Mild Amusement

The Mild Fiancée is a better cook than I am. I'm not useless in the kitchen, but she's a better cook. She's had more practice, and has more of a passion for it. She'll look up recipes or watch YouTube videos about cooking, for example. She has favorite chefs that she likes to watch. I do not. So, basically, she has a head start in the cooking department, and she puts in more work than I do. It doesn't surprise me in the slightest that she's much more of a culinary whiz than I am. However, that doesn't mean that I leave all of the cooking to her. For one, that doesn't seem particularly fair to me. I eat the food, too, after all. And for another, I might as well learn how to make some of the dishes, particularly if I like them (this is one of the Mild Fiancée's favorite refrains). So, I still wash, prep, chop, stir, and generally take care of other supporting type tasks in the kitchen. The other relevant bit of information here is that we tend to m...

As I mentioned last time, the Mild Fiancée and I inherited quite a bit of wine . We had no intention of coming home with that much wine, but we did so anyway. Inevitably, that meant that we were going to try some of them. What would the point be otherwise? So that we could store them instead of someone else? That simply wouldn't do. So, on one fine evening, we decided to be adventurous. We decided to crack open one of those wine bottles. Now, we're not connoisseurs by any stretch of the imagination, but we understand the basic chemistry well enough. Some of these bottles were old, and had not been stored in precise, temperature-controlled environments. Some of them were bound to be losses. The odds just weren't good that every single one was in good, drinkable shape. So, with a laugh, we started in on our very own wine tasting. The first bottle we drew (randomly) happened to be a Chardonnay: You can tell it's a Chardonnay because the bottle says so That seem...

I have an interesting relationship with shopping. To begin with, I tend to do a fair bit of it online, since I find it's easier to find what I need that way. It's also rare that I need a particular item in that exact moment, so I can usually wait a few days for my package to arrive (though there are definitely exceptions to this rule ). I tend to shop from home, basically. Now, that's not to say that I don't ever frequent brick and mortar retail stores. In fact, I've written about an adventure or two that I've had when stepping foot inside of these stores. One of the more interesting ones was a recent one, when the Mild Fiancée (then the Mild Girlfriend) and I swore up and down that the cologne I liked had somehow changed its smell . It all got settled in the end, but it was a pretty amusing way to get to that point. Lately, though, I've noticed that there's another, implied type of shopping that we end up doing. I call it shopping at home, because i...

A while back, I remarked that I like to get creative when serving the food . It doesn't happen all the time, but every now and then, I come up with something good. All in all, though it's mostly just a way to have some fun with putting food on the table. And since I'm the sous chef and we're cooking more these days, that gives me more opportunities to play with the food. My favorite example of this was with a simple brownie. The Mild Fiancée and I were sitting on the couch, and she asked me to serve the brownies for dessert. As I was pulling the brownies out of the pan, I noticed the rounded corner. Now, I can't tell you exactly what it was about that corner that triggered a memory, but the shape of that corner harkened back to my childhood. I'd seen that rounded edge before. I knew it from somewhere. As soon as I realized what it reminded me of, I knew I wasn't going to just plop the brownie on the plate. Oh, no no no. I was going to have some fun wit...

The Mild Wedding preparations are in full swing, and it's becoming more real by the day. A friend of ours once described the whole process as an exercise in project management, and I'd concur with that assessment. It definitely feels like we go through checklists and spurts of activities. Put it this way: there's a spreadsheet with a bunch of tasks and dates that we need to get through. Now, it's not all work. There's some fun and games that go along with it, too. In this particular case, the Mild Fiancée had a bachelorette type outing with friends and family. I say "bachelorette type" because it wasn't your stereotypical outing. She's not a stereotypical type of girl, so I can't say I was very surprised. Besides, it was her day, and that's how she wanted to have fun. She could've dressed in a bunny suit and gone to IHOP and I wouldn't have questioned it. The one bit, however, that was slightly more traditional came courtesy of ...

As I've written about before, I have a mixed heritage . You wouldn't know it from looking at me, but I have Chinese family. On the flip side, you wouldn't know by looking at my name on paper that I was born in South America and speak Spanish. Basically, I surprise people all the time. It leads to all sorts of laughs. For example, someone called me at work the other day to talk about working with some interns from minority groups. I've never worked with this person before, but he got my name from some folks that I have worked with. Since he only knew my name, he had no idea that I actually had first-hand experience with some of the teams and programs that he was describing. The kicker of all of it was when I let him in on the secret. He asked if I spoke Spanish, and I responded in a few Spanish sentences. Apparently, though, he did not speak any Spanish, despite a very brown-sounding last name of his own. I got a good kick out of that. As much fun as that can be, th...

Every now and then, I attend a conference for work. For the most part, the point of attending these conferences is that I'm supposed to learn some stuff and meet some people. The proportion of those two things changes a bit depending on the conference, but that's the basic formula. Of course, there's also some amusing anecdotes thrown in every now and then. This is a tale of that last part. Recently, I had to attend a fairly large conference. I was warned in advance that there would be lots of people there, to the point where you had to go in with a plan lest you get sidetracked. I did my homework, so I mostly knew where to go and how to navigate the crowds. The one item that I left somewhat unsettled, however, was a meeting with a vendor we work with. We agreed on a time and a general area, but left it at that. Me being me, I arrived early to make sure I didn't miss the guy or keep him waiting. When I got there, though, I quickly realized that I was not going to be...