Mild Amusement

This story started out innocently: a few of us decided to carpool to a group outing. It made a lot more sense than driving multiple cars to lunch and then driving those same cars back to the exact same place from where we started. So, we all met up at the appointed time, give or take some tardiness, and headed to lunch. Now, the friend who drove has purchased a new car since the last time I saw her. So, someone made an off-hand remark about how it'd be my first time in her car. There was all manner of banter about the pomp and circumstance necessary for this momentous occasion, and we all shared a few laughs about it all. Since there were three of us, though, someone had to sit in the backseat. That's where this story started to get far more amusing. Since I tend to have shorter legs than many of the other folks I hang out with, I'm very used to sitting in the back, particularly that middle seat in the back. And, since this is such a common occurrence, I immediately vol...

For the most part, my job doesn't require me to be up late at night. It's pretty rare these days that I have to be logged on to my work machine once I get home. Sure, I interact with people in other parts of the world, but for the most part, we can get it all done within the confines of our regular business hours. That said, a very coincidental set of circumstances has made me decide that I can't wait until the next time that I do have to be awake for this. The first part of this story starts with a work snippet. I support an application that gets used at all hours of the day, and one day, we started seeing intermittent errors in the middle of the night. They just started at 3AM for no apparent reason, even though no one had changed anything (at least not that I'm aware of). The worst part was that they were intermittent errors, so it became much harder to reproduce the errors or troubleshoot what was going on. Regardless, someone suggested I check the credentials,...

So, I like to stay active, and that sometimes involves CrossFit . If you've never tried it for yourself, one of the hallmarks of this particular style of workout is that you're constantly doing something different. I've been asked to perform all sorts of new movements that I'd never considered before. Now, before you start questioning this, I've always been taught proper technique and form long before I had to actually perform the exercise with any kind of weight in my hands. So, it should be fairly safe if done properly. That said, constantly having to do new exercises means that I routinely get coaching for the proper form for a movement. Even for things that I now take for granted, someone is always watching and calling me out if I'm starting to slip. It's not uncommon for someone to tell me to keep my chest up (so you don't put a heavy strain on your lower back). For someone as anal and detail oriented as me, that is incredibly helpful. I general...

I've occasionally had people tell me that I have a very distinct way of communicating. I've got a "style," if you will. Now, I pretty much only know one way to talk: the way I talk. It's not like I have put countless of hours into crafting a new persona or figuring out how to piece words together. For better or for worse, it's an innate style. Most of the time, I don't really think about it. It's one of those curious little facts that people have thrown my way and I have retained (sort of like how I know that Japanese has a word for " someone who is so good they are legendary "). However, it's recently come up in enough ways that it's led to a few laughs, and several at my expense. First of all, it turns out that I write very much like I talk. I've never really thought about it, but that makes some sense. It's pretty natural to try to translate your actual speech into written speech, I think. Either way, this came up when ...

A little while back, my siblings and I wanted to get my mom some jewelry for Mother's Day. We figured she'd appreciate it, and it was one of those gifts that seems more appropriate for a "we appreciate you" type occasion. However, we're all geographically spread out, so it's not like we could arrange a group outing to find something. And despite our best efforts, nothing we saw online quite seemed to match the style we were looking for. So, one of us had to make a run to a store and see what we could find. That someone would be me. If you're a regular follower of this blog, this should sound vaguely familiar. I've had some adventures purse shopping for my mom before, and even going into stores geared towards women has some interesting consequences . So, you might expect more of the same this time around. I'd walk in, feel a little awkward, and there would be some laughs at my expense. Not this time around. This was like the manliest version of...

I have some adventures when it comes to driving and parking . Hell, I even have some fun with the car radio . It's still a little surprising to me how many stories I end up having as a result of these two activities, but the blog posts don't lie. There are amusing stories to be had as a result of my car. Well, as it turns out, there's one more to add to the list. In order for this to make sense, though, I'm going to have give you some background information. First of all, I work in a office complex that houses several companies. So there are lots of people walking around, but I don't work with all of them. For the most part, this isn't a big deal. Everyone is civilized to each other, and it's not like there are company-affiliated gang battles raging across the parking lot. We just nod and say hello. Secondly, I have always intentionally parked fairly far from the office. I figure it doesn't hurt to get a little bit of extra exercise, and I don't...

Recently, a few college buddies and I decided to get together to hang out, and we settled on a back yard barbecue. I expected a good time and some banter, but even so, folks managed to surprise me. It was more than just a tad amusing. First off, since we were all going to contribute, we sent a bunch of emails back and forth about foods to bring. I suggested anticuchos at one point, and everyone was on board with this plan. So, I planned on picking up some cow heart (that's what anticucho is made from) from a butcher the day before. However, my old college roommate happened to have a butcher friend, so he beat me to it. The problem, however, was that he was in Berkeley and the heart was in San Francisco. Well, between cars, public transportation, and plain old coordination, we figured we'd have this problem licked. This was not to be. First off, someone had to pick up the heart on a Thursday, so I was at work during the day. I asked if we could pick it up the next day, but ...