up. Instead, the members of push up club changed the format: we had to do push ups every hour during the work day. Not everyone works the same schedule, so we stuck to the hours when we knew that everyone was in the office. That worked out to 8 hours during the day, so that meant 8 sets of push ups. The actual number of reps changed over time, and we also adjusted it for each person to account for different levels of strength. So, every now and then, you would hear someone say, "okay, it's almost 9AM. Push up time!" as a few people dropped down to do their hourly push ups. That format actually...

Now that the Mild Wife and I have started making our own kombucha , the whole process has led to a steady stream of laughs. We mostly started it as a way to try to save some money, but it has led to a whole mess of chuckles throughout the whole process. It has been quite the pleasant surprise, I have to say. First of all, I should point out that I generally don't like getting my hands dirty. I don't know why, but this has been one of those things that's always been part of my personality. You know how some kids would play in mud or get stains on stuff throughout the house? Generally speaking, I stopped doing that by the time I hit elementary school. I can deal with it if my hands are sticky or greasy, but it's not my favorite feeling in the world. I usually end up washing my hands shortly thereafter. I mention this because when you brew kombucha, you have to scoop out the SCOBY from your brew jar at some point. The SCOBY is the culture that ultimately turns sweet tea in...

As I've mentioned a couple of times now, grocery shopping has gotten a lot more creative lately. We are being very conservative about going outdoors during the pandemic, so we try to get many of our groceries delivered to us where we can. As we have discovered, though, there are times when that means that we end up with surprises about what the actual item in question consists of. It's not a huge deal, but it does lead to some confusion and some laughs when it happens. This time around, we had a slight variation on that general theme. You see, we decided to buy groceries from Whole Foods because they deliver and because Amazon is still a thing in our household. Specifically, we chose to purchase a frozen berries pack. It had a mix of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, so we figured it'd provide a little variety. Now, we do tend to favor fresh produce when we can find it, but we are not above buying frozen fruit or frozen vegetables. At the end of the day, they sti...