Mild Amusement

It's that time again, when I remind everyone that little kids are ridiculously fun to be around. Amazingly enough, this is actually the eighth installment in this "series," (if you're curious, here's the last one before this ) which means that I know a bunch of funny little kids. As always, I feel compelled to point out that I'm not actually laughing at the munchkins (I actually tend to get annoyed by people who do). I'm laughing with them, and I always take the opportunity to correct them if it's necessary. It's just hard not to be amused when one of them says something clever or unintended. So, without further ado, I present to you the latest bout of amusement that I've seen: (I am feeling sick, so I go to the fridge to get something to keep myself hydrated) Kid: "Sam, what's that?" Me: "Oh, it's juice" Kid: "Why are you drinking it?" Me: "I feel kind of sick, so I need to drink something....

I always get a laugh out of a good bet. I've been partial to a few good ones over the time that I've been blogging, so I've written about bets for finishing one's meal , running during vacation , and making it to work on a Monday morning . Win, lose, or draw, the bets have always made me laugh. Well, I made another bet that made me laugh, only this time, I ended up laughing at myself. Actually, I made a pair of bets. I was having dinner with a friend who generally doesn't like to be adventurous with food, so somehow we settled on a bet: she had to eat what I ordered for her for one meal. Remember, I'm the kind of person who will intentionally order items on menus that I haven't had before (and being able to roll with the culinary punches has been helpful on at least one occasion), so she really was taking a chance in making this bet. Ultimately, I ordered something fairly tame for her, a fish dish that she normally wouldn't have ordered. Still, it all...

I make no secret of the fact that I have geeky hobbies. I've been known to read comic books and wear associated t-shirts on occasion. I can still be goaded into a Lego competition by little kids, I keep a chess set in the office , and I have a highly developed sense of curiosity that often leads me to learn about random things like cooling a room without air conditioning . Heck, I work as a software developer during the day, so if nothing else, I've got geeky tendencies. None of this is a problem for me, it's just a part of my personality. If others want to judge me based on that, that's their prerogative. I'll happily go on doing my thing. Of course, I purposely said that it's part of my personality. As much as I enjoy doing some of those things, I also think I should try to be a well-rounded human being. The cliche of the absent minded professor is not something I aspire to, and I think people fall into the trap of using that as a crutch. Sure, everyo...

I forget who first mentioned Google Voice to me, but as soon as I heard about it, I liked the idea. It lets you have a phone number that you know will never change, regardless of which carrier you use, what country you're in, or just about any details of your physical presence. You can then have any phone you want ring when you receive calls, so it gives you all sorts of flexibility. It's entirely possible to have people call you and have it make a work phone ring, and then three hours later, have that very same phone number ring totally different number at home. Basically, it gives you more options, so I'm a fan. Well, for the most part. I don't usually mess with the call forwarding aspects of it, but I do like having a web interface for all of my voice mail and text messages. This is particularly useful when I'm at work, since I turn my phone notifications off when I'm there. I can switch over to a different tab to check in on messages when I know I have ...

People who have talked to me in the recent past know that my allergies have been acting up far more than usual lately. I've never really been a sickly person, but I have been sniffly and congested more in the last few months than in the last few years before that, combined. What makes the whole experience so bad is that it makes you unfit to be in public (do *you* want to hang out with someone liable to get snot on you?) and it makes you feel miserable. I started taking medicine on a daily basis to try to keep it under control, but every now and again, it would still flare up. Worse yet, it was entirely unpredictable. I've had myself tested to try to determine to what I was allergic, but nothing conclusively really came up (dust mites, pollen). I dusted and vacuumed regularly to try to prevent any of that from building up and causing problems, but every now and then, my sinuses would just decide to rebel for no apparent reason. I also know that although I can handle the col...

I'm not exactly a rookie at weddings; I'm old enough where I've been to a wedding or two . You get the person a gift, you go to the celebrations, you (usually) wear a suit or a tux, and you have a good time celebrating with someone you care about. Sure, the details change for each and every wedding, but it's not like I suddenly have to learn a new language or stand on my head in order to go to a wedding. My point is, if you've been to a few weddings, you can fall on past experience to understand what's going on. Several years back, my I went to a wedding for a friend that I've nicknamed " Mom ." I didn't know many other people there, but remember, this was someone I called "Mom." There was no way that I wasn't going to go to this wedding. And as it turned out, one of my good friends was also knew Mom, so the two of us went to this wedding together. Anyhow, the actual ceremony was in a garden setting, so we all walked up and wai...

A long time ago, I remarked that my sister thinks I read very quickly . It's one of those things that I've apparently done for a very long time, but I've never really spent much time thinking about it. It's not like it's ever made much of a difference one way or the other. Until recently, that is. A shorter time ago, my brother and sister got me some comic books for my birthday. Well, to be precise, they got me the comic books a few days before my birthday, so I was pleasantly surprised. What's more, they'd actually gone back to a Secret Santa wish list from years past to figure out which ones I thought would be interesting (clever of them, I must say), so I was even more pleasantly surprised. In fact, I was so pleased by the gift, that I was reading them within the hour. Now, just to give you an idea of how much there was to read, one of these was an inches-thick anthology. It was easily several hundred pages long. Even if you account for the fact that th...