Mild Amusement

As the days of COVID-19 are dragging on, we are having to make more adjustments to our usual routines. Some of these changes are so mundane that I haven't mentioned them at all in this blog, while others have lead to some pretty funny anecdotes . That's probably par for the course, since you wouldn't expect a global pandemic to be all giggles. As it turns out, however, not all of the anecdotes happen to us directly. Having to socially distance and remotely do things has actually led to at least one goofy episode that we found out from afar. You see, it was our niece's birthday recently, but we couldn't visit her because of the aforementioned social distancing. So, we figured we'd ship her a present and call her on her birthday. We couldn't be there in person, but we could still wish her well and try to make her feel special on her birthday. Given that shipping times have been erratic the last few months, we ordered the present with plenty of time, and it arr...

I mentioned a while ago that a few of us had started doing push ups as a bit of a game . It was mostly just a way to add a bit of fun and poke fun at each other as a team-building thing, but at some point, it sort of ran its course. It wasn't going to be novel forever, and at some point, we realized that for some people it might actually impede their work day. So, we switched it up. Instead, the members of push up club changed the format: we had to do push ups every hour during the work day. Not everyone works the same schedule, so we stuck to the hours when we knew that everyone was in the office. That worked out to 8 hours during the day, so that meant 8 sets of push ups. The actual number of reps changed over time, and we also adjusted it for each person to account for different levels of strength. So, every now and then, you would hear someone say, "okay, it's almost 9AM. Push up time!" as a few people dropped down to do their hourly push ups. That format actually...

Now that the Mild Wife and I have started making our own kombucha , the whole process has led to a steady stream of laughs. We mostly started it as a way to try to save some money, but it has led to a whole mess of chuckles throughout the whole process. It has been quite the pleasant surprise, I have to say. First of all, I should point out that I generally don't like getting my hands dirty. I don't know why, but this has been one of those things that's always been part of my personality. You know how some kids would play in mud or get stains on stuff throughout the house? Generally speaking, I stopped doing that by the time I hit elementary school. I can deal with it if my hands are sticky or greasy, but it's not my favorite feeling in the world. I usually end up washing my hands shortly thereafter. I mention this because when you brew kombucha, you have to scoop out the SCOBY from your brew jar at some point. The SCOBY is the culture that ultimately turns sweet tea in...

As I've mentioned a couple of times now, grocery shopping has gotten a lot more creative lately. We are being very conservative about going outdoors during the pandemic, so we try to get many of our groceries delivered to us where we can. As we have discovered, though, there are times when that means that we end up with surprises about what the actual item in question consists of. It's not a huge deal, but it does lead to some confusion and some laughs when it happens. This time around, we had a slight variation on that general theme. You see, we decided to buy groceries from Whole Foods because they deliver and because Amazon is still a thing in our household. Specifically, we chose to purchase a frozen berries pack. It had a mix of strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries, so we figured it'd provide a little variety. Now, we do tend to favor fresh produce when we can find it, but we are not above buying frozen fruit or frozen vegetables. At the end of the day, they sti...

I said a long time ago  that once I decided to stick to a blogging schedule, it meant that I was worried that some weeks might make it harder to write than others. At the time, I worried about being super busy at work and cooped up in the office. I have to admit that I did not have pandemic, police brutality, and riots on my bingo card. This week has been harder than all the ones that came before it to write something amusing. I've come close to missing my deadline a few times, but I've usually managed to come through with an amusing anecdote for the week. It helps to regulate my outlook on life, in a way. If I can point to at least one thing, even one small, insignificant thing that made me laugh, then I'll at least have that one thing to provide a little bit of light. This week, though, has felt different. I can't explain why, because I am, unfortunately, old enough and aware enough to have lived through events like this before. I remember the names of Rodney King and...

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...