Mild Amusement

I wrote recently that my email is actually a pretty rich source of material for blog posts . However, my weeknight outings are also just as likely to cause some hearty laughter. Heck, I've got a tag for outings precisely for that reason. If you don't believe me, I invite you to read about the time that dinner led to a bet about whether or not someone could finish their meal . These outings also resulted in the decision to ban someone from picking the restaurant because we narrowly avoided food poisoning , my cell phone pretending to get booty calls in the middle of dinner , and people giving me grief over a gift card . Don't get me wrong, I've been laughing right alongside with all these folks, but I've come to realize that an inordinate number of amusing stories come from these types of outings. And as it turns out, an inordinate number of those outings happen to come up on a Thursday. It's like Thursday is my lucky day or something. I actually didn...

In case you haven't noticed yet, I prefer talking informally. If people IM me at work, I usually greet them then follow it up with, "what's up?" There are a few reasons for this, but the most important one is that I think there's more character to it. There's more soul in slang, if you will. In fact, one of my very first blog posts was about this very topic . It just doesn't sound the same to use twelve five-dollar words when you can use five normal ones. In particular, somewhere along the line, I decided that I like the usage of "yes ma'am" and "yes sir." I don't know if I read it or heard it first, but the idea that you'd show respect in a such charmingly simple way struck a chord with me. Of course, it's always something that's portrayed as a country manners type thing. But it sounds right to me, so I use it. It's precisely why I say that normal, every-day conversation has more soul to it; there's a sen...

Long-time readers of this blog (all two of you) know that I stick to a schedule . There are good reasons for this, all outlined in the linked post. However, the pertinent part of that post for today's purposes are near the bottom of that post: if I have to stick to a schedule, how do I ration out my funny stories so as to not run out? I don't want to end up in a situation where I post a bunch of funny stories, and then one day, I find myself staring at a laptop with nothing amusing to write. Well, as it turns out, the answer to this problem seems to be checking my email. Somehow, I have managed to gather a group of friends that consistently provide snarky and/or amusing stories. And they frequently email me about these post-worthy stories. On days when I find myself needing inspiration for the weekly blog post, I usually end up checking my email to see if there's anything worth writing about in there. In hindsight, this should come as no surprise. After all, my inbox wa...

A long time ago, I was talking to a health professional (the person wasn't a doctor or nurse, but had a heck of a lot more training than me. I don't remember what his official title was) about my diet. Like pretty much every person in that field does, he asked me if I drink at some point. Yes, I do. No, I don't drink that much. Well, what about sugary drinks? Yes, I have one of those every often. No, it's not very often. For the most part, I actually try to eat healthily. Sure, I enjoy burritos, wings, and beer, but that is hardly my every-day diet. The same extends for any carb-heavy drinks, including both beer and soda. I will maybe have a couple of beers when I go out, and I almost never drink soda. The person sitting opposite from me was not convinced, however. He didn't quite call BS, but he had a facial expression that seemed to indicate otherwise. I think he thought I was lying to him. Well, there's not much I could do about convincing him in the span...

I've been going on a lot of hikes lately. I've always liked being outdoors , and it helps keep me in passable shape. All in all, I don't think it's all that bad a deal, so I try to do it as much as possible. And as it turns out, I know quite a few like-minded people , so I've had plenty of opportunity to enjoy this particular activity in the last few months. In fact, I've enjoyed it so many times lately that it's led to all manner of shenanigans. Fittingly enough, an old coworker of mine actually started up a series of summer hikes. At some point, someone forwarded it to a friend, and she then forwarded the invitation to me. Long story short, I ended up hiking with some coworkers. That whole series has been interesting, to say the least. The first time I did it, I carpooled with someone from work, but we were running late. That meant we had to hustle to try to catch up with the rest of the group. She assured me that this was feasible, but she neglected to ...

Whenever you go to the doctor and complain about pain, they ask you to rate how bad the pain is on a scale from 1 to 10 . This is largely due to the fact that there is no way to objectively measure the pain  (#5 in the linked article covers this one). I don't know enough of the science behind it, but I imagine that everyone's body reacts differently to stimulus (different muscles, different chemical responses, different everything, really). Worse yet, everyone's pain tolerance is different, often wildly so. Keep that last part in mind, it's going to be important in a little bit. A while ago, I was talking to the Mild Ex about some of the folks she works with, and she was joking about how guys are all wusses. None of the guys wanted anything to do with needles and shots, apparently. She went down the list, and all of them refused. The very first woman she asked, however, happily agreed. Translation: guys are wusses. As it turns out, I don't necessarily disagree. ...

I mentioned recently that I have a new laptop , so I've been having fun playing with the new toy (I'm a developer, remember? As far as I'm concerned, a laptop is a toy). Sure, it's meant re-learning a few things on the new machine, but for the most part, I've enjoyed having an upgraded machine that can do more than my old laptop could. I will also admit that there is something to be said for the Apple sense of polish. There are a bunch of little things that I just like about using the new laptop. However, there is one little thing that seems to always mess with me. You see, the charger for the laptop is magnetic. There's nothing particularly problematic with that, except for that the charger comes with a little piece of plastic to cover it. I think that's largely because it is magnetic, so that you don't have lots of cruft messing with the magnetic. Regardless of the reason, though, I noticed right away that there was an extra little piece to worry a...