Mild Amusement

We moved into our current place less than a year ago, so I don't know all of my neighbors.  It probably doesn't help that my long commute keeps me away from home for a while, but it is what it is.  Sure, I've seen a few of them every now and then, but we're hardly friends.  They're definitely in the "greet them with a head nod but no words" zone. So, I was most definitely surprised when the next door neighbor rang the doorbell.  My mom said something about the neighbor wanting to talk, and I raised an eyebrow.  Then my mom figured that I should tag along in case she needed a second set of eyes and ears.  I'd also like to think she needed someone intimidating in case things went sour with the next door neighbor (that'd be me).  Luckily, the lady was nice, so I didn't have to bust any heads. However, she started telling us about these suspicious dirt piles on/in our small little grass/garden patch in front of our house.  Apparently, there is ...

If you remember the hippy medicine I took a while back, you know that I'm no stranger to odd labels.  When I scanned that label, I definitely raised an eye brow.  I think I may have recently topped that, though.  I can only imagine the moxy that would be required to come up with the labels on the items below.  I want in, I tell you. The first thing that made me think this was a trail mix snack from the vending machine.  I normally try to away from the vending machine, but on this day, I was particularly hungry and I needed an extra snack.  Part of the reason why I stay away from the vending machine is that most of the options aren't exactly healthy.  So when I do cave in and plop down a dollar for an item, I usually aim for something that's not going to clog my arteries (much). Luckily for me, the little items have these little labels of a green leaf to indicate which items are healthy/good for you.  Scanning through the green-leafed items, I...

If you've been reading this blog for any extended period of time, you probably know that I have a few rules for myself.  Each week, I try to work out three times, do at least one good deed , and eat two vegetarian meals .  Each of these rules has a back story (read the links if you're curious), but the point is that I try to live a certain way.  I'm not hardcore about it, either; it's not like I'm about to commit harakiri if I mess up one week. Over time, however, I've also developed rules for other people around me.  Those, on the other hand, are far stricter (and far funnier, truth be told).  It all started when I was on a business trip with a coworker/friend of mine.  She ended up getting pretty sick, and I had to pick up medicine for her while she rested up in a hotel room (as an aside, customs officials get very, very curious if said friends ask for "drugs" instead of "medicine" via text message).  Well, it actually got bad enough tha...

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...

The recent post about parking couldn't have been timelier.  I was walking home the other day, and I found someone that was on the other end of the parking conversation.  In this case, someone had blocked the driveway in front of this person's house. To be clear, I think the person has every right to be upset in this case.  For one, that's illegal.  Secondly, it legitimately blocks the path of any cars trying to park in the driveway or garage.  My beef with the people who get on our case is that they feel entitled to something to which they're not actually entitled.  In this case, the people living in this house are entitled to have a driveway free of other people's cars.  I'm siding with the people in the house on this one. So did these people just tow the offending car to deal with the problem?  No, they did something far, far awesomer (yes, I know that's not a real word, but it's awesomer than "more awesome," thank you very much).  Ins...

The other day, I drove home and there was no parking.  I drove all the way up my block, and I didn't see anything.  That was surprising, since this was late at night.  It's not like there's a shortage of parking on my street (except for right around church services); there's usually a spot or two free.  Still, I had to circle for a bit to find a space, and I went about my business.  It was mildly annoying, but that's how it goes sometimes. Apparently, though, I may be alone in my thinking on this.  Recently, I've discovered that people can be very touchy about the parking near their houses.  The public parking near their houses, mind you.  For example, the van I ride to and from work needs to be parked somewhere overnight, so we always park it near the last stop.  I've actually counted, and there are something like 10 spots for 4 houses on each side of the street, for a two-block stretch.  So we park in whatever space we find when we ...

As I've mentioned before, the company for which I work is trying to save money .  I get it, spending more money than you make is generally a bad thing.  So they're taking steps to remedy that.  And most of these things make sense.  There is, however, one particular cost-cutting measure that I take a little bit of issue with: the lights. Funnily enough, I'm normally a huge fan of not wasting electricity via lights.  At home, I'm the one who's always walking around turning off lights behind people when they leave the room.  People will leave a room, go do something else for 10-15 minutes, and then stroll back in.  That's a full 10-15 minutes of electricity that didn't need to be used, so I turn off the lights.  When I was younger, my mom once joked that she'd save money whenever I was home, because of this habit. At work, they put motion detectors on the lights in offices.  The idea is pretty similar to what I do naturally; if there's no on...