Mild Amusement

Every now and then, the timing is more amusing than the actual thing. For example, I once let my sister and her husband use my bedroom when they stayed with us, only for me to have a hilariously hard time getting into a new routine during that time. I did eventually figure it out, but only on the very last day of their stay. Like I said, the timing is sometimes the funniest bit of the whole thing. In this case, it wasn't so much a slow crescendo that set up the joke. No, in this case, I had the PG&E public safety power shutoff to blame . If you're unfamiliar with what that was, the biggest utility company in California proactively shut off power to lots of people during some inclement weather. The craziest thing about it was that it wasn't even the kind of weather that you normally worry about. It wasn't high heat, extreme cold, pouring rains, or a hurricane. No, the root cause was high winds. Think about that; the wind blew so hard, that the utility company was ...

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...

In many ways, I am a creature of habit. There are some restaurants where I consistently order the same thing, for example (as best as I can tell, this was a large part of the confusion behind " do you know you? "). I've also been writing weekly blog posts for something like six years  (the actual blog has been around for longer, though). I honestly don't know where the time went, and it blows my mind that that fact is true. Still, there it is. Like I said, a creature of habit. Now, I realize this fact about myself, so I try to take advantage of it. That's why I build in little mnemonics into my life, to help generate results that I like. I don't want to forget my wallet in the car, so I pat my pockets down each and every time (check that last link if you're confused). Basically, that helps reduce the chances that I might walk away without it. As it turns out, I'm not the only one. I've heard other people reference their own version of a self p...

At work, my cubicle has a little closet for hanging up your coat. It's not very big, and I doubt I could fit more than two or three articles of clothing in there (there's only one hanger in there, though). Now, I know many of you might be commenting that I at least have a closet, and I don't deny that it's a nice little extra feature. I've actually never had one before, so I was pleasantly surprised when I walked into that cube and realized that I had my own mini closet. Since it was new to me, though, it took a while to build up the habit to actually use the thing. I've walked into a cube and hung my jacket on the back of my chair for years now. And even though I fully intended to take advantage of this new closet, I kept forgetting to do it at first. Of course, habit die hard, but they do die eventually. So I gradually got into the habit of hanging up my jacket (I always wear a jacket to work since I get up at the butt crack of dawn ), and I was mildly plea...