Mild Amusement

August 8, 2009. Over twelve years ago, I started blogging with this simple post . I didn't really have a great reason for starting the blog, other than I wanted to try it out. I wanted to try writing and putting it where others could read it. I don't know, it just seemed like a new adventure to try. Along the way, there have been all sorts of posts and all sorts of life events, but through it all, I kept writing. It just became a part of what I do at some point. It wasn't a matter of whether I was going to write a blog post, it was a matter of when. The Mild Wife has described it as a "writing practice," and it was one of the reasons why I kept writing. Honestly, it's good practice, and it gives me an opportunity to hone my craft. I'm no professional author, but we all have to write stuff in our everyday lives. Why not give yourself reps to get better at it? However, I think it's time for that practice to change. My weekly anecdotes sure kept me amused...

So, in the ongoing saga that I have been writing about the last few weeks, a perfect storm of random occurrences led me to taking a trip to the office. Once there, I went about my day, but leaving led me to wander through a mine field of geese and goose droppings . Incidentally, I also happened to mention this to my coworkers, and one of them introduced me to the nickname that Canadian geese sometimes go by: the " cobra chicken ." All in all, that one day led to much hilarity. Still, at this point in our tale, I wasn't home yet. The Mild Wife was out and about that day, so we had agreed to carpool. I was going to hop on the bus, and she would pick me up from a BART station. We've actually done this a bunch, and it had become my go-to means of transportation before the pandemic started. It saved me from having to deal with rush hour traffic, so I was actually a big fan of this process. I expected far less traffic on this day, but even so, it was a sound plan so that...

Recently, I had to make a trip to the office . It was an unplanned excursion, but I still had to physically go in to the building. It was a bit of a comedy of errors, so I can laugh about it now. However, all of that just involved the reasons for why I had to leave the house. There were still a few bits of hilarity once I arrived in the office. As you can imagine, there are far fewer people who go into the office these days. That part wasn't surprising to me; in fact, I wasn't sure if I'd run into anyone at all. However, I wasn't prepared for the other residents who seem to have set up shop in those buildings. You see, with fewer people around, the animals don't have to worry quite as much about running into something that scares them. Specifically, the geese don't have nearly as much competition, so they're free to wander the grounds. I was reminded of this when I saw a sign that actually said to watch out for them. As a reminder, geese are very, very terri...

I have been working from home for something like eighteen months now. It's long past a novelty at this point; it's just how I get stuff done for work. Sure, I get to have my own snacks and do push ups without any funny looks, but at the end of the day, I'm trying to get work done. Now, as it so happens, I have a work laptop that requires company-issued credentials in order to log in. This isn't super uncommon, so I don't really think much about it most of the time. However, if you have to renew those credentials, things start to get a little bit more interesting. I remember a long time ago, I used to have to get a new badge that was encoded with new credentials. It was very much a process where I had to rely on others in order to complete. These days, there is a self-service portal that lets me go through the motions on my own. That's much better than the bad old days, but since I'm not working from the office lately, that means having to do this remotely....

There are a bunch of everyday tasks around the Mild Home that require waiting some amount of time. Say I put want to put something in the oven, I need to make sure that I take it out after a set amount of time. I mean, bad things happen if you leave food in the oven for a long time. If you're lucky, it's just inedible; if you're unlucky, then the smoke alarm is involved. Quite a few of them involve food (steep the tea for X minutes, uncover the pot after Y minutes, etc.), so that should come as no surprise. However, I recently had to use baking soda and vinegar to help unclog a sink. As I discovered, you don't just dump those things down the sink. You wait 5-10 minutes after mixing those ingredients in the sink, to let them do their thing. Otherwise, it just fizzes for a bit, and nothing really happens. In either case, I needed to wait for a set amount of time. Now, when it comes to setting a timer, I have a few options. There are timers on the stove and on my cell phon...

A few months ago, I tried my hand at making home-made dumplings . It came out all right, and it was definitely passable for a first attempt, but we always said that we should have another go at it. After all, if we liked it all right when we made it with no first-hand experience, it should come out even better after having at least one rep under our belt, right? We found out this weekend. First of all, the Mild Wife helped with the dough preparation this time around. I knew to be wary of making the dough too sticky this time around, but because she has more experience with baking, she was able to guide us through the pitfalls. What really surprised me was just how little water you can/should add at a time. We're talking about a tablespoon at a time when you're trying to make a ball of dough. I mean, I knew not to overwater it from previous experience, but it still surprised me to add in that little water at a time. Still, there was a method to this ( including the trusty sanduk...

I've mentioned it before, but I like to watch some Netflix while I do the dishes . I don't remember when I started the practice, but it's become a routine at this point. It gives me something to focus on while I do chores, and it makes the whole experience more enjoyable. All in all, it seems like a good idea to me. Now, I know that my screen time is limited. I'm certainly not going to wash dishes for two hours, so I can't watch an entire movie in one go. Heck, half the time, I can't even watch half of a movie in a single session. Ultimately, that drives my viewing preferences, so that I tend to favor episodic shows. Basically, that's how I watch some show or another: one dishwashing session at a time. Recently, that's been the Star Trek: Enterprise show. I never watched it when it first came out on television, so this is my chance to see the whole series. As with many series, there are some good episodes and some not-so-good episodes. Still, it's a...

For much of my life, I have had a really large appetite. I never really intended for this to happen, but it just did. In fact, people around me would occasionally notice the amount of food that I ate , and there would inevitably be some good-natured ribbing about it. It was just one of those random tidbits that was true about me, sort of like the color of my hair or which of my hands is my dominant hand. However, that started to change as I got older. I'm not geriatric, but I wrote over a decade ago that my appetite was starting to look more like the average person's  (also, it's more than a little crazy to me that I can reference something I wrote 10+ years ago. That seems like a lifetime ago). Time and age have definitely changed that particular fact about me. What's more, as it's become more of the norm for me to eat less, I have started to feel uncomfortable if I eat too much. It's not even a matter of comparing how much I eat now versus what I used to eat; ...

The Mild Wife and I make spreadsheets. It's just one of those things that we do. There was a time when I probably would've contested whether this was true, but as time has gone on and more spreadsheets have "magically" appeared in our lives, it's become harder and harder to dispute. I mean, we were talking about a wish list, and a spreadsheet popped out . The most obvious place where this comes up, though, is with our monthly budget . I mean, we're literally talking about trying to make sure numbers match up. Even if I didn't love spreadsheets quite as much, this would be one scenario where it'd just make sense to use this particular tool. There are lots of numbers to track, and we want to keep an eye on how much we're spending. This seems like a classic case for a spreadsheet. Well, given how prevalent they are in our lives, this also means that I've gotten used to seeing some of the numbers. In very simplified terms, I track monthly payments ...

Unfortunately, this pandemic seems to be drawing out even farther. I'd started to think that we might be getting over the hump, but the number of cases keep rising and there are new variants that seem to be causing concern all over again. I'm not predicting doom and gloom, but let's just say that I'm not surprised that some counties are starting to issue lockdown and mask rules again. Ultimately, that means that the Mild Wife and I have to ensure our mask game is on point again. We still have a few from the initial bout of sewing  but it's sure looking like we're going to need masks in the near future. Given that, I figured I might as well start making a few more. Of course, I've got a few more reps under my belt now, so I can start to think more about how we want the finished product to look rather than the mechanics of whether or not I threaded the machine properly. The latest sewing blog post happened to be about masks, and it was from a few weeks ago, s...

There are some songs that are just plain catchy. I'm sure a lot of thought goes into making these songs so there's some science to it, but I don't know what that science looks like. From my perspective, some music just randomly gets stuck in people's heads. They're just ... easy to listen to over and over again. I don't just mean the ones that get stuck in my head , but they seem to catch the collective consciousness and make a home there. A good example of this was that " Let It Go " song from the movie Frozen. It was well done, and I can fully understand why it was as popular as it was. Even so, look at the number of views on that video. There are over 500 million views, so it was more than just a catchy song. Lots and lots of people were watching that, and I guarantee you that some of them were watching it repeatedly. In fact, I know for a fact that some people were watching that video on a loop, because I have friends and coworkers who told me thei...

As I've mentioned before, the Mild Wife and I invested in a sewing machine during the pandemic. It was the most basic model we could find, but it was good enough for what we needed: to make a few masks. And now, over a year later, I still think that it was a good investment. Interestingly, even with restrictions being lifted a bit, we still find that we need masks. Some stores still require them, and neither of us wants to be in a position where we needed a mask and didn't have one. So, we still have to wear and wash them. And even though we've never run out of clean masks to wear, we did notice that we were close a couple of times. So, I recently broke out the sewing machine to make a few more masks. When we initially invested in supplies, we bought a pack of fabric squares. We figured we weren't going to need super high quality, and having a bunch of squares would give us options in case one of us screwed up (read: me). That also gave us the ability to add a little v...

At my parents' house, they have a chopstick that has been worn down a couple of inches. It lives near the coffee machine, and has become a fixture there. It's not quite worn down to the nub, but it's well on its way. Imagine a pencil that has been half-used, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what it looks like. It's just been worn down over time and through use. Now, I've always found that one chopstick mildly interesting. I mean, I fully understand the physics that led to that, but it's sort of like seeing a rock that has been worn smooth by a running river. There's this moment of wonder where you contemplate the ravages of time, you know? The other thing that always came to mind was a sense of wonder. I mean, clearly, my parents could see that this chopstick was getting the worse end of that interaction. Couldn't they have just switched to a different tool/implement? And why the coffee machine? That seems like a strange place for a chopstick. I...

I've mentioned here and there that the Mild Wife is a really good cook . I mean, I try to pull my weight and I have a trick or two up my sleeve , but I can't quite make up the differential in time and reps that the Mild Wife has. Basically, she's put in a lot of effort into honing her craft in the kitchen, and it shows. I'm leading with that only because it's the only explanation I can find for some of her inspirations. It's not so much that she's imaginative, it's more that she has inklings that certain ingredients will taste good together. I firmly believe that a good part of the reason for this is that she has worked with these ingredients enough to truly get a grasp on their flavors. Think about it; if you're a carpenter, your experience gives you a good idea what type of wood or nails are best for a particular project. If you then have to build something you've never made before, you can probably guess which materials you could apply. Heck, ...

A long time ago, the Mild Wife shared a story about one of her friends' kids. This particular friend has a young daughter who happens to like Hello Kitty quite a bit. This in it of itself is not that surprising - that's a huge industry worldwide, so there are lots and lots of kids who like Hello Kitty. However, what made this story funny was that they found Hello Kitty where they least expected it: the supermarket. You see, Hello Kitty has branched out beyond the usual toys and plushies. It is now possible to buy Hello Kitty wine and Hello Kitty pasta . This notion had never occurred to me before, but as the Mild Wife's friend discovered, it is most definitely a real thing. When her daughter discovered this at the grocery store, she insisted that they buy some. The mom gave in and purchased the pasta, so there was a good laugh to be had. The story doesn't end there, though. No, this particular kid was so enamored with the pasta of one of her favorite characters that s...

My job requires me to sit a lot. It's not a huge inconvenience or anything, but it's a well-known risk of my profession that it can lead to back pain and carpal tunnel. It's just one of those things that I have to watch out for. For the most part, it's not a huge deal, especially since I do push ups every hour during the work day . Getting up at least once per hour helps to break up the long periods of sitting in the same position, so the longest amount of time that I'm seated in the same position is about an hour. I hadn't intended those push ups to be a posture and ergonomic thing, but I'll happily take the side effects. Still, there's only so much that a quick break from sitting can do, so I started looking into ways to tweak my posture. I mean, why not be proactive about stretches and exercises to try to prevent harm? What's the worst that can happen? I have a stronger back? As it just so happens, I found a YouTuber that seems to have some good s...

I mentioned it in passing once before, but the Mild Wife and I have been  cooking things that provide food for several days at once. I'm not entirely sure that it was a conscious decision with tons of discussion in advance, but that's the routine we have settled in. So when we roast a chicken on the weekends, we eat some of it that day, and then use the rest of it throughout the week. We make broth out of the bones, and we shred the remaining meat to use throughout the week. But how, exactly, do we consume that shredded chicken? Well, we do all sorts of things with it. Sometimes we'll make fried rice with the chicken, sometimes we'll make tacos, and sometimes we make salads with it. There are a bunch of options. It's never quite the same thing, but cooking is much easier when your ingredients are pre-prepped and pre-chopped. Lately, though, we've been making sandwiches with the shredded chicken. Specifically, we've been making something like a chicken salad...

The Mild Wife generally likes to do her research when she buys things that are going to last a while. I mean, it makes sense: you're going to have this thing around for months, if not years, so you might as well make sure you make a good investment. No one is going to raise an eyebrow if you do your homework before buying a car, for example. It's an investment, so you want to make sure you know as much as possible before you buy it. As I've pointed out before, though, this habit also extends to makeup . Now, it's not as big an investment from a pure financial standpoint, but as I've discovered, many of these products are meant to last many, many months. What's more, you are literally putting this product on your face. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to slap on something that made me look terrible. So, she does her homework. Like I said, this makes sense to me. However, skin tones are not an exact science. It's not like there's a hex c...

The Mild Wife is fond of saying that people have "preferences." Like if you were to look in my closet, you'd probably notice that a fair number of my clothes follow a pattern. I don't wear tons of bright colors, for example. Sure, I've got some yellow and red shirts, but there are a lot more items in dark blues and blacks. I don't duplicate shirts or clothing items, but some colors definitely show up more than others. Like she says, people have preferences. Now, this also extends to habits in general. Heck, I've been known to say "habits die hard" on more than one occasion ( like this blog post ). It's the same basic principle as having preferences, only with muscle memory and repetition added to the mix. If you've done something for weeks or months, it's very likely that you'll naturally default to that again. In this particular case, the habit has to do with wrapping and unwrapping presents. To be completely frank, I tend to be ...

A couple of years ago, the Mild Wife and I thoroughly enjoyed a trip to Buenos Aires . We have a lot of happy memories about that trip, but one of the more surprising ones was that we had a legitimately good time chowing down on vegetables  at some Asian restaurants. I still somewhat suspect that this may have been a result of the local restaurants near our hotel, but in either case, we genuinely enjoyed those vegetable-heavy meals. One other interesting side effect of this trip was that we also grew to appreciate club soda . I don't quite remember at what point we realized it, but we realized at some point that if we consumed a glass of club soda around meal times, it seemed to help with digestion. I'm sure I can come up with some quasi-logical reason for this, but honestly, I don't know why this is true (it does, however, seem to be true according to WebMd ). All I know is that we felt better if we had more club soda, so we started mixing that in with our meals. Now, it...

Lately, the Mild Wife and I have been getting into plants and flowers. We've always appreciated having flowers of some type around the house, but it has become more of a point of emphasis lately. I can't quite pinpoint when exactly this change happened, but there are now more plants around the Mild Home. If I had to guess, part of it was that we have been sending flowers to my family members more often during the last year or so. In essence, it's become more of a part of our lives, so I'm guessing that some of that energy has been directed to the Mild Home. I mean, think about it; if you peruse the websites that sell plants and flowers more often, it's more likely to come to mind when thinking about your own abode. The funny thing about that is that it forms a cycle that feeds in on itself. If we're thinking about plants more often, we're also going to think about them as presents more often. We're way down the rabbit hole at this point. So, it should c...

The Mild Wife and I have always appreciated a little bit of time to watch something together via a streaming service. We sometimes partake in other activities while watching  (and they're probably not ones you can guess), but there are quite a few posts on here about Netflix-related amusement. Heck, last week's post was inspired by something that we watched on Netflix. Now, all that is fun, but this post isn't about Netflix. You see, we recently ventured into Amazon Prime Videos. We've actually had Amazon Prime for a little while, but we have never really bothered to check what movies or shows were available to us. For one, we already pay for a streaming service, so we didn't really have a huge desire to pay for even more content. Neither of us really minded choosing from Netflix's collection. However, we happened to be browsing through Amazon recently when we realized that there were free-to-us options. These movies force you to watch some ads, but otherwise, ...

Recently, the Mild Wife and I started watching " The Big Family Cooking Showdown " on Netflix. I don't remember whether it was recommended based on previous watching history or if we just decided to pull it up on a lark, but we started watching it nevertheless. If you've ever seen " The Great British Baking Show ," this show has a very similar look and feel. It is a cooking competition, but it's not cutthroat at all. It very much feels like a family-friendly show featuring friendly families. Since this show specifically focuses on home cooking, you get folks cooking things that look like something we might actually attempt to make at the Mild Home. I mean, it can be fun to watch some professional chef cook a giant lobster and top it with caviar and truffle sauce, but I'm never going to make something like that. The stuff that these folks make, though, looks something we might actually attempt to make. We might not make the recipe exactly as is, but w...

The Mild Wife and I recently decided that it was safe enough to hazard a hike at a nearby trail. We were still good about wearing our masks and socially distancing, but hiking is probably a particularly good solitary activity. It's not like you need to team up with other people in order to make it to the end of a short trail. What's more, we also made sure to get there early to avoid lots of people, so there were plenty of precautions involved. In either case, this meant that we found ourselves on a trail doing a morning hike. As you can probably imagine, it's been a while since either of us has partaken in this particular activity, so we definitely noticed that there were a few muscles we hadn't used in a while. I mean, we've still been trying to exercise during the pandemic , but sometimes there just aren't great substitutions for the real deal. Let's just say that the Mild Wife and I both remembered the next day that we had been hiking the day before (not...

Sunscreen and I have an interesting relationship. On the one hand, I am fully aware of the value of sunscreen and the dangers of melanoma . I get that I should wear sunscreen, and I accept this fact. If I know I'm going to be out in the blazing sun for a whole day or even an afternoon, I will put on sunscreen. I don't gripe about it, I just do it. It's what you're supposed to to to protect yourself from prolonged exposure, so I do so. On the other hand, I have had quite a few adventures with a lack of sunscreen. In one case, I ended up with a farmer's tan because I didn't reapply the sunscreen when hanging out with a friend . In another, I ended up with a sunburn on the inside of my knees because I almost  covered every part of my body, but didn't quite manage to do so. Essentially, I'm not meticulous about the process, oftentimes with hilarious results. If I'm really honest, I think part of that is because I don't really like the process of app...

I have a bad habit of forgetting to check the expiration date on some things. It's not that I'm trying to hold on to items for longer than they are useful, it's just that I forget that they're there. For example, I used to keep some allergy meds in my backpack back when I was going to the office. It wasn't that I needed them all the time, but I didn't want to take a stroll outside and then spend the rest of the day being unfit to be around people. So, I took a precaution by keeping some meds on me. However, I didn't need them very often, so they just sort of sat there for months. And then the Mild Wife would notice a long time after that, and exclaim that I had expired allergy medicine. You get the idea. The same was true for a pack of gum that I used to keep in my lunch bag. It was there mostly as a precaution when I was packing lunch and bringing it to the office . I didn't have pungent foods for lunch very often, so it mostly sat there unused. From wh...

I once mentioned, a while back, that I sometimes have difficulty finding items that have been moved slightly, even if they are in a clear, transparent container . The Mild Wife has largely solved this problem by labelling the jars, so as to provide visual hints. Still, it's not a foolproof method. You can't realistically label the fridge shelves, for example. And no matter how clever the system, there are bound to be brain farts that mess up the system. In essence, a sufficiently talented fool can always defeat a fool-proof system. That, my friends, is why the Mild Home has recently had an uptick in the phrase, " look with your eyes, not with your mouth ." From what I understand, this is a fairly common saying in some Asian households, so the Mild Wife recalls it vividly from her childhood. It was not so common a saying in my own household as I was growing up, so it is still somewhat novel to me. Incidentally, that also makes it a little more amusing to me. The joke ...

Every so often, a random topic of conversation makes its way through the Mild Home. There is no real rhyme or reason to it, it just sort of happens. It can be about just about anything, and, in all honesty, it's part of the fun of conversations between the Mild Wife and I. I mean, imagine if you're just sitting there on a random Thursday afternoon, and then suddenly you find yourself cackling at the notion of someone in the family might have two cats . That's spice of life type stuff, you know? Anyhow, I have a new addition to this random assortment of musings from the Mild Home. In this case, we're going to revisit a childhood lullaby, Baby Beluga . Now, it has been many, many years since I have sung that particular song, so I don't remember all of the lyrics off the top of my head. All I really remember is "baby Belua in the deep blue sea, swim so wild and swim so free." I actually suspect I'm not alone in this, either, because that's arguably t...