Mild Amusement

I've mentioned it before, but I like to watch some Netflix while I do the dishes . I don't remember when I started the practice, but it's become a routine at this point. It gives me something to focus on while I do chores, and it makes the whole experience more enjoyable. All in all, it seems like a good idea to me. Now, I know that my screen time is limited. I'm certainly not going to wash dishes for two hours, so I can't watch an entire movie in one go. Heck, half the time, I can't even watch half of a movie in a single session. Ultimately, that drives my viewing preferences, so that I tend to favor episodic shows. Basically, that's how I watch some show or another: one dishwashing session at a time. Recently, that's been the Star Trek: Enterprise show. I never watched it when it first came out on television, so this is my chance to see the whole series. As with many series, there are some good episodes and some not-so-good episodes. Still, it's a...

For much of my life, I have had a really large appetite. I never really intended for this to happen, but it just did. In fact, people around me would occasionally notice the amount of food that I ate , and there would inevitably be some good-natured ribbing about it. It was just one of those random tidbits that was true about me, sort of like the color of my hair or which of my hands is my dominant hand. However, that started to change as I got older. I'm not geriatric, but I wrote over a decade ago that my appetite was starting to look more like the average person's  (also, it's more than a little crazy to me that I can reference something I wrote 10+ years ago. That seems like a lifetime ago). Time and age have definitely changed that particular fact about me. What's more, as it's become more of the norm for me to eat less, I have started to feel uncomfortable if I eat too much. It's not even a matter of comparing how much I eat now versus what I used to eat; ...

The Mild Wife and I make spreadsheets. It's just one of those things that we do. There was a time when I probably would've contested whether this was true, but as time has gone on and more spreadsheets have "magically" appeared in our lives, it's become harder and harder to dispute. I mean, we were talking about a wish list, and a spreadsheet popped out . The most obvious place where this comes up, though, is with our monthly budget . I mean, we're literally talking about trying to make sure numbers match up. Even if I didn't love spreadsheets quite as much, this would be one scenario where it'd just make sense to use this particular tool. There are lots of numbers to track, and we want to keep an eye on how much we're spending. This seems like a classic case for a spreadsheet. Well, given how prevalent they are in our lives, this also means that I've gotten used to seeing some of the numbers. In very simplified terms, I track monthly payments ...

Unfortunately, this pandemic seems to be drawing out even farther. I'd started to think that we might be getting over the hump, but the number of cases keep rising and there are new variants that seem to be causing concern all over again. I'm not predicting doom and gloom, but let's just say that I'm not surprised that some counties are starting to issue lockdown and mask rules again. Ultimately, that means that the Mild Wife and I have to ensure our mask game is on point again. We still have a few from the initial bout of sewing  but it's sure looking like we're going to need masks in the near future. Given that, I figured I might as well start making a few more. Of course, I've got a few more reps under my belt now, so I can start to think more about how we want the finished product to look rather than the mechanics of whether or not I threaded the machine properly. The latest sewing blog post happened to be about masks, and it was from a few weeks ago, s...

There are some songs that are just plain catchy. I'm sure a lot of thought goes into making these songs so there's some science to it, but I don't know what that science looks like. From my perspective, some music just randomly gets stuck in people's heads. They're just ... easy to listen to over and over again. I don't just mean the ones that get stuck in my head , but they seem to catch the collective consciousness and make a home there. A good example of this was that " Let It Go " song from the movie Frozen. It was well done, and I can fully understand why it was as popular as it was. Even so, look at the number of views on that video. There are over 500 million views, so it was more than just a catchy song. Lots and lots of people were watching that, and I guarantee you that some of them were watching it repeatedly. In fact, I know for a fact that some people were watching that video on a loop, because I have friends and coworkers who told me thei...

As I've mentioned before, the Mild Wife and I invested in a sewing machine during the pandemic. It was the most basic model we could find, but it was good enough for what we needed: to make a few masks. And now, over a year later, I still think that it was a good investment. Interestingly, even with restrictions being lifted a bit, we still find that we need masks. Some stores still require them, and neither of us wants to be in a position where we needed a mask and didn't have one. So, we still have to wear and wash them. And even though we've never run out of clean masks to wear, we did notice that we were close a couple of times. So, I recently broke out the sewing machine to make a few more masks. When we initially invested in supplies, we bought a pack of fabric squares. We figured we weren't going to need super high quality, and having a bunch of squares would give us options in case one of us screwed up (read: me). That also gave us the ability to add a little v...

At my parents' house, they have a chopstick that has been worn down a couple of inches. It lives near the coffee machine, and has become a fixture there. It's not quite worn down to the nub, but it's well on its way. Imagine a pencil that has been half-used, and you'll have a pretty good idea of what it looks like. It's just been worn down over time and through use. Now, I've always found that one chopstick mildly interesting. I mean, I fully understand the physics that led to that, but it's sort of like seeing a rock that has been worn smooth by a running river. There's this moment of wonder where you contemplate the ravages of time, you know? The other thing that always came to mind was a sense of wonder. I mean, clearly, my parents could see that this chopstick was getting the worse end of that interaction. Couldn't they have just switched to a different tool/implement? And why the coffee machine? That seems like a strange place for a chopstick. I...