Mild Amusement

So, there is a common idiom in English about going around in circles . It means roughly that you're not really accomplishing anything because you end up at the same spot you started (that's what happens when you traverse a circle). It's a simple enough notion, and the saying rarely needs explaining. It just sort of makes sense. Well, let me tell you, I have reason to disagree. In my case, I don't mean the sort of hypothetical running around in circles, I mean the literal kind. I have literally gone around in circles and found value in the exercise. It's also worth noting that the act wasn't a way of getting exercise, either. No one would dispute that running laps around a track has its own value (even if you're the type who finds that kind of exercise boring, you can understand the logic behind it). However, in my case, it wasn't a way to get exercise. I have different, more amusing, reasons. In the first case, I was sitting around at home, and I s...

Over the winter break, the Mild Girlfriend and I spent some time hanging out with family in Colorado. I don't head out that way as often as I would like, so it was good to see folks. However, the trip was not without its drawbacks. As it turns out, it's possible to hurt yourself on vacation, when you least expect it. On one of the warmer days, we decided to take a stroll through Garden of the Gods , in Colorado Springs. Sure, it was cold, but it wasn't snowing, nor was it freezing outside. All in all, we figured it'd be fine to walk through the park. There were a bunch of other people there, too, so we couldn't have been too wrong (either that, or we were all suffering from mass hysteria). Regardless, for all that it has an impressive sounding name, the Garden of the Gods park is mostly just some flat walking. There are lots of really, really tall rocks and peaks, but none of us were trained climbers. That was out of the question, especially in that weather. How...

I walk funny . Or at least that's what I've been told. It's not exactly like I can watch myself while walking, so I just have to take other people's word for it. If enough people tell me that I have a bit of a strut, then I have a bit of a strut. Luckily for me, it doesn't come up all that often. Aside from the anecdotes in the linked post, it's not a daily part of my life. About the only thing that comes to mind was that one of the Mild Exes once asked me to do a "pimp limp" version of the walk down the runway. Otherwise, it's just not something I think about. In fact, I'd pretty much forgotten that anyone has ever told me this before. That changed recently. One day at work, I had to talk to my coworker so I stopped by her desk. We chatted about the issue, and then I wandered off to get some water for myself. Now, I should note that there is a fairly high wall surrounding her cubicle, so as soon as I walked away, she couldn't see me. I...

Here in the United States, we drive on the right side of the road. We walk on the right side of the road. If you're on the escalator and you want to just stand while others walk around you, you stand on the right side. Basically, we tend to default to being on the right when in doubt. Many of us know, on an intellectual level, that people in other countries "drive on the wrong side of the road," but it's still just a random fact that we tuck away in the back of our minds. It's when you go to another country and actually experience that difference that things start to get interesting. Like, say, when I went to Japan. Given the title and the lead in to this post, you can probably guess that in Japan people drive on the left side of the road and stand on the left side of the escalator (while everyone passes you on the right). Now, it usually only takes a couple of times of walking "upstream" for you to realize that you're walking on the wrong side, ...

I don't know why, but I don't walk like most people do. I can't quite explain it, but I have been told numerous times that I have a very distinctive gait. It's the sort of thing where if I'm walking down a hill amongst several people, you can probably pick me out based on the way I'm walking. It's not a conscious decision to walk that way, I've pretty much always walked that. Even when I was a kid, people would comment that I had a strut, and that I sort of walked like my grandpa. Given that my grandpa has age working against him, it was probably a bit odd to have my walk compared to his. No one ever said it maliciously, though, and it's not like I knew a different way to walk. So, I kept doing it. Over the years, classmates of mine noticed this, as well. However, their description of said gait has been slightly different. Various friends that I have known for a while have commented that I walk "like a thug." In fact, one of them used t...

We moved into a new office building a while back, and everyone is settled into the new space by now.  It's not as nice as the offices we used to be in, but it's not like it's a horrible place to work.  It's a cubicle farm, it is what it is. It's a long, narrow building, so there are four elevators.  To either side of the elevator, there are also stairs that take you to the other floors.  So far, so good.  However, the bathrooms are also laid out to either side of the elevator.  One side has the men's restroom, and the other side has the women's restroom.  This, I have discovered, results in a couple of little quirks. If you are taking the stairs, you have to walk directly towards one of the two bathrooms, and turn off before you actually enter the bathroom.  I'd guess that the door to the stairs and the door to the bathrooms are probably about two feet apart.  Given that, and the fact I don't really want to cause any awkwardness with some...

I'm old school enough that I tend to avoid using force against women.  I'm not generally a fan of force/violence in every day situations anyway, but it's less of an option in my mind when the other person lacks a Y chromosome.  Still, I think I may have been tricked into using force against the fairer sex.  Now before I get vilified, let me explain. I was in Disneyland with a Mild Ex, and we were walking from one ride to the next.  There were a bunch of people around, as usual, and we were navigating the crowds.  There was a group of rowdy teenagers off to our right, and we were trying to avoid them by walking around them.  However, one of the guys was being sillier than the rest, and he was literally backing into us.  So, I put out a hand to make sure he didn't crash into us, and gave him a light push in the back to make sure he knew there were people behind him. And that's when I felt a bra strap. Yup, that "dude" was actually a girl.  No...

After my crappy flight , I was now in Newark, New Jersey at 7AM on a Friday morning. I had done a little bit of reading up, so I knew which bus I needed to take and where I was going to get off. All in all, getting into the city was surprisingly easy. I suppose speaking the language does make things simpler. Through no real planning of mine (a theme of the trip, at least on my part), I picked one of the later bus stops at which to get off, Grand Central. I actually just figured that getting off at Grand Central would give me options, and heck, it's called Grand Central. That just screamed "decent place to disembark that might be close to some stuff" to me, so that's where I got off. However, it also meant that we drove down 42 nd St to get to my bus stop. That just happens to be a big street, and it gave me a glimpse of Times Square as we drove by. My bus stop choice had accidentally given me a rough layout of the city. Go me. I had about 6 hours to kill...