Mild Amusement

A little while back, I told the harrowing tale of mismatched coasters . If you remember, the Mild Wife and I have a set of green and orange coasters, and we alternate the colors. Now that I'm writing about it a second time, I realize full well that the alternating colors are simply a choice, but still, that's just how our brains work ("our brains" may or may not have more to do with my brain than hers). You wouldn't a run of the green ones knowing full well that there were perfectly good orange ones to be had, would you? Still, we looked high and low for the missing coaster. We checked all of the places we could think of: anything and everything near the kitchen, underneath the dining room table, underneath the coffee table, the desks where we do work, even the nightstands. We knew that it hadn't just walked out, but we could not for the life of us find the thing. It had apparently gone missing, and we had a mystery on our hands. Well, friends, I am happy ...

The Mild Wife is very, very good about wearing sunscreen. She's almost religious about it, making sure to apply the stuff whenever we head out. It doesn't matter whether it's sunny as all hell or it looks like a dreary morning. She will still apply sunscreen. It's good for you, so it makes sense (side note: I recently heard that Baz Luhrmann "sunscreen song" again, and it really resonated with me as 30-plus-year-old). She also reminds me to wear sunscreen myself, because if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander. I mean, I get it. It's not like I want to get sunburned or to get melanoma .  In fact, I usually try to avoid damage from the sun, even if I occasionally fail and end up with really weird tans (see exhibit A and exhibit B ). The problem, however, is that I just haven't done it often enough where I've made it a habit. I do so haphazardly, and the results are understandably erratic. So, you can imagine the fun when ...

One of the classic conversations amongst a group of people who spend a lot of time with each other is where to go grab food. It happens with significant others, it happens with classmates, it happens with coworkers. In fact, it happens so often that enterprising folks have made websites, apps, and features that all solve this problem by randomly selecting a cuisine or restaurant for you (seriously, just Google something like " lunch decider "). In my case, this conversation started up among a couple of coworkers who happen to sit near me. They were talking about where to eat lunch, and a third coworker hopped into the conversation. Eventually, I was sucked into the conversation, and a tangent about nearby lunch places ensued. That's when the magic happened. One of the guys I work with couldn't remember the name of one place that he was referencing, so he grasped strands of his memory to come up with the name. I can't promise that I'll reproduce it perfec...

A long time ago, I remember walking by the common area on a floor where I didn't work. It was interesting to see their various artifacts and practices on display, in particular because they didn't necessarily line up with what I was used to with my team. It was like visiting another country, and I was a sightseer that got to visit for a little while. This was a while ago, so I don't really remember the little things. However, I do remember that they had a communal puzzle. The whole thing was set up on a table in full view of the entire team, and I got the impression that people were encouraged to work on it whenever they had a free moment. What's more, there were other completed puzzles in various places, so I could see that this wasn't just a whim. On the one hand, this puzzle thing made total sense to me. I was the one who had an ongoing chess game with my coworker , remember? Spreading the fun around seemed perfectly reasonable. On the other hand, though, ...

At some point, the Mild Wife and I decided that we were best served by prepping all of our meals for the week in advance (this practice is often described as "meal prep," which is why I titled this post the way I did). I don't quite remember the details of the conversation where we decided this or how we settled on this as a good option, but it was one of those things where we both sort of knew that this was a good idea. Now, at the end of the day, all of this is all about pragmatism. If you want to save yourself a bunch of time, you don't cook every day. There's an overhead involved with cooking your meals; you have to chop, wash, grab pots and pans, and so on. If you batch it all up, you can get some economies of scale. Sure, you still have to take out pots and pans, but you only do it once per week instead of seven times per week. The same holds for prepping the ingredients themselves. I can probably chop seven onions at once faster than I can chop one onion ...

I don't usually spend tons of effort on breakfast, what with getting up early in the morning ( with occasionally hilarious results ) and trying to get to work with as little fuss as possible. Most of the time, I just have a glass of milk or a cup of coffee to go with some sort of carbs. Some days, that's a reheated waffle. Other days, that's a slice of bread or toast. Either way, it's a pretty simple meal. As a result, I usually find it a treat to have anything more substantial for breakfast. Let's say the Mild Wife and I are out for breakfast or brunch. I'm going to take full advantage of the menu, and I'm going to order something a little bit more elaborate than toast (side note: French toast is usually near the bottom of my list). If it has chorizo, bacon, tortillas, or eggs, then I'm definitely going to take a second look at the item in question. In fact, eggs are pretty high on my list. I know that, all things considered, it's not a particul...

This is one of those rare posts about work. I don't usually write much about my 9 to 5, in part because there's almost always something more amusing going on in my non-work life. In fact, I try to find  something amusing in my non-work life to write about because it sort of forces me to look at life a certain way. If life outside of work is legitimately devoid of any and all amusement, the fix to that is to have more fun, not to write about work. Still, there are rare occasions when something amuses me so much that I'm willing to bend my rule. This, as you can probably imagine, is one such occasion. First, let me start off with a little bit of background: in some offices, there is the practice of Tie Tuesday . If you've never seen it in practice, people at workplaces that don't enforce business attire show up with a tie on. It's like the opposite of casual Fridays, and people do it for no other reason than to spice things up a bit. I'm guessing it also a...