Mild Amusement

A while back, I had a nice meal with my family. Both my brother and my sister-in-law were present at that meal, and all three of us thoroughly enjoyed our meals. As it turned out, I finished my meal that night, despite the waiter more or less telling me he didn't think that I could do it. The whole thing cracked me up, so I wrote about it. Truth be told, it's not like I was bragging about my eating prowess.  Maybe it's because I'm getting older and wiser, or maybe I'm just getting lazy, but t hose days are past. I've decided that I should try to eat smaller portions , after all . In fact, I had lunch with a friend of mine recently, and she commented on just how small my lunch had been. I'm not just all talk, I tell you, I really am eating a little bit less these days. Regardless, I told the whole story as it happened: I finished my meal, but my brother and his wife did not finish theirs. There were some jokes about the size of the bowl of the soup, an...

I'm a curious person. I like to figure out how things work, and I like to understand what words mean. I don't pretend like I know everything about everything, but I do usually pay attention when I hear new tidbits of information. It's a trait that has served me well over the years, but every once in a while, it comes back to bite me in the butt. This is a story about one of those times. To lay the groundwork for how this came to be, let me back up about half a year. I was talking to a friend of mine, and she asked if I wanted to go a firearm course. I'd only been to the range once before , so I was intrigued by the concept. My friend just so happened to sign up for the class through one of those social deal websites, where you can get a discount if several people also bought the same deal. So, I signed up for an account. This was where it all started. The class was a decent use of an afternoon, though I did end up wishing that we'd had more time to shoot at the ...

I live in a big city, in a part of town where the blocks have a bunch of houses all bunched together. I don't mind it, but as a result of this set up, I don't really know many of my neighbors. I've seen a few of them around, and I say hello when I do. However, it's not like they know my life story and I don't know anything about their lives other than the fact that they live on my block. It's somewhat unfortunate, because we lose out on the community feel as a result. Still, there are times when I realize precisely why things are this way. As one person put it, I have at least one " weird neighbor ." Well, the neighbor on the other side of our house isn't exactly tons better. Back when we were working on the shed with a million nails , he suddenly decided that he was going to be more social. Well, actually, it's more like he draped himself over the fence between our two houses and started to inspect our work. Mind you, he did all of this whil...

Earlier this year, a calendar appeared in my room. I forget exactly where it came from, to be honest. It might have been one of those calendars that you get from a store after you buy something right around the beginning of the year. It might have been a gift (or a re-gift) that my parents didn't want. Either way, this thing appeared in my room. Not wanting to waste it, I hung it from a hook. Now, this particular calendar was the kind where you tore off a page every day. That put the onus on me to keep the calendar up to date on a daily basis, but I figured it wouldn't be that big a deal. I mean, it's a freaking calendar. How difficult could it be? Well, first of all, I wasn't quite in the habit of updating a calendar on a daily basis. Much like any other habit, it took a while to learn. So, for a good chunk of the month of January, I had the wrong date showing on my calendar. I didn't actually notice, truth be told. It's not like the calendar was humongous ...

I've said it before , but I very willingly laugh at myself and situations that could negatively impact me, largely because I'm too much of a smart ass. Quite often, I see the humor of the situation even when I am the "victim" in the scenario. I also tend to think that there's value in adding to the general amusement in the world, so I've always considered laughing at myself to be fair game. All in all, it makes for all sorts of interesting exchanges. The latest bout of this happened to be when I was in the hospital a few months back. First of all, I had to check in on a weekday, so I was by myself. The people who I could trust to bring me to the hospital were all working that day, so I strolled in by myself. That was fine, but the first nurse I saw was a bit surprised by this fact. In her words, she thought I "was a teenager, so [she] was about to ask where my parents were." Awesome. I was all of five minutes in to my excursion, and already things ...

A while back, a bunch of us went out for a birthday dinner as a family. Seeing as how it was for a birthday, we went to one of the nicer steak houses near by. I don't generally go to steak houses very often, and I definitely hadn't been to this one before. I didn't quite know what to expect, frankly. I shouldn't have worried. By the end of the meal, we all had a good meal and a surprising amount of laughter. First of all, we all decided on getting a pitcher of sangria. I think it was one of the few things we could all agree on, and it was pretty darn delicious. Of course, this was the beginning of the fun. One of my sister-in-law's brothers (side note: I'm always curious if there's a more succinct way of describing this relation) had had to miss the dinner, so my sister-in-law decided to make sure he knew exactly what he was missing. I think the word "awesome" and the phrase "what you're missing out on" were thrown around in some te...

A while back, I joined up with a bunch of friends for some beers on a weekend afternoon. They picked some place I'd never been to before, but I didn't care all that much. I mean, the general plan was "drink some beer," so it's not like I was going to be too exacting about the venue. I was running a little late, but by the time I got there, the rest of the crew was executing beautifully on the general plan. However, they had thrown a wrinkle in to the plan by also starting up a game of shuffleboard. It's rare that I see a shuffleboard table, so every time I do, I'm always amused by the novelty of the thing. However, seeing as how I was late, I got my hands on a mug of beer, sat back, and watched. Combining the commentary from the peanut gallery with the beers that had been consumed, this was a pretty amusing spectacle to watch. As it turned out, I wasn't going to be a spectator for long. At one point, one of the other guys bowed out, so I stepped up...