Mild Amusement

So far, in our continuing saga about the Mild Honeymoon, yours truly discovered the joys of a winter coat , people were extremely generous with the champagne , and we managed to drink too much sake . Through it all, one of the recurring themes was that we didn't speak nearly enough French to really understand everyone around us. I'm pretty sure that sake order would've gone a lot differently had it been conducted in French, for example. Still, it was an ongoing source of amusement and occasional consternation. Now, the Mild Wife and I both tried to learn as much French as we could while we were there. We paid attention when people spoke to us, we tried to repeat back little phrases we knew, and we made liberal use of our friend Google while we were in town. We didn't want to be completely helpless if the situation ever called for some basic French, and it just seemed like the right thing to do. No one wants to be labeled that stereotypical ugly Americans on holiday. ...

To catch everyone up, the last time I described the Mild Honeymoon, the Mild Wife and I had decided that we had actually had more champagne than we wanted . To be clear, it was a good problem to have, and we were lucky that the folks around us were so nice. It was just a bit much. So, we decided to keep our alcohol intake down. We would have a glass here, but we weren't about to have a ton of anything. That plan worked great until we decided to have Japanese food one night. See, we usually appreciate a bit of sake with our meal, so we figured we'd relax our alcohol limitation for that meal. After all, you can usually get sake in a smaller portion, so even if you drink, you can enjoy a relatively small amount. In fact, some of the sake bottles you buy are only about 300 milliliters. A regular sized wine bottle is usually 750 milliliters, so you're definitely not drinking the same volume. With that in mind, we figured we'd order the sake. It'd be a nice, small ...

Let's continue the tales from the Mild Honeymoon, shall we? In our last chapter, we discussed how yours truly learned both the definition and the value of a winter coat . I realize it's going to be one of things that I laugh about, and others laugh at me about, for many moons to come, but it was all part of the experience. We took all of it as it came, y'know? Now, for this blog post, there's a bit of an interesting back story. After we got engaged, the Mild Wife wanted to prep for the wedding. We did a lot of it together (there was a spreadsheet), but some of it she just had to do herself. In fact, some of it didn't even cross my mind. For example, the Mild Wife had to figure out what makeup she was going to wear on the day of the Mild Wedding. In hindsight, I understand why: it was a fairly long day, and the makeup had to simultaneously photograph well, allow her to eat, but still look how she wanted. That's a lot to ask for, and you don't necessarily lu...

Last time, I mentioned that the Mild Wife and I decided to honeymoon in snowy Montreal . We ended up choosing it over much sunnier places, but we figured we'd still have a pretty good time. After all, we were heading out on our honeymoon, and we both like a good adventure. This one would just be a tad colder than some of our previous adventures. Well, that was basically the attitude, with one slight exception. The Mild Wife was concerned about the state of my outerwear. You see, I have never lived in a city or town that experiences snow, hail, sleet, or any of the other words that mean "it's cold up in here." So while I understand what "cold" means on an intellectual level, I've never actually lived through it. More specifically, I've never had to bundle up and protect myself against that kind of weather. So, we went shopping. I would only learn this after the fact, but it was an exercise in frustration for the Mild Wife. She has lived through...

A while back, the Mild Wife and I were trying to figure out where to go for our honeymoon. We knew we wanted to have a leisurely trip, so we looked for places where we could lounge and take our days slowly. As it turned out, the actual process for booking our travel would end up causing a few laughs. Leisurely days immediately brought to mind the beach. This was probably doubly true because we had recently traveled to Miami at the time, and we had both enjoyed our time there. Well, maybe the Mild Wife enjoyed it more than I did, because she got to see more of the city and enjoy more of the beach than I did. Either way, though, the idea of being able to walk out to the beach seemed very appealing to us. So, that was what we targeted. A return trip to somewhere in the Caribbean seemed pretty ideal. Now, we just so happened to get married in late summer/early autumn. That happens to be hurricane season in that part of the world, so in an attempt to plan ahead, we chose to delay our h...

Lately, the Mild Wife and I have been trying to be better about budgeting. Luckily for us, there's no impending costs that forced this on us, nor are we struggling to make payments. We just want to save up for big costs faster. Since it's not likely that we're going to win the lottery any time soon (it's particularly hard when you don't purchase tickets), we figured we're try to be more efficient about the money that we already make. Basically, try to put money more towards the savings categories than the spending ones. It's worth noting that we're not really doing anything fancy in order to try to shift our habits. We didn't subscribe to new alerts on every credit card and bank account, we didn't hire a financial advisor, nor did we invent a new algorithm for how to put money away. We just started by tracking what we spend. Basically, we decided that we had categories, and we were allowed to spend a certain amount in each category. We have a...

Dancing is one of those activities that brings out a lot of emotion. It can be a source of some trepidation, it can be rewarding, and it can inspire happiness in other people (in some cases, all in the same night ). For other people, they just straight up like to dance, and you can see pure joy on their faces when they do it. If you've ever seen a group of people dancing in a circle, you know what I mean. There's usually laughter, and occasionally, someone busts out a move that draws a collective gasp of amusement . Basically, no one really dances with a stoic look on their face. One way or the other, you get something. That makes it prime for some mild amusement. As it turns out, though, the old school dance moves tend to be especially prone to providing some amusement. One of the funniest things I've ever heard came from a guy a little older than me referring said dance moves. First, a little background detail: we were both volunteering at a gym to help with logistics...