Mild Amusement

In a way, this blog post almost feels like cheating. I covered the basic outline of the story over on the CrossFit blog I maintain , so I know roughly what I'm going to write. However, there's a bunch more background and lead-up to the story there, plus a highly amusing epilogue. So, I figured there was enough "bonus" material to warrant its own blog post here. First, let's start with the setting. I go to a CrossFit class at work, and I have for a while. In fact, I've written about it once or twice here, because it leads to a good number of laughs. Well, because I've known these folks for a while, two things have happened. First, I've become friends with a bunch of the people, from the coach and his wife to a bunch of the people in the class. Secondly, because I've been going for so long, I'm something like one of the senpais . In short, I'm something like one of the "senior" students who can help mentor or fill in under the ...

A very long time ago, I wrote about some adventures on a basketball court . Well, I randomly decided to go that same basketball court recently, and ... here I am, writing another blog post. First of all, those older gentlemen were still there . And they were still heaving half court shots with wild abandon. I wrote that blog post roughly 4 years ago, and they were still there when I stepped foot on that court recently. Based on how comfortable they were running around there, I'm assuming they've been doing this pretty consistently since I wrote that first blog post. Think about that: they have been heaving half court shots just for grins for 4 years straight. That, my friends, is what winning at life looks like. I immediately noticed them when I got there, so I chuckled to myself a little bit. However, this time, I noticed a few extra details. For example, one of the guys was wearing white gloves. We're not talking Michael Jackson sequined gloves or anything, but they w...

As it turns out, people occasionally come up with some pretty interesting theories about me. So far, I've had people darn near accuse me of being in the military  and ask me if I secretly teach math for a living . For the most part, this usually happens because people don't know me very well. In those two examples, the people asking me these things were either people I didn't know, or those whom I had just met. So, I just laughed it off. Recently, though, I've had people I work with fairly consistently come up with a few entries to this list. Remember, some of these people have interacted with me on a daily basis for years. And even if I haven't talked to them directly every single one of those days, we work in an open environment where other people can overhear conversations. Even snippets of conversations give you a pretty good idea of what someone's about if you hear enough of them. The first one is actually an oldie but a goodie. A couple of folks I see ...

Yes, friends, it's time for another anecdote of an amusing bet that I have made  (all of the previous iterations are linked in that post, if you're really curious). As always, it's the lead up and the story around the bet itself that are amusing, not so much the contents of the bet. I don't much care whether it was a $1 bet or someone had to jump in a lake; most of the time, that's like a 5 second conversation. The stakes are almost incidental most of the time. It's the joy of winning, the pain of losing, and the glee involved in getting to the end that amuse me. So, this story starts with a bit of a convoluted joke. A friend of mine said something about Sour Patch Kids  in conversation, and I said that I should get some. I don't eat tons of candy, but every now and again, I do pop a few pieces into my mouth. And as it happened, the mood happened to strike. However, my friend interpreted my comment as, "I currently have some of this candy in my poss...

Several years ago, my brother and sister got into one of those Facebook Zynga games, Mafia Wars . They kept talking about it, and there were a bunch of goofy jokes related to it. Initially, I wasn't all that interested in the game, but eventually, hearing about it so much piqued my curiosity. So, I decided to give it a go. That didn't last, but my point was that it became a family thing for a little while. We'd check in with each other about the various tasks and accomplishments, and there was a lot of banter about it. Remember, these are the same people that commissioned the " Court of Life ." It should come as no surprise that there were jokes galore. Recently, though, this phenomenon repeated itself with Clash of Clans . As was the case the first time around, my siblings were the first to jump on the band wagon. I don't quite know who the first was, but soon a bunch of my family was playing. My siblings, a spouse, and some in-laws were all in on it. And...

For reasons unknown to me, people in my life have occasionally asked if I was in the military. I once hypothesized that it had something to do with my gait . As it turns out, I now know why. Well, I have a better idea now. First, though, let me start by saying that I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. I have enough respect for the members of the armed services ("home of the free because of the brave" comes to mind) that I am pleasantly surprised if people ask me this. However, I've never served in any kind of military branch. Hell, I've never even played on an organized sports team. However, this observation is not a coincidence. It has come up too many times, in too many ways, for it to be one person's wild imagination. No, it's come up surprisingly often: Vendors in a different continent entirely asked me out of the blue I briefly mentioned this in the linked blog post, but a few coworkers and I were walking around a look out point du...

I've mentioned before that I seem to enjoy teaching , to various degrees. This came as a bit of a surprise to me, since I never really imagined myself as a teacher. It's not exactly like I had visions of myself at a chalkboard with chalk in hand as a little boy. However, I've done various activities that have involved teaching people things over the years, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience. It's actually kind of fun most of the time. As with everything on this blog, though, it certainly leads to its share of laughs. For starters, I have a rule: "if you've got jokes, so do I." I've mentioned it briefly before (namely, in that blog post I linked at the beginning), but it leads to a surprising amount of banter with students. For the most part, it just sort of happens. Still, a couple of memorable examples come to mind: I always introduce myself to the class during the first session, but I don't give them my full life story. I tell them...