Mild Amusement

At work, we have these organizer things for our mail ( they look sort of like this one ). If you're not inclined to click on the link, it's basically a set of slots that can be labeled with a person's name. Each one is assigned to a person, so everyone know where their mail arrives. It makes sense; there's a bunch of us, so you need a way to sort all of the potential mail we get. I don't actually get very much mail at work, but the number is more than zero, so it needs a way to arrive in my hands in a sane way. It's also faster to drop it all off there, rather than personally visiting each and every person to hand-deliver mail. All in all, the system makes sense to me. However, the one thing I hadn't accounted for is that some of these things are rather tall. What's more, they will also put them on a table or piece of furniture, so that no one has to squat down to reach their mail slot. This is nice and all, but after some recent shifts in where peop...

If you've ever watched any of the American sports, you're likely to have seen a spin move. Essentially, you spin around in order to avoid a defender. When used properly, it can leave a defender chasing after air ( like so ) and give you a practically unimpeded path to the basket/end zone. It's one of those things that's incredibly fun to watch when it's executed properly. Now, for some reason or another, it has always come to mind whenever I see someone walking towards me. I fully recognize that the Mild Wife is not trying to tackle me when she's trying to walk past me to the room, but my brain still thinks "spin move!" whenever she's walking towards me. I can't quite explain the rationale for it, but that's just what my brain thinks. I suspect that I've ended up trying to walk past someone and we've both side-stepped to the same side one too many times. I'm fairly sure you've had it happen to you, too. You both mean wel...

The Mild Wife and I like food of all sorts. We will happily eat dino nuggets (and I will stand by my assertion that they taste better than the normal nuggets) and mac n cheese  with no regrets, even though we also have a soft spot for steak. Sure, everyone likes the nicer things in life, but we don't require those things in order to be happy with a meal. Hell, some of my favorite foods are what you might call "peasant food." Notably, pizza is on both the Mild Wife and my list of favorite items. We just plain like pizza. I don't think I've ever had a slice of pizza that was so bad that I wouldn't eat it, and I could easily have pizza for two meals a day without tiring of it. Like I said, we like pizza. This, however, leads to an interesting observation by the Mild Wife: "how come people don't have pizza parties anymore?" When we were younger, these sorts of gatherings were fairly common for birthdays and other celebrations. Looking back, I ...

I remember a while back, I read something online about how to deal with the inevitable question of "what shall we have for dinner tonight?" It doesn't matter how picky or freewheeling two people are with their diets, you still have to make a decision. If you're super picky, your partner has to find an option that will suit your tastes. If you'll eat anything , you have to whittle the list down to just one from your wide range of options. Either way, it can be a bit of an adventure trying to find that one good option. Well, this particular suggestion was what I shall dub the Five-Three-One Method. One partner lays out five options from which to choose, the other narrows those five choices down to three, and then the original person selects the final option from the narrowed list. Everyone is involved in the selection making process, and you definitively assert that you are okay with the options that you have selected. Better yet, it avoids having to choose from e...

For some reason, I find the "pick your top three" discussions pretty interesting. Heck, I wrote a whole blog post about having a new top contender in the dessert category . For me, the fun part about it isn't so much in hearing the actual decisions, it's in hearing the reasons why something is either in or out of that top three. Do you pick the item that you could eat every single day without ever getting bored of it or do you pick the one that's a delicacy that you almost never consume? Being forced to pick just three of something usually forces some interesting decisions about what you like (and don't like). Incidentally, that's also why I dislike sub-categorizing the choices. Your top three American desserts is no fun, I want you to actively consider about whether you like apple pie or kanafeh better. It's even more interesting if the items are nothing at all like each other. Is cold, creamy ice cream a better choice than a warm, gooey brownie? W...

Have you ever looked everywhere for your cell phone only to find that it was in your hand the whole time? Or hunted high and low for your keys without any success because they were snugly in your pocket? I have a feeling that this is a near universal phenomenon, only because people can be thrown off pretty easily. From what I understand, your brain optimizes so that it doesn't have to recall or process every last piece of information, and it's possible for things to fall into the blind spots as a result. If you've ever seen someone in front of a new laptop or computer, you've probably seen some variation of this. It's probably the same basic stuff, but it looks and feels different. That's just enough to throw off the mental optimization, and things grind to a halt. Well, I'm no different than everyone else. I generally know where we keep the cereal, for example, so I look for the box of cereal in the usual spot. If I don't see it there, consternation...

I have enough of a quirky sense of humor that I appreciate shenanigans and a little light mischief. I don't want anyone to get hurt or for things to break, but if there's a laugh to be had after an impish grin, I'm usually in. Heck, one of the reasons I like being around little kids is that they tend to do this sort of thing naturally. One might, hypothetically speaking, jump on sofa cushions that he's not supposed to . It's all pretty amusing to me. I've known this about myself for a while, but the Mild Wife has had enough time to experience it to intuitively understand when my sense of mischief is about to kick in. What's more, since she experiences this as a spectator, she can notice little tells that I've never really noticed myself. Specifically, there is a little giggle/laugh thing I do that tips her off that some shenanigans are about to go down. It surprised me when she mentioned it, but it also made me crack up that I giggle to myself about th...