Mild Amusement

A few months back, I agreed to go to salsa classes (there was alcohol involved). I didn't just agree to it, though, my friend made me pinky swear to this plan (I repeat, there was alcohol involved). After that, there was no way I could back out. I was pretty much locked in. So, I've been going to salsa classes with a group of friends after work, since others wanted in on the fun. Now, the way these classes work is that you're constantly changing partners. They do that so that you get as much experience as possible. Everyone does the same move slightly differently, and figuring out what works (and what doesn't) makes you a better dancer. Particularly for someone who has to lead, working with different people is helpful to figure out the details. However, changing partners all the time also meant that for the first few weeks, I was dealing with total strangers. That led to all sorts of fun. For starters, where should I look when dancing with this new-found partn...

I think I've made various mentions of my CrossFit work outs on this blog, so it should be no surprise that it's my preferred form of exercise. That's not to say I don't play sports or go running every now & then. Still, when it comes to keeping myself healthy, I like doing the CrossFit thing. It's a great way to exercise, to be sure. I think most of us have noticed very positive results as a result of working out this way. But really, what makes it even more fun is that it feels like family. There's a bunch of camaraderie & we all root for each other. I don't think I've ever seen the last person finish their workout without someone else sticking around for encouragement. There's friendly competition against each other, too; if one person uses heavier weights, you'll usually see at least 2 others up their weight, too. The best part about it feeling like family, though, is that it also means we bicker like siblings. And THAT is fla...

At work, the team of which I'm a part asks that you let everyone else know if you're going to be out on a certain day. The idea is that it's easier to figure out when we have schedule conflicts and no one sits around waiting for you if you're not around. We have a group calendar, but often times, people forget about it. Really, the de facto way of doing this is by sending out an email to the group saying, "I'll be out of the office on day X for reason Y. I'll be back on day Z, if you need to reach someone, do Q." Now, you're under no obligation to tell everyone your business. You can say, "I need to take care of some personal matters" and that's that. However, most of the time the reasons are benign: doctor's appointments, obligations with kids, vacations. That means that people get in the habit of writing emails with the real reason why they're out. This has led me to laugh out loud on more than one occasion. Some...

Among the other fallout from my recent Houston trip , I ended up with a pretty nasty sounding cough. I didn't feel sick, but I sounded pretty bad. In fact, I got through a fairly intense "bootcamp" class with that cough, so I figured I was fine (side note: the running joke seems to be that I had mono). Still, I sounded sick. It got bad enough that I figured I'd use a sick day a couple of days after I got back to rest up. A day of rest is usually enough to help me recover from colds & coughs, so I figured I'd be back to the grind the next day. And since I was being all good about taking care of myself, I went looking for cough medicine, too. If I was actually trying to make myself get better, it couldn't hurt to actually try to make myself get better. Now I haven't been sick enough to take medicine in a while, so I had to ask where the medicine was. My mom pulled out a box of the stuff, and then wandered off to deal with something else. The fir...

I was recently in Houston with some work friends for a long weekend/vacation. It was a lot of fun; we ate & drank plenty, we saw a couple of shows (Miss Saigon & Wonderland ), and there was general merriment to be found. Heck, I even found a guy who used to be in the armed services that taught a class called "Bootcamp" (all you other "bootcamp" classes taught at random gyms, I'm pretty sure you got nothing on this guy). It was a good time, and I'm glad I went. But you know what worries me? On this trip, it felt like my friends were slowly taking more liberties with messing with me. It's not like anyone was out and out being a jerk (if they were, we'd have words). No, it was far more insidious & devious than that. It felt like a slow turning of the tides, with yours truly on the receiving end of the crashing wave. Don't believe me? I present to the jury Exhibit A: after watching Miss Saigon, a couple of people joked that I remi...

A while back, my friend talked me into running the Kaiser Half Marathon . There was actually a group of us that decided to run that race, so we'd all been fairly diligent about training. I had to skip out on a 10 mile run a couple of weeks before the actual race, but I'd been pretty good up to that point. All in all, I felt like I was doing a halfway decent job of training, so I was shooting for 2 hours or less. And seeing as how that was roughly the midpoint between my San Jose time and my Vegas time, it seemed like a reasonable goal. On the morning of the race, I got up early (side note: why can't there ever be a race that starts at 10AM or something?) and got all ready to go. I had opted for picking up my race packet that morning, so I actually had to be there even earlier than most people. Given that, I figured I'd skip breakfast at the house and grab a banana or bagel somewhere near the start line. They generally have something for the participants, and it...

I think I might be slipping on the social hierarchy at work. I've never exactly been at the top, mind you. But I get by, you know? I have a non-trivial number of friends at work, and they, in turn, are socially capable. I kind of figure that if my friends aren't social outcasts, then by the transitive property, I'm not one, either (really, I'm just riding their coattails). At least that was the working theory until today. Today, the guy I used to work with emailed me back about a birthday lunch. We usually try to celebrate people's birthdays with at least a lunch in their honor. If we know the person better or can get something together, we'll do dinner or hit a club, but that really depends on the circumstances. Anyhow, I emailed this guy yesterday asking him if he wanted to do a birthday lunch. Well, the question was more like, "when are you free for said lunch?" And he didn't get back to me. Mind you, this is an office environment at a...