Mild Amusement

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...