Mild Amusement

Cologne and I have a very interesting relationship. I have a " signature scent " that I like and that I have worn for years, but I've never been a connoisseur. When I first picked out that scent, I basically walked into a store and asked for help . I think that's probably a good representative moment for my attitude towards cologne: I like wearing it, but I couldn't pick something out off the top of my head. Other than my signature scent, I don't really know what the other options are. Well, that changed a little bit recently. First, I have to explain a little bit of back-story, though. A while back, my brother-in-law was on an international flight for work. He was flying on one of the nicer tiers, either business class or first class, so they handed him a complimentary care package thing. It's the sort of thing that has a toothbrush, toothpaste, and a few other amenities to make the flight and the time immediately afterward a little more comfortable. ...

I get the odd compliment every now and then, quite literally. Like I always say, it beats a straight up insult, so I'd rather hear the compliment than the alternative. Still, it usually makes for a fun story. There is one of those odd compliments, however, that I've heard repeatedly over the course of my life. Apparently, I have nice, long eyelashes. It's the sort of thing that I've never really considered, because that's just how my face looks. For better or for worse, that's what I've got, so I just take it for granted. Now, I fully realize that I can say that in part because I'm a guy. I'm not expected to curl my eyelashes or apply mascara to them at any point, so I don't. Incidentally, that's also why the people who tend to make comments about my eyelashes are women. They do  change the shape and length of their eyelashes, so they tend to notice those things. It's the same basic reason that I tend to notice when TV shows have ...

So, I lied just a tad. The Mild Wedding actually consisted of a couple of different events, rather than a single day's worth of festivities. One of those events was a Chinese wedding banquet, where they serve you ten courses of food . Yes, ten courses. Pretty much everyone left stuffed. Now, the Chinese ceremony was obviously a nod to part of my heritage. I've been to enough Chinese weddings and have enough Chinese family nearby that we figured it made sense to get married that way, as well. In fact, I remember telling people that I didn't really consider myself completely, thoroughly married until the paper work was done AND we'd done the cultural ceremonies. We don't do things half-assed around here. That said, I am a make up of several cultures (as has been documented in the past to amusing results ), and the Mild Wife brings her own, unique cultural heritage to the table. So, we decided that we would make sure no particular cultural would get left out. S...

Last time, we learned that I can actually pull off a Clark Kent to Superman style transformation if I put on a suit. It doesn't give me super powers, it just makes me look drastically different (apparently). That, however, was not the extent of the hijinks at the Mild Wedding. First, I should mention that the Mild Wife and I are not super traditional. I walked down the aisle hand in hand with both of my parents, because we wanted to honor them both. That's most definitely not the old school way of doing it, but we figured it was a nice way to do it. Similarly, the Mild Wife also walked down the aisle with both of her parents at her side. Again, we liked that better than tradition. However, one of the traditions we did want to adhere to was that the wedding dress should be a surprise for me. I'm not sure there was a deep meaning behind the decision, other than I thought it'd be fun to be surprised by how she looked. So, even though we picked up the dress in advan...

So, as I mentioned in the last blog post , I got married. I now have a Mild Wife. The whole process was very interesting, and there were all sorts of amusing stories along the way. Sure, there were moments of stress, but all in all, it actually went fairly well. That said, the first story that comes to mind came from the actual day of one of our ceremonies. As you can imagine, we had a lot to think about on the day of that ceremony. There were a few things we had to set up, and the Mild Wife had to do her hair and make up for the big day. Ultimately, we decided to stay in one of the rooms offered by the venue in order to make the whole process smoother. I mention that particular detail because it meant that we were hanging around the venue for longer than just the ceremony. We had at least a couple of meals there (we were feeling lazy about driving anywhere), and talked to a few members of the venue's staff off and on throughout our stay there. In fact, at one point, the recept...

I have a very interesting relationship with language. I speak at least two of them ( and bits and pieces of a few others ), so my brain is already going to be wired differently than a native speaker's. Moreover, I tend to prefer using very simple language and I'm curious enough to follow links that lead me to new vocabulary . The end result is a mish-mash of all sorts of language, from the fancy words to the old-timey sayings that I've read or heard (one of my favorites is "tweren't nothin', ma'am" in an aw-shucks type drawl from an old Western movie). Mix in some Spanglish or Chinglish , and ... you get the idea. So, when a friend of ours mentioned the New York Times Speech Quiz , the Mild Wife (yes, we got married. There will be blog posts) and I were both very curious to see what we would get. If you've never heard of it, it's a series of twenty five questions that tries to pinpoint where you grew up based on words you use. At the end, it...

A little while ago, the Mild Fiancée and I decided that we wanted fish for breakfast. Specifically, we wanted to make a poke bowl of some sort. It's not the sort of breakfast we have that often, but on this particular day, we had a craving for fish and rice. A poke bowl seemed like a good way to satisfy that craving. Now, we were up early enough that many of the actual places that serve this sort of food weren't open yet. It wasn't a ridiculous hour or anything, but usually you have to wait until closer to ten or eleven in the morning for restaurants like that to open. You can't exactly have a twenty four hour poke shop (the fish/seafood would go bad). That left us with one option if we wanted to satisfy our craving: we had to make our own. Luckily, the dish itself can be pretty simple. At its core, it boils down to fish, rice, and soy sauce. It's up to you how much or how little to top it with, and we weren't looking for a gourmet version by any stretch of...