Mild Amusement

As I've mentioned once or twice, the Mild Wife are being pretty conservative about social distancing and our risk tolerance for going outside. The rule of thumb has basically become, "don't." There are still a few items here and there that require braving the outdoors, but unless it's strictly required, we either don't do it or find a way to do it from the comfort of our home. That list of items we don't do outdoors anymore includes, as we've discovered, grocery shopping. We were fortunate that we had just gone grocery shopping a week or so before the quarantine orders started to come down, so we didn't run out of any of the essentials. Still, we knew we had to refill our pantry eventually, since we didn't exactly buy six months of supplies when we went grocery shopping. So, we started trying to get items in bulk where we could. Rice and beans were among the first items that we managed to find, so we were able to provide the staples for our ...

The Mild Wife likes to bake, and she's branched out into various different types of bread and pastries. I've seen her make bread, pizza, and panettonne , among others. Incidentally, if you don't know what panettonne is, it's not exactly the simplest recipe. You have to take some care in order to get it right, but the Mild Wife has knocked out some fairly good ones. Now, I mention this so that you get an idea of how much the Mild Wife appreciates the activity. We haven't been able to do it as much lately (flour has been a little harder to come by), but it is something that comes up around our home. In fact, it's a common enough activity that for a while, we had a sour dough starter that we'd use to bake loaves of bread. The basic idea is that you let the starter grow, and once it's grown large enough, you take a chunk of it to make into dough. The starter continues to grow, and you repeat the process a bunch of times. Now, technically, the starter is...

I have mentioned it on a few occasions, but I watch some Star Trek every now and again. I've actually stopped to think about why I've picked that particular show to watch, and it comes down to the fact that it's episodic and that there's a little nostalgia tied up in it. That's it, really. I can watch it in small chunks if I need to, and I don't miss out on a key detail if I turn my head away for a few seconds. That makes it a good companion if I'm washing dishes or if I'm concentrating on something else . These days, I have a bit more free time since the Mild Wife and I are staying home. So, I've been filling that free time with a bit more hobby time. Inevitably, this has led to an increase in crocheting, among other things. As you can probably guess, this has also meant an increase in Star Trek viewing. I am currently watching Voyager as I work on my latest project. Like I said before, part of me does get a kick out of reliving some of the st...

Now that we've been doing the social distancing thing for a while, we're starting to settle into a new routine. It's still fairly obvious that we're adjusting to the conditions, but we've done a few things enough times that they don't feel out of the ordinary. These things aren't quite automatic at this point, but they are familiar enough that we can do some of them from muscle memory (incidentally, the "21 days to build a habit" thing seems to be a misinterpretation of research) . We're settling into a bit of a groove, basically. The place where that's the most obvious is with meals. We need to eat three times a day, so we get lots and lots of practice cooking and prepping our food. As a result, cooking was probably the one place where we found an equilibrium sooner rather than later. In a nutshell, we found some staples that we liked, ordered them in bulk where possible, and just kept cooking that over and over again. Oatmeal, rice, be...

A while back, I was hunting for something on a website. I don't even really remember what it was, but I was trying to find some information and I thought that the organization's website might be a good way to find that info. I'm sure you've participated in a similar exercise at least once in your life. Maybe you needed to find a return policy for a company, you had to find a person to call for some reason or another, or you just wanted to find the organization's hours. Either way, this should be a familiar set up for many of you. The part that came next, however, is likely new, and hopefully amusing, to you. You see, this particular website had headshots for many of its leaders. I tend to like this when it's a publicly-facing site, as it puts a face to a name. Sure, I might know the name John Doe, but it feels a little personal if I see John Doe's face. It obviously has its downsides (this is the Internet we're talking about, after all), but I can see ...

As with most people these days, I have more free time on my hands. The Mild Wife and I don't really go anywhere other than to go on our weekly drive , so we're basically home all the time. In effect, the only times I open the front door are to check the mail or take out the trash. It's just how it goes; social distancing is a thing, and we're trying our best to do our part. So, what is one to do with the extra time? I have tried to not fill in that time with extra work, lest I blur the home-work line too much. I mean, I generally enjoy what I do, and there's never a shortage of work. But I'd really prefer not to turn into a workaholic during the pandemic, so I'm trying to find other ways to spend my hours. Fortunately for me, I have a few other hobbies that I can indulge during this time. Notably, I still have crochet hooks and a big old collection of yarn. Yes, I still crochet stuff every now and then . And since I've managed to make quite a few be...

Given the whole pandemic thing, we've been doing the whole social distancing thing. Specifically, both the Mild Wife and I have been working remotely for several weeks now. I'm lucky that my work lends itself to that relatively easily, but that doesn't mean it's been a smooth ride. Originally, I just used my laptop microphone and speakers in order to take calls. I figured I was mostly working from a room that was meant to act as an office, and I could close the door if I had to take a video call. It wasn't the most elegant solution, but I figured it mostly worked. There was a little bit of ambient noise from the rest of the house, but it wasn't annoying enough to cause problems. All in all, it mostly worked. However, there came a day when I accidentally left my microphone on when I was speaking to the Mild Wife. She was telling me all about some shenanigans when she was young, and there was quite a bit of laughter from both of us. Since I was using the lapto...