Mild Amusement

Whenever I travel, I like to make at least something of an attempt to learn the language. That's how I ended up learning the Greek alphabet oh so many years ago, even though I couldn't really speak the language. I actually got decent enough at it that I could read street signs and menus, though that didn't necessarily know that I knew what I was reading. This latest trip to Japan was no different, so I asked the Mild Ex to lend me her Japanese text books (she'd studied some in college). She also helped teach me a few words ( sumimasen is incredibly useful), though what she taught me really didn't sink in until I was in the country and people were saying these things to me. And Japanese is a language that has three distinct sets of characters, so I knew I wasn't going to learn it all in the time before my trip. I did, however, learn enough hiragana to be able to read some signs, and I knew enough to ask things like, "excuse me, where is the train (stati...

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, ...

First off, let me define that word that you probably don't recognize. Basashi is the Japanese word for horse sashimi. Yes, you read that correctly. This post is going to be about raw horse meat being served up as food . Now, to anyone who really knows me, it should be no surprise that I was willing to entertain this as an entree. I've told the story of " come y calla " (read: "eat your food and shut up") before, and I've never quite gotten over it. I also tend to be very willing to just try things , and food is no different. Interestingly enough, I actually knew about this because a friend of mine had consumed this before. In fact, she had decided to give the horse a try during a trip to Japan of her own. I don't quite remember what prompted this for her, but I do remember the reservations that she expressed while talking about the food. Heck, that Wikipedia article to which I linked has a whole sub-section about the taboos against treating horse a...

A while ago, a friend of mine decided to do a 30 day "burpee challenge." I've mentioned burpees before, but they're a form of exercise that can be challenging after a few of them. In this case, the challenge was to do 30 of them every day for 30 days in a row. She then decided that she'd like company on this particular challenge, so she invited a few of us to play along with her. I'd been particularly bad about going to the gym at that point, so I was happy to participate. If nothing else, I'd get some form of exercise for 30 days. This plan worked out pretty well, since we all managed to hit the 30 day mark. In fact, it worked so well, that we agreed to keep going past the original 30 days. I wasn't very good about tracking the number of consecutive days, but I know for sure that we hit at least 100 days. At one point, though, I realized that I had gotten accustomed to the 30 burpees, so it wasn't very good exercise any more. Knowing that, I...

If you've read this blog for any amount of time, you know that I deal with little kids all the time. They run around my house during the day ( sometimes literally ), and I see them on my days off. This has led to all manner of amusing exchanges , shenanigans , and even some added stress on my part . Mind you, none of these are my actual children, but I've grown very accustomed to dealing with munchkins. It's actually kind of fun, and it occasionally gives me a way to relate to folks with young children of their own. That last part also means that I have opinions on things like daycare etiquette, and I can talk to other folks my age about their experiences with their kids. I know full well that their job is much harder than mine (I've yet to wake up in the middle of the night because my kid demanded attention of some sort), but we can hold conversations about other aspects of their development. I never quite expected to be in this position a decade ago, but that's ...

I like to listen to music while I'm working on things that require concentration. Since my day job generally requires a good amount of concentration and abstract thought, it is pretty common to see me with headphones on at work. In fact, one guy even commented that I looked like Mickey Mouse because of the shape of the headphones and the way they were oriented on my head. Regardless, I usually have some sort of music playing while I get my work done. Now, I don't have any particular song or album that I listen to over and over, so I usually just let my whims take over. I once spent an entire day coding away to Janet Jackson's "Escapade."  I don't quite remember what I was working on, but I somehow got into a good groove (the work kind, not the booty-shaking kind) and I just kept playing the song over and over again. It's a very haphazard process, and it keeps things interesting. I've found, though, that music services like Pandora don't really ...

It all started out innocently enough. I was sitting at home taking care of some mundane task or another, when my mom asked me to pick up a birthday cake. My mom was throwing one of her renowned birthday parties for one of the day care kids, and every other adult in the house was tied up. So in the logical next step, my mom asked me to go pick it up. All I had to do was pick it up and get it back home. I agreed readily enough, since it seemed like a simple enough task. The cake was probably something like a mile away, so it was a short enough drive to the store. It had already been paid for, and I literally just had to walk in, carry it out, and then drive back home. However, my mom did caution me that if there was a line or I was otherwise delayed at the store, I shouldn't enter the house through the front door. Little kids tend to be experts at spotting and picking out cake, so the idea was to keep it out of sight until it was time for the cake to actually be eaten. This seeme...