Mild Amusement

Let's pretend that you're at work and you're on a teleconference call with a bunch of people. Since you're on a conference call, that means that there are folks in different physical locations. It doesn't really matter whether you're in two different rooms in the same building or in two different countries, the important part is that you're not actually in the same room. The other salient point in that first sentence is that it's a "tele"-conference call, meaning that you're mainly relying on the audio, and there may or may not be video. For the sake of argument, let's say it's one of the older pieces of technology that doesn't include video conferencing. So, you now have a situation where you've got at least two physically-separated locations, and you have people on either side who can't actually see each other. This is not an uncommon situation, and there are decent odds that you've been in a situation like thi...

As I've pointed out before, the Mild Wife is amused by the fact that I am nerdier than she is. Her short-hand for it is, simply, that I " like Star Trek ." Of course, she still encourages this particular habit of mine, although sometimes she does so unintentionally . For one, it doesn't really do any harm, and for another, she's just encouraging me to partake in my hobbies. Now, that isn't to say that she doesn't appreciate this particular fandom at all. For all that she teases me, there are still things that she wants to partake in. One good example of this is the movie, " The Matrix ." She knows full well that it's one of those movies that has a bit of a following, so she has some interest in watching that movie (it certainly doesn't hurt that I've talked it up a bit). So, we've resolved to watch this movie so that she can partake in that particular bit of nerdom (for the record, the Internet says that's a word ). The ot...

A little while back, we were hanging out with some family friends. As it so happens, we've gotten to the point in life where a lot of our friends have kids, so this particular outing involved some little human beings (side note: this is quite possibly my favorite description of children). In this case, the little human beings involved weren't that little, as they'd already started elementary school. Still, the fact that they were little will become relevant, and hilarious, in a moment. Over the course of the afternoon, we eventually started watching some television. I don't think everyone was watching, but the television set was on, so a few folks were paying attention. I want to say it was set to sports of some sort, but I don't honestly remember. Basically, people were generally involved in conversation with each other, but those that weren't actively speaking had something else to distract them. One such distracted person was one of the smaller humans, an...

The other day, the Mild Wife and I decided to make a cheesecake for a family gathering. Neither of us has ever made a cheesecake before, but both of us happen to enjoy eating cheesecake, so we figured we'd give it a go. As she often likes to point out, we should know how to make the things we like to eat (why wait on other people if you can help it?). So, we (read: she) found a recipe online . This particular recipe was from Better Homes & Gardens, which is not a publication that I read very often. Still, necessity makes for strange bedfellows, so there I was, happily reading the online version of that magazine. It's worth noting that the reason the Mild Wife chose this particular recipe was that it had less cream cheese than some of the others that she'd seen. You see, she'd joked many moons ago that if I ever saw what actually went into a cheesecake, I'd change my mind about eating it. I don't like tons of butter in my food, and I don't have a par...

The Mild Wife pointed out the other day that I seem to like cooking special meals. Sure, I help with the usual day-to-day meals , too, but the ones that really stand out in her mind are the meals or items that tend to take a bit of extra prep work or that we don't cook very often. I'd never really thought about it that way, but I can't really fault the logic. I do like to make risotto , for example, and that can take a while to prepare. Well, one of the items that I've added to my repertoire was roasting a turkey. The Mild Wife and I decided to make one for ourselves last year, and I was largely in charge of the process. She definitely helped, but like I said, it was largely my operation. Fortunately enough, it came out pretty well, and we were happy with the whole process. In fact, we were so happy with it that we figured that we could make the turkey for a larger family meal the next year. This year was "next year," so I had to replicate the success f...

I'm not the biggest fan of Daylight Saving Time. For one, I get up really early to begin with, so it's not like it does me any good to have sunrise be off by an hour. There are pretty good odds that I'm going to get up when it's dark no matter what the clock says. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly to me, it doesn't really seem to work (as a quick example,  see the last item on the History Channel's article ). Basically, we spend all this effort to try to get a benefit, but it doesn't seem to materialize. So why bother? Regardless of how I feel about it, though, that's how everyone does things where I live. It's not like I can wage a one-man boycott of Daylight Saving Time. I will inevitably have to meet with someone, either for work or for pleasure, and bad things would happen if we had two different ideas of when 10AM was. Basically, I have to play along because time is one of those things that everyone relies on. So, when it was the app...

My parents like to cook , so they spend a fair bit of time working with recipes. My Mom likes to try new recipes, so it's not uncommon for her to decide to make a new recipe out of the blue. I've seen her make biriyani at home, for example. We don't have cultural roots in that part of the world, but she figured it'd be fun to make, so she tried her hand at it (I liked it well enough). The interesting bit, though, is that they try to perfect certain recipes. Once they've tried it once or twice, they'll try to get the flavors and the textures just right. It often makes for some good meals, because these are people who care about how the food comes out. In general, that one fact tends to make the end result better. The funny thing to me, though, has always been just how striving for perfection shows up in day-to-day life. Specifically, overhearing my parents talk about what they want to change for a particular dish leads to some comically precise discussio...