Mild Amusement

So, there is a common idiom in English about going around in circles . It means roughly that you're not really accomplishing anything because you end up at the same spot you started (that's what happens when you traverse a circle). It's a simple enough notion, and the saying rarely needs explaining. It just sort of makes sense. Well, let me tell you, I have reason to disagree. In my case, I don't mean the sort of hypothetical running around in circles, I mean the literal kind. I have literally gone around in circles and found value in the exercise. It's also worth noting that the act wasn't a way of getting exercise, either. No one would dispute that running laps around a track has its own value (even if you're the type who finds that kind of exercise boring, you can understand the logic behind it). However, in my case, it wasn't a way to get exercise. I have different, more amusing, reasons. In the first case, I was sitting around at home, and I s...

I like pizza. It is one of the items that I can happily eat over and over again, with nary a complaint (burritos are the other item in this category). On some level, it's a simple recipe: bread, sauce, cheese, and toppings. The toppings, it should be noted, don't have to be anything fancy. Sure, some restaurants try to differentiate themselves by using nicer ovens or high-end ingredients. But at its core, you really just need some dough and a few toppings. It's fun in its simplicity. Personally, the reason I like it so much is that it's a hearty food. Let's not forget that the base of this whole thing is basically a really flat bread. That's the sort of food that's meant to provide sustenance. Put another way, I've never seen someone go on a diet and insist that they should eat pizza to get their nutrition for the day (I have seen a salad-heavy rich people diet , though). You just wouldn't describe pizza as a dainty item. Fortunately for me, the ...

A few weeks back, the Mild Wife and I decided to check out the Bay Area Book Festival . It was close enough to us that we figured it'd be fun to check out, and we both do some writing. In my case it's much more of a hobby (you are reading my personal, just-for-funsies blog, after all), but I do like to write nevertheless. Hell, I even write a small piece of fiction every now and then . Basically, we were excited enough about the concept of a bunch of workshops dedicated to books and to writing that we decided to partake in the festival. Now, the festival lasted the whole weekend, so there were quite a few moments that the Mild Wife and I enjoyed from the whole process. Better yet, the Mild Wife and I didn't go to the same sessions all weekend long, so we often had fun comparing notes and reporting amusing anecdotes from our respective experiences. There was one guy who spoke to the Japanese author in Japanese and knew just a tad too much about Japanese literature for it t...

When the Mild Wife and I moved in to our apartment, we had to do a bunch of shopping in order to furnish the house. We each had items we could contribute to our new home, but even so, there were quite a few that we had to purchase. These days, I look back on some of it quite fondly. Sure, it would've been better had we not made three trips to the nearby store in the same day, but it's become part of our story. There's usually a laugh or two to be had for most of the items in our household. However, the one set of items that has decidedly not made us laugh lately is a set of coasters. Yes, coasters. You would think that it'd be hard to get mad at coasters, but hear me out. Let me finish my tale of woe, and then you can judge for yourself. In hindsight, I shouldn't be surprised. You see, it took forever for us to find a suitable set of coasters. We figured that it would be a relatively quick errand to choose and acquire coasters, but, astoundingly, this was n...

Eating is always a source of amusement for me. Somehow, my attitudes and experiences when it comes to food find a way to make me laugh. Sometimes, the ingredients themselves cause a few laughs . I've even had the amount of food I eat make me and the Mild Wife laugh . Of course, no discussion of my relationship to food is complete without the " come y calla " story, and that's usually good for a laugh or two if you've never heard it before. Now, of all of the foods that I eat, dessert seems to occupy a special category in the amusement scale. For starters, I don't really eat much dessert. I'm not sure that I ever get sugar cravings, so if there's an entire course geared towards increasing sugar intake, I'm not particularly interested. Sure, I will eat some if presented with dessert, but I almost never ask for that course myself. It certainly doesn't help that my body reacts with some very strange dreams if I have dessert too close to bed time ...

As with most couples, we tend to split up chores around the apartment. It's only fair that no one person has to do everything. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that we each do exactly half of every single chore. For one, there are some chores that I don't like doing, and there are some chores that the Mild Wife doesn't like doing. For another, we sometimes have time constraints that make it easier for one person to handle the task. Long story short, we each have our assigned tasks. Most of the time, this is just how we do business. It's a fact of life, and it's fairly mundane. In one very specific instance, however, it has led to quite a bit of conversation. You see, I am in charge of our petunias. We got them a long time ago as a gift from our neighbors, roughly around the time when we moved in. I don't even remember how we came upon that particular division of labor, but that's how it went down. Now, I don't have tons of experience wi...

The last time that I used this particular title, I told the tale of a pair of ripped jeans . I'd actually forgotten about the episode until I did a search for posts (I don't like reusing the post titles), but it seemed incredibly apropos given the story I want to tell this time. I don't want to give away the punchline, but you'll see what I mean. So, during that last story, I had to buy a new pair of jeans at the last minute, and I ended up having to change in a public bathroom. It all just felt very odd. Fortunately for me, I was at home when the shenanigans happened this time around. Specifically, this happened: Yes, that is a belt in two pieces The real kicker of it all was that I wasn't even wearing the belt when it decided to end its waist-cinching days. It was, as you can see in the photo, hanging on the hook. I forget what I did, but there was no violent motion involved. I think I tried to move the hanger, but I don't really remember. However, the ...