Mild Amusement

All Good Things ...

2021-10-10T20:00:00.001-07:00

August 8, 2009. Over twelve years ago, I started blogging with this simple post. I didn't really have a great reason for starting the blog, other than I wanted to try it out. I wanted to try writing and putting it where others could read it. I don't know, it just seemed like a new adventure to try.

Along the way, there have been all sorts of posts and all sorts of life events, but through it all, I kept writing. It just became a part of what I do at some point. It wasn't a matter of whether I was going to write a blog post, it was a matter of when. The Mild Wife has described it as a "writing practice," and it was one of the reasons why I kept writing. Honestly, it's good practice, and it gives me an opportunity to hone my craft. I'm no professional author, but we all have to write stuff in our everyday lives. Why not give yourself reps to get better at it?

However, I think it's time for that practice to change. My weekly anecdotes sure kept me amused, and even made me look at my life with an eye for positive, humorous things. Still, it's always been a hobby, and I never really thought about it as more than that.

Recently, I've decided that maybe I want to treat my writing as more of a side hustle. I'm not entirely sure if that means I'm going to set up a Patreon or try to sell a book, but I'm going to give it the old college try. It's a new adventure to try, and I'm curious to see where it goes.

For anyone who has read or followed along, thank you. I know I don't have millions of followers or anything, but the feedback I've gotten along the way has been helpful. If nothing else, it helped to have someone to share the laughs with.

So, with that, I bid you adieu. I'll still find ways to write, and at some point, I'll be sure to share my newest venture here. Till then, may you find mild amusement wherever you are.

An Excursion: Getting Home

2021-10-03T20:00:00.001-07:00

So, in the ongoing saga that I have been writing about the last few weeks, a perfect storm of random occurrences led me to taking a trip to the office. Once there, I went about my day, but leaving led me to wander through a mine field of geese and goose droppings. Incidentally, I also happened to mention this to my coworkers, and one of them introduced me to the nickname that Canadian geese sometimes go by: the "cobra chicken." All in all, that one day led to much hilarity.

Still, at this point in our tale, I wasn't home yet. The Mild Wife was out and about that day, so we had agreed to carpool. I was going to hop on the bus, and she would pick me up from a BART station. We've actually done this a bunch, and it had become my go-to means of transportation before the pandemic started. It saved me from having to deal with rush hour traffic, so I was actually a big fan of this process. I expected far less traffic on this day, but even so, it was a sound plan so that's what we went with.

Now, there is a bus stop near the office, but it's a short walk away. I haven't actually measured it, but I can usually do it in less than ten minutes. Mind you, that's walking at a leisurely pace, so it's not exactly a stressful ten minute walk. There's even a path that cuts through the buildings and parking lots that makes this awfully convenient, so I wasn't particularly worried about getting to the bus stop.

I was, however, concerned about the bus schedule. After all, I hadn't taken that bus in over a year, so I had no idea if the schedule had changed drastically. Once I was logged in to my laptop, this was actually one of the first things I did; I had to make sure I knew when to leave so I could get home okay. After a bit of clicking around, though, I realized that the schedule wasn't too different from what I remember. There was a banner saying that they had work shortages so occasionally buses might be late, but otherwise, the schedule looked perfectly reasonable.

Well, when the time came, I packed up my stuff and moseyed on over. I actually left something like twenty minutes before the bus was supposed to arrive. My day was done no matter what, but given the potential unpredictability of the buses, I wanted to give myself a bit of a cushion. I figured in the worst case, I could stand and wait for ten minutes. It was worth the wait to minimize the stress.

Remember how I said there was a path that cut through the building and parking lots? Well, the path was still there, but there was now a padlocked gate blocking said path. I'm not entirely sure I know why this was the case, but about five minutes into my walk, I realized that I had a problem. I had to backtrack, and walk the long way around to get to that bus stop. I also had five minutes less with which to make this trip, since I'd spent those five minutes getting to the gate.

Well, crap.

I realized my dilemma with some dismay, and quickly turned to go back the other way. My leisurely walk now was now a power walk, to try to make up the lost time and still arrive at the bus stop on time. As I was hustling down the sidewalk, I kept thinking that I was really glad I had given myself that cushion, or else I would have missed the bus for sure. Still, I was going to be cutting it close, so I glanced at my watch on more than one occasion.

With two minutes to spare before the appointed time, I saw the bus stop. Mercifully, the bus was not there, so I figured that I had made it in time.

I walked up to the actual seating in the bus stop, looked around, and realized I was the only one there. That might very well have been because of the pandemic, but it also could have been because I missed the bus. Trying to alleviate my concerns, I whipped out my cell phone to try to look up the "next arrival" site/app for the buses. No sooner than I had looked down at my phone than I heard the rumble of a large vehicle coming my way. Yup, the bus arrived as soon as I tried to verify its arrival time.

After the sudden and unexpected rush of adrenaline from the padlock, I was more than happy to know that I wouldn't have to agonize over whether I had missed the bus. I got on, sat in a seat, and felt a rush of relief.

The rest of the ride went smoothly, and I met up with the Mild Wife shortly thereafter. Still, if I end up back at the office during the pandemic again, I'm giving myself that twenty minute cushion again, and I'm taking the long route from the beginning. I'm not trying to get my heart rate up like that again.

An Excursion: New Neighbors

2021-09-26T20:00:00.001-07:00

Recently, I had to make a trip to the office. It was an unplanned excursion, but I still had to physically go in to the building. It was a bit of a comedy of errors, so I can laugh about it now. However, all of that just involved the reasons for why I had to leave the house. There were still a few bits of hilarity once I arrived in the office.

As you can imagine, there are far fewer people who go into the office these days. That part wasn't surprising to me; in fact, I wasn't sure if I'd run into anyone at all. However, I wasn't prepared for the other residents who seem to have set up shop in those buildings. You see, with fewer people around, the animals don't have to worry quite as much about running into something that scares them. Specifically, the geese don't have nearly as much competition, so they're free to wander the grounds.

I was reminded of this when I saw a sign that actually said to watch out for them. As a reminder, geese are very, very territorial. This is doubly true when they are protecting their young, so the sign had a warning that you should be wary if you cross a bunch of geese. Fortunately for me, I didn't see any on my way in, so I noted the sign with a quick mental nod, and then went about my way.

This was not the case when I exited the building, however. By the time I left the office, there were quite a few geese out and about. Remembering the sign, I was wary of any flocks of geese. In fact, I briefly considered trying to find a different path, but it would have meant a much, much longer trip around the build, so I decided to brave it.

Now, I should also note that geese are very good at one other thing: leaving geese droppings. I don't know how they do it, but they are notorious for just plain making a mess. And with fewer people to scare them off, that just means they're free to, um, do their business wherever.

So, at this point, I had to cross through potentially hostile territory surrounded by geese on all sides, while watching out for the minefield below. It wasn't a super long walk, but it was still stressful nevertheless. For a bit, I wasn't quite sure whether to look up for hissing geese or to look down for geese droppings. Let's just say that I was quite grateful to finally get away from the geese.

Again, now that it's all over, I can chuckle about it. Who knew that I would have this much of an adventure when leaving?

An Excursion: The Leadup

2021-09-19T20:00:00.001-07:00

I have been working from home for something like eighteen months now. It's long past a novelty at this point; it's just how I get stuff done for work. Sure, I get to have my own snacks and do push ups without any funny looks, but at the end of the day, I'm trying to get work done.

Now, as it so happens, I have a work laptop that requires company-issued credentials in order to log in. This isn't super uncommon, so I don't really think much about it most of the time. However, if you have to renew those credentials, things start to get a little bit more interesting. I remember a long time ago, I used to have to get a new badge that was encoded with new credentials. It was very much a process where I had to rely on others in order to complete.

These days, there is a self-service portal that lets me go through the motions on my own. That's much better than the bad old days, but since I'm not working from the office lately, that means having to do this remotely. That's not bad in it of itself, but it does add a degree of risk to the whole process. If, for whatever reason, the remote process goes awry, then I will be at home without valid credentials to log in to my work laptop. Essentially, it has to work perfectly or else I will be locked out.

Want to guess what happened to me the other day?

Yup, I was unlucky enough to have something go awry. I'm still not entirely sure what happened, but I worked through the process one afternoon. It looked like it had completed, and I finished out my afternoon without problem. When I tried to log in to work the next morning, however, the laptop just would not accept my credentials. I tried a few different things, including just plain restarting the laptop, but nothing worked.

Well, we have a helpdesk that I can call, so I tried calling them. Nothing they suggested seemed to work, so their last resort was to try plugging directly into the router instead of using the WiFi. I'm not entirely sure I understand how that would solve this problem, but they mentioned that they'd seen it work in the past.

However, that meant that I had to dig up a cable to hard-wire into the router. I'm not sure I've needed one of those in a long time, so I actually had to rummage around to see if I could find one. Sadly, I came up empty. Either I was flustered and I didn't do a good job, or my memory had failed me and we didn't actually have an ethernet cable handy. In either case, I didn't have an ethernet cable handy, so that really only left me with one option: drive in to the office.

I can't remember the last time I actually did that, so it felt very much like a field trip. I mean, I was going to be there anyway and I was probably going to have to be there long enough to last until lunch, so the Mild Wife packed me a lunch. I can't remember the last time that happened. Usually we just sit down and have a meal. All in all, it was annoying, but I tried to make the most of it.

With the benefit of hindsight, the whole thing was amusing. I mean, what are the odds? Not only did I have to renew my credentials, but that process had to go bad, the usual troubleshooting had to fail, AND we had to be missing a cable. It was like the perfect storm of shenanigans.

Next time, we'll talk about my adventures on said excursion.

Timer

2021-09-12T20:00:00.003-07:00

There are a bunch of everyday tasks around the Mild Home that require waiting some amount of time. Say I put want to put something in the oven, I need to make sure that I take it out after a set amount of time. I mean, bad things happen if you leave food in the oven for a long time. If you're lucky, it's just inedible; if you're unlucky, then the smoke alarm is involved.

Quite a few of them involve food (steep the tea for X minutes, uncover the pot after Y minutes, etc.), so that should come as no surprise. However, I recently had to use baking soda and vinegar to help unclog a sink. As I discovered, you don't just dump those things down the sink. You wait 5-10 minutes after mixing those ingredients in the sink, to let them do their thing. Otherwise, it just fizzes for a bit, and nothing really happens. In either case, I needed to wait for a set amount of time.

Now, when it comes to setting a timer, I have a few options. There are timers on the stove and on my cell phone, and both work equally well. However, it gets a little trickier if I have to leave the oven on for 20 minutes, but I have to turn the contents of a tray after 10 minutes. Sure, I could set the timer for 10 minutes, turn the food, and then set another timer for 10 minutes. That's a perfectly valid solution, and it accomplishes the goal. However, it takes a few extra steps, so there's always a nagging sense that there is a better way.

This is where my use of phone games has become helpful once again. I've discovered that it may take be a while to complete some quests, but on one of those games, it takes me roughly 5 minutes to complete a match. It's not precise to the second, but on average, it comes out to about 5 minutes. In essence, my brain knows that waiting 5 minutes is a solved problem.

So, if I want to wait some multiple of 5 minutes, I really just have to play my phone game a few times. This is especially useful since I rarely need more than about a 10 minute wait (if I did, I'd walk away and do something else while I waited).

Remember that scenario about having to turn the food in the oven? That simplifies to turning on the oven, sticking the food in, setting a timer for 20 minutes, playing my phone game twice, turning the food, then waiting for the only timer I set. It cuts out some steps, so I don't have to fiddle with the stove twice, nor do I have to wait for two different timers. And since I was likely going to play at some point anyway, it just makes that use of time more productive. All in all, it feels like a win.

I have to say, I'm highly amused at this turn at events, since I never thought I'd be using a phone game as a cooking tool. Still, the proof is in the pudding, so I'm going to keep doing this. I'm probably going to chuckle every other time I do it, too.

From Scratch 2

2021-09-05T20:00:00.001-07:00

A few months ago, I tried my hand at making home-made dumplings. It came out all right, and it was definitely passable for a first attempt, but we always said that we should have another go at it. After all, if we liked it all right when we made it with no first-hand experience, it should come out even better after having at least one rep under our belt, right?

We found out this weekend.

First of all, the Mild Wife helped with the dough preparation this time around. I knew to be wary of making the dough too sticky this time around, but because she has more experience with baking, she was able to guide us through the pitfalls. What really surprised me was just how little water you can/should add at a time. We're talking about a tablespoon at a time when you're trying to make a ball of dough. I mean, I knew not to overwater it from previous experience, but it still surprised me to add in that little water at a time.

Still, there was a method to this (including the trusty sanduk), and the dough came out really well. It was pliable, but more importantly, it was far less sticky than the one that I had made the first time around. All in all, it was a clear improvement to the first one.

Now, we had shrimp on hand this time around, and we had decided that we were going to make wontons instead of dumpling, but a lot of the same basic principles still applied. In fact, we used the same starter recipe as a basis for our filling. It obviously wasn't identical to what they suggested, but I had enough of an idea of how I wanted it to taste that I could freestyle the filling.

So, after carefully rolling out the dough into wrappers, filling them, and folding them, we were able to finally cook them in our broth to get that nice wonton flavor. I say "finally" only because there were a few steps, but it was a surprisingly quick process. I'm guessing it took about an hour of prep time including making the dough and chopping the ingredients, so it really didn't seem that bad.

The finished product came out pretty well (if I do say so myself), though we have ideas about how to wrap the wontons for next time. The best part, though, was that we had extra filling left over, so we were able to make shrimp balls and have those for a different meal. All in all, it seemed like a marked improvement over the first attempt, and a meal that we're definitely going to have to make again.

My favorite part, though, was when everything was done, we sat down and got to enjoy the fruits of our labors. It may not have been funny, but it certainly brought a level of appreciation and amusement to the meal. I mean, looking at the bowl the second time, I could definitely tell that this was not the same meal that I had made the first time. I'd like to think that a wry chuckle escaped from me at some point or another, though that might very well be hindsight.

In either case, we're definitely going to make that again.

Waiting for the Suck

2021-08-29T20:00:00.001-07:00

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 means of entertainment during chores, so I more or less just run with hit. It's not like it's been so terrible that I've wanted to give up on it altogether, though I will readily admit that some of the episodes were hard to get through.

However, during one of the recent bad episodes, I got curious how many seasons the show had lasted. I didn't want to know any spoilers, I just wanted to know if it had a long run after that or not. As it turns out, there were only four seasons of the show, so it wasn't an overwhelming success. From what I understand, ratings were low by the time that it was canceled.

In essence, there were good odds that it was going to suck at some point.

At the time when I looked this up, I wasn't yet on the fourth season (I might have been somewhere in the middle of the second season). So, I had it in the back of my head that the show was going to get terrible at some point, but I didn't know when. That led to an interesting phenomena where I would wait for the penny to drop. If there was something that seemed off, I would wonder if that was the beginning of the end. Was that character arc going to mean that the show veered into Terrible Land? What about that new technology? Was it going to be abused and suspend disbelief? There were lots of interesting moments like that.

Now, I fully recognize that it's possible that the power of suggestion was at play. I may have actually started to veer towards "this sucks" because I had some warning that it might eventually go bad. I can't completely rule this out, though I do think that some of my reasons for disliking certain episodes are pretty solid. Heck, I was thinking that before I discovered that the show was canceled, so I'd like to think it was mostly my original analysis.

In either case, I'm still slogging through the episodes, but I'm still waiting for the show to get bad. It's sort of amusing hearing myself wonder if this is it. I'm at the edge of my seat waiting for terrible television. That's at least worth a giggle, right?

The Pause

2021-08-22T20:00:00.001-07:00

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; whatever the absolute amount of food I can consume, I now feel the consequences of trying to stray past that limit. I feel actual discomfort if I try to eat more than my stomach requires, and I've noticed the feeling more prominently as the years have gone by.

Well, as I am wont to say, pain is a great teacher. I simply don't want to feel uncomfortable like that, so I try to avoid overeating. There are still occasions when I'm hungry and I eat a lot, but when I feel full, I stop eating. It's not about the actual amount I eat, it's about knowing when to stop.

However, this brings up a new, secondary dilemma. What if the first portion I serve myself isn't enough food? Am I still actually hungry? How much more should I serve myself? I don't want to go hungry, but I also don't want to feel uncomfortable because I ate too much. There's definitely a Goldilocks zone of how much more I can eat, and the trick is making sure to find it.

In an effort to make sure I stay within this zone, I have taken to pausing for five minutes or so after that first serving. I have read that sometimes your stomach doesn't provide the signals to your brain quickly enough (and/or that you ate too quickly), so my solution is to try inject an artificial pause to ensure that I'm not in this situation. If I'm still hungry after that quick break, I should continue to eat. If I find that I'm "suddenly" full, then I can stop eating.

Interestingly enough, I find that most of the time, I am, indeed, still hungry after the pause, but there have been a few times where it's saved me from myself. So, even though I'm mostly certain that I should grab a second serving, I'm going to keep doing this to make sure I do avoid that discomfort where possible. If anything, I find that it also helps calibrate the size of my second serving. All in all, I think it's been helpful.

Still, even though it's really useful, I can't help but laugh at myself. It's like a longer, self-imposed version of the five second rule (courtesy of this useful post). I've definitely chuckled at my own expense during the pause, and I'm not sure it's going to stop anytime soon.

Half an Hour

2021-08-15T20:00:00.001-07:00

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 like mortgages, incidental spending, and total debt. It's not at the level of a financial planner, but it does give us a sense of how our payments are making a difference.

So if we put in an extra $50 towards our mortgage, how does impact the interest that we have to pay from here on out? How much did we save this month? How much discretionary money do we have every month? I think you get the idea; it's supposed to give us an idea of where our money is going, and what impact that particular spending will have on our budget.

On a nuts and bolts level, this is really helpful for managing this month's expenses and budget. However, because we've built a spreadsheet, this also means that we can imagine what-if scenarios for the following months. I can start to calculate what would happen to our mortgage if we spent an extra $50 towards our mortgage every month from now on. I can also plan for a big expense if I know it's coming sometime in the future. Essentially, I can start imagining the future in terms of our finances.

Now, this might seem very matter-of-fact, but this is where my imagination usually starts to kick in. Well, what if I got a raise next year? If interest rates dropped, should we refinance? If we do that, how much would we save every month, and how much more would we pay in interest? There are all sorts of scenarios that become possible at that point, and my brain likes to consider a good number of them.

Honestly, I don't really have a great reason for why I do this, but I do. In fact, I've done it enough times now that I started to notice the pattern. I would sit down, pay bills, and then spend an extra thirty minutes or so playing with those numbers. After all, I just finished clearing our debt for that month, so then I start thinking about what happens in the months that follow.

I don't think that exercise has ever led to drastic changes in our budget, so in many ways, this is an exercise in goofing off. But it just feels like a good use of time to me. To a degree, it makes me feel comfortable with those numbers. I have something of an instinctive sense of what's possible, in part because I do spend those thirty minutes playing with the spreadsheet. That, and I get to imagine a bigger house, retiring younger, or splurging for some item or another. Why not dream a little?

All that said, I don't think I'm going to stop playing with those numbers any time soon. On balance, I think it's good for us. Still, I can't help but chuckle about the flights of fancy that that editing that spreadsheet entails. Who knew that spreadsheets could be a tool for sparking joy?

Combinations

2021-08-08T20:00:00.001-07:00

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, so I've built up our inventory just a bit more. However, as I was cutting through fabric after deciding the inner and outer layers, I noticed that I had quite a few scraps laying around. They weren't huge pieces of fabric, but they were also large enough that they still looked quite useful. And since I now feel comfortable with making basic stitches (read: straight lines), it occurred to me that I could stitch some of them together. I mean, I have a sewing machine at my disposal. Why not, um, sew things?

Besides, I'm the type of person where I don't mind trying something out if I feel like it's within reach. And if I can handle stitching some straight lines, combining rectangular pieces of fabric together into a bigger rectangle is just more of the same isn't it?

I resolved to find out.

Ultimately leading to this

As it turns out, it was within my powers to quilt together some strips of fabric. It's not going to win any awards at a runway, but I was proud of my efforts. I mean, I quilted together strips of fabric to make both an inner and outer layer. That's like, actual, honest-to-God sewing. Looking back on my initial fumbling with the sewing machine, this is definitely a step up. It felt like I'd achieved something.

I don't know what the future is going to bring or if I'm ever going to attempt sewing actual items of clothing, but it seems like it's within the realm of possibility now. Who would've thought?

Repetition 2

2021-08-01T20:00:00.001-07:00

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 their kids did that. Their kids just flat out loved that song, so they heard it a bajillion times a day. In fact, they would sometimes bemoan their fates. I mean, even if you like something the first time, it's going to get old by the fiftieth time, right?

One of my other favorite stories along these lines was that the Mild Wife has a friend whose family speaks Arabic. They were visiting family a few years ago, during the height of the "Despacito" craze.

Now, this is another one where the numbers speak for themselves; there are over seven billion views on that video. Billion. With a "b," not with an "m." That's not that far off from the entire population of the entire planet, so it's no exaggeration to say that it was massively popular. That song was everywhere for a while.

So, as this friend was visiting her family, her young kids were hearing it there, too. And since they were kids and they didn't really know what language the singers were singing in, they assumed it was spoken in the local dialect. That's right, her kids sort of assumed that "Despacito," which is a song in Spanish, must be Arabic because they heard it alongside a lot of Arabic. I can't exactly fault the little kids for this assumption, but it's hilarious.

All of that, however, is background for the punchline in this particular story. My sister has young children, and she occasionally plays the radio for them. As a result, the little kids recently discovered a song that you may very well remember yourself: "Who Let the Dogs Out" by the Baha Men. Again, this is a piece of music that caught fire and was everywhere for a little bit. It has since faded out of cultural memory as a nostalgic moment, but to two little kids, it is every bit as fresh and exciting when they first hear it.

As you can imagine, my sister has been hearing a lot of munchkin interpretations of that song recently. I wish her luck.

Inside and Outside

2021-07-25T20:00:00.001-07:00

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 variety into our life, for the heck of it.

Now, variety is good, but that also means that there are some fabric squares that neither the Mild Wife or I would ever wear. I mean, there are uses for those colors and patterns, but I would prefer that it not be on my face. So, certain squares are much higher on our list to sew with, and some would preferably never see the light of day.

As we discussed this, we very quickly came to describing these as "outside" fabric squares (i.e., the ones that would be visible) and "inside" fabric squares (i.e., the ones that would get used for lining that no one would ever see). It was an interesting discussion, because the ones that both the Mild Wife and I considered inside squares were immediately used as lining, but others that only got one "inside" vote were still in play to use as an "outside." It wasn't so much a negotiation as a filtering process, but the whole thing led to some banter and discussion.

After all, if you vote for something as an "inside," you likely have opinions on the color or the pattern. Maybe I didn't like the color, or maybe the Mild Wife thought the pattern looked too much like colors splattered about. One of them even looked like, and I quote, "an infection." You can probably see how this would lead to more than a few laughs.

Fortunately we had plenty of fabric to choose from, so it wasn't a problem, but we sure did have fun picking the fabric squares to use.

Just One

2021-07-18T20:00:00.001-07:00

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. It's not like you would pick up coffee grounds with chopsticks, so why combine those two things? It's even more puzzling when you consider that it's only a single chopstick that serves this purpose. It's not a pair of chopsticks, it's a single, solitary chopstick. What gives?

Well, I think I have a pretty good idea now.

You see, I tend to mix in a fair bit of milk with my coffee every now (my brother calls this "coffee flavored milk"). And in order to make this drink, you have to stir the coffee and the milk together. In coffee shops, they have a special coffee stirrer tool for this. We don't live in a coffee shop, so I usually grab something out of the silverware tray to do this. My options are a teaspoon of some sort, or ... a chopstick.

I can't entirely explain why, but most of the time, I end up choosing the chopstick. It's just ... simpler. I think part of it is that we don't use chopsticks every meal, so the teaspoon is slightly more valuable to our day-to-day. If I'm going to have my near-daily Peanut Butter Snack, I'm most likely going to use a teaspoon. So if I'm going to "sacrifice" a utensil to substitute as a coffee stirrer, I'm going to pick the one with the lower day-to-day value.

The other thing worth mentioning is that it's much simpler to wash a chopstick. It takes like three seconds to do. With cutlery, we try to batch it up into loads for the dishwasher to do. So there's no guarantee that the teaspoon is going to be readily available again for a few hours. It's obviously not a deal-breaker, but I hate the notion of being one teaspoon short at a meal because the dishwasher isn't quite ready yet. I mean, I'll wash one by hand at that point, but that also seems to slightly detract from the value of the dishwasher.

Now, all of that makes sense in my head, but it wasn't until recently that it occurred to me that my parent's half-chopstick and my habits came from the same place. I think it was something like the hundredth time that I was using a chopstick to stir my coffee when I realized that if I kept stirring with chopsticks, I might wear one of them down through sheer friction.

The epiphany hit me very shortly thereafter, and I suddenly understood full-well why that worn-down chopstick is a thing for my parents. As the saying in Spanish goes, "mas sabe el Diablo por viejo que por Diablo." Roughly translated, that means that the Devil is more cunning for being old than for being the Devil.

It's a heck of a lesson to learn from a half a chopstick, let me tell you.

Interesting Combination

2021-07-11T20:00:00.001-07:00

I've mentioned here and there that the Mild Wife is a really good cook. I mean, I try to pull my weight and I have a trick or two up my sleeve, but I can't quite make up the differential in time and reps that the Mild Wife has. Basically, she's put in a lot of effort into honing her craft in the kitchen, and it shows.

I'm leading with that only because it's the only explanation I can find for some of her inspirations. It's not so much that she's imaginative, it's more that she has inklings that certain ingredients will taste good together. I firmly believe that a good part of the reason for this is that she has worked with these ingredients enough to truly get a grasp on their flavors.

Think about it; if you're a carpenter, your experience gives you a good idea what type of wood or nails are best for a particular project. If you then have to build something you've never made before, you can probably guess which materials you could apply. Heck, you might even do something unconventional that still manages to be structurally sound.

I think the same basic principle applies here; the Mild Wife has a really, really good grasp of her materials. There have been times when she has chosen to combine ingredients in ways that had never occurred to me, but I'll be darned if it doesn't work. Honestly, at this point, I'm no longer surprised, and I just nod along when it happens. I mean, if it's not broke, why fix it?

Still, I think one of the latest fun mixes is my favorite of all time. I realize that's high praise, but I will let the picture speak for itself:

See if you can pick out the unconventional ingredient

In case you missed it, those are dumplings in the salad. I repeat: there are dumplings in the salad. I don't just mean those little tortilla strips or pieces of the filling, I mean actual, whole dumplings in the salad. And you know what? It was flippin' delicious.

Seriously, how many of you would have ever thought to put dumplings in a salad? I know I certainly wouldn't have until I saw the Mild Wife do it. It was also tasty enough that it has quickly become one of my favorite salads, pretty much ever.

In fact, I was so amused that I shared the picture with a few mutual friends. My favorite response was something like, "that looks good. It's probably the only way I would actually eat salad. I fully approve." If that doesn't tell you how genius an idea this is, I don't know what will.

Mastering her ingredients indeed.

Some Thing Never Change

2021-07-04T20:00:00.001-07:00

A long time ago, the Mild Wife shared a story about one of her friends' kids. This particular friend has a young daughter who happens to like Hello Kitty quite a bit. This in it of itself is not that surprising - that's a huge industry worldwide, so there are lots and lots of kids who like Hello Kitty. However, what made this story funny was that they found Hello Kitty where they least expected it: the supermarket.

You see, Hello Kitty has branched out beyond the usual toys and plushies. It is now possible to buy Hello Kitty wine and Hello Kitty pasta. This notion had never occurred to me before, but as the Mild Wife's friend discovered, it is most definitely a real thing. When her daughter discovered this at the grocery store, she insisted that they buy some. The mom gave in and purchased the pasta, so there was a good laugh to be had.

The story doesn't end there, though. No, this particular kid was so enamored with the pasta of one of her favorite characters that she wanted to sleep with the pasta next to her. Yes, you read that correctly. It's not particularly hard to guess what the kid was thinking, but it's still hilarious. I mean, she wanted a pack of pasta in her bed/crib. That's some devotion to Hello Kitty right there.

What made this extra funny to the Mild Wife was that she also loved Hello Kitty when she was a kid. She didn't just sympathize with the little girl, she empathized with her. The Mild Wife knew exactly how the kid felt, in part because the Mild Wife herself had probably had similar notions about some other Hello Kitty-branded product when she was a kid.

Now, that's amusing and all, but that's all the setup to the punchline. The Mild Wife and I recently had time to kill, so we wandered through a mall for a few minutes and came upon this:

Notice the bottom shelf and the third pack of noodles from the left

Yup, we came upon Hello Kitty-branded food items ourselves. The Mild Wife, out of sheer nostalgia and amusement, browsed through the selection for a few minutes. She didn't fawn over them or anything, but she definitely let her inner six-year old out for a bit. It was quite amusing to watch a grown woman examine both the Hello Kitty pasta and the Keroppi pasta to try to see if there was a difference in flavors or nutritional value. There were also a few muffled giggles as we spotted the various items on each of the shelves.

Like I said in the title, some things never change.

A Simple Stretch

2021-06-27T20:00:00.001-07:00

My job requires me to sit a lot. It's not a huge inconvenience or anything, but it's a well-known risk of my profession that it can lead to back pain and carpal tunnel. It's just one of those things that I have to watch out for.

For the most part, it's not a huge deal, especially since I do push ups every hour during the work day. Getting up at least once per hour helps to break up the long periods of sitting in the same position, so the longest amount of time that I'm seated in the same position is about an hour. I hadn't intended those push ups to be a posture and ergonomic thing, but I'll happily take the side effects.

Still, there's only so much that a quick break from sitting can do, so I started looking into ways to tweak my posture. I mean, why not be proactive about stretches and exercises to try to prevent harm? What's the worst that can happen? I have a stronger back?

As it just so happens, I found a YouTuber that seems to have some good suggestions on general fitness recently, so I looked up his videos to see if he had anything for posture. As it turned out, he did. Now, I'll mention that I saw his stuff referenced on a random Reddit thread, and the feedback was overwhelmingly favorable. Lots of people seemed to appreciate his positive vibe and the fact that he had legitimately useful tips. So, I figured I'd give it a go.

One of the first things he suggested was an exercise where you stand with your back to the wall and lift your arms. It sounds really simple, but he suggested it as a first step to try to strengthen your back muscles. So, I started there. If it was as easy as it sounded, then I'd just move on to the next exercise. If not, well, I knew what to work on.

It hurt.

You know how some people say the first time they do yoga it hurts like hell because they're working muscles in new ways? Yeah, it was like that. I stood there, with my back to the wall, and it was surprisingly difficult to get my hands up. I didn't want to cheat by arching my back, so I basically felt those muscles in my back protest from being used in ways they hadn't been before.

On the one hand, it is disappointing to realize that those particular muscles need that much work. However, the flip side of that is that I can feel the progress because I'm in the earlier stages of strengthening those muscles. About a week later, I could actually start to feel when my shoulders started to slouch forward. It's kind of cool to literally be able to feel the progress.

That said, you better believe I'm going to keep doing this stretch. I'm not trying to turn a blind eye now that I know that my upper back needs work and how to fix it.

Sensuous Life 4

2021-06-20T20:00:00.001-07:00

I mentioned it in passing once before, but the Mild Wife and I have been cooking things that provide food for several days at once. I'm not entirely sure that it was a conscious decision with tons of discussion in advance, but that's the routine we have settled in. So when we roast a chicken on the weekends, we eat some of it that day, and then use the rest of it throughout the week. We make broth out of the bones, and we shred the remaining meat to use throughout the week.

But how, exactly, do we consume that shredded chicken?

Well, we do all sorts of things with it. Sometimes we'll make fried rice with the chicken, sometimes we'll make tacos, and sometimes we make salads with it. There are a bunch of options. It's never quite the same thing, but cooking is much easier when your ingredients are pre-prepped and pre-chopped.

Lately, though, we've been making sandwiches with the shredded chicken. Specifically, we've been making something like a chicken salad sandwich. We can make the chicken salad in advance, and then have it however we like. We can eat it straight, as a salad, or slap it between two pieces of bread and then have a sandwich.

Now, that in it of itself is nice, but I wouldn't argue that it's part of the Sensuous Life. I mean, eating salads and meal prepping is more about time being a bit older and time management. However, there is one little detail about this type of meal that makes us both giggle about the Sensuous Life:

See if you can spot it

It's the way the sandwich is cut. I don't know why, but whenever we slice a sandwich diagonally, it just feels fancy. It doesn't change the composition of the food, it doesn't change how quickly you can consume the food, and it certainly doesn't require any special equipment. But somehow, that particular way to slice the sandwich makes it feel like the meal is suddenly a part of the Sensuous Life.

The Mild Wife and I have chuckled about this fact on more than one occasion lately, and, frankly, I don't think it's going to stop. I mean, if all you have to do to make your meal feel a tiny bit more special and add a little joy to your life is angle a knife, why not? The diagonal slice is here to stay.

Second Opinion

2021-06-13T20:00:00.001-07:00

The Mild Wife generally likes to do her research when she buys things that are going to last a while. I mean, it makes sense: you're going to have this thing around for months, if not years, so you might as well make sure you make a good investment. No one is going to raise an eyebrow if you do your homework before buying a car, for example. It's an investment, so you want to make sure you know as much as possible before you buy it.

As I've pointed out before, though, this habit also extends to makeup. Now, it's not as big an investment from a pure financial standpoint, but as I've discovered, many of these products are meant to last many, many months. What's more, you are literally putting this product on your face. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to slap on something that made me look terrible. So, she does her homework. Like I said, this makes sense to me.

However, skin tones are not an exact science. It's not like there's a hex code for your skin that precisely identifies you skin tone. What's more, even if that did exist, people's skin is not always uniform all the way across their entire bodies. So, it takes serious time and effort to try to find something that matches your skin tone, looks the way you want it, and comes at a price point that you're comfortable with.

What makes it even harder, at least for the Mild Wife, is that sometimes she isn't directly in front of a store sample when she's curious about a particular product. I mean, if she was there in store, she would probably swatch a little bit of it on her forearm to see how well it matches her skin. But that's not always the case. In fact, I'd argue that scenario actually makes up a small minority of the times when she's curious about a particular product. So, she ends up looking at websites and other social media to try to judge whether something looks like it'd match her skin tone.

Lately, though, she has taken to getting a second opinion on these things: me. I don't think I'm particularly good at this or anything, but I'm around, I understand what she's trying to do, and I happen to have the benefit of seeing her frequently. I'm not going to be biased by what she already has in stock, plus I probably see her face more often than any other human on the face of the planet. So, as it turns out, I qualify as a good impartial judge.

This has led to discussions about "rosy undertones" or whether something is "too matte." Let me tell you, I never imagined this would be a part of my life, yet here we are. I know the Mild Wife appreciates the input and I'm happy to do it, but the whole thing makes me chuckle. Every so often, I find myself trying to help match a random picture on a makeup website's to my wife's face, and the whole notion that I'm trying to judge makeup makes me chuckle.

Second opinion, indeed.

Preferences

2021-06-06T20:00:00.001-07:00

The Mild Wife is fond of saying that people have "preferences." Like if you were to look in my closet, you'd probably notice that a fair number of my clothes follow a pattern. I don't wear tons of bright colors, for example. Sure, I've got some yellow and red shirts, but there are a lot more items in dark blues and blacks. I don't duplicate shirts or clothing items, but some colors definitely show up more than others. Like she says, people have preferences.

Now, this also extends to habits in general. Heck, I've been known to say "habits die hard" on more than one occasion (like this blog post). It's the same basic principle as having preferences, only with muscle memory and repetition added to the mix. If you've done something for weeks or months, it's very likely that you'll naturally default to that again.

In this particular case, the habit has to do with wrapping and unwrapping presents. To be completely frank, I tend to be somewhat meticulous about this activity (leading to some amusing anecdotes). I was that kid that would carefully remove the tape at the seams of the wrapping paper, rather than just tearing through any piece of exposed wrapping paper. I don't know why I approached the presents this way, I just did. I know my siblings didn't do this, so I figure it's more of a nature than a nurture thing.

The Mild Wife has obviously seen this, since we've shared more than a few birthdays and Christmases together. She is more similar to my siblings in this regard, but she knows my preferences, so she mostly just chuckles while I try to surgically remove wrapping paper. It's not her style, but she derives a little bit of amusement from watching me go about unwrapping presents in my own style.

Now, you might be wondering why I'm writing about this in early June. It's not my birthday yet, and it's certainly not near Christmas. So why am I writing about presents?

Grocery deliveries, that's why.

We still have groceries delivered to the Mild Home on occasion, and one of the things that happens is that they put a sticker over the top of paper bags. I've never seen an official explanation, but these stickers identify the delivery by using a random word (something like "lake") and also the number of bags. So when we get our groceries, if there are two bags, they'll each have a sticker, and they'll say "lake 1/2" and "lake 2/2" on them.

More importantly, these stickers are placed at the top of the bag, to seal them. It's not just a label on the side, the stickers are sort of a tamper-proof seal for your delivery. The sticker thing is big enough that you can't realistically get to the contents without removing it or tearing the bag. I would imagine the intent is to provide a sense of reassurance that nothing got in to the bag mid-trip.

However, those qualities also mean that we have to remove the sticker once we receive delivery. We more or less have to tamper with the seal in order to put the groceries away. You can probably see where this is going; when I'm in charge of putting the groceries away, I fastidiously peel off the sticker and then fold it down inside the bag. Basically, I remove it as simply as possible. You can still tell where the sticker used to be, but it's an attempt to be surgical. Again, people have preferences.

This all came to a head recently when the Mild Wife and I were putting away groceries. She was watching me carefully peel the sticker back on one of the eggs when she blurted out, "you put away groceries like you unwrap presents!"

She's not wrong, but the whole thing was met with much laughter. We both had a good, strong chuckle about it all, and it took a little bit longer to put the groceries away that day. Better yet, I can't help but chuckle every time I see one of those delivery bags with a sticker.

Agua Con Gasifier

2021-05-30T20:00:00.001-07:00

A couple of years ago, the Mild Wife and I thoroughly enjoyed a trip to Buenos Aires. We have a lot of happy memories about that trip, but one of the more surprising ones was that we had a legitimately good time chowing down on vegetables at some Asian restaurants. I still somewhat suspect that this may have been a result of the local restaurants near our hotel, but in either case, we genuinely enjoyed those vegetable-heavy meals.

One other interesting side effect of this trip was that we also grew to appreciate club soda. I don't quite remember at what point we realized it, but we realized at some point that if we consumed a glass of club soda around meal times, it seemed to help with digestion. I'm sure I can come up with some quasi-logical reason for this, but honestly, I don't know why this is true (it does, however, seem to be true according to WebMd). All I know is that we felt better if we had more club soda, so we started mixing that in with our meals.

Now, it's not called "club soda" in Argentina. In fact, I'm not sure it's called club soda anywhere in the Spanish-speaking world. The term I've heard far more frequently is "agua con gas." It means, quite literally, water with carbonation. Now, those are short, simple words, and they roll off the tongue quite nicely. If you give me a choice between saying "agua con gas" and "club soda," I'm going to pick "agua con gas." And since the Mild Wife understands enough Spanish to know what that means, we joyfully called it agua con gas for the length of the trip.

In fact, we enjoyed saying that so much that we continued to refer to the beverage as "agua con gas" even after we returned home. I mean, it's not like it stopped being fun to say. And we both understand what those words mean, so we don't lose any meaning during the process. If anything, saying those words brings up some happy memories, so it's got a bonus side effect of reliving some happy times.

So, we came home, and we continued to call it "agua con gas" and we started purchasing it more often than we had in the past. It still wasn't a super common item in our household, but we did buy them enough that it was a reasonable thing to ask whether or not we had agua con gas in the pantry. The answer frequently depended on the last time we'd gone shopping and felt the itch for a beverage, but you get the idea. It was a legitimate conversation piece.

Well, recently, we decided to splurge and get our own. We have been cooking at home a lot more often during the pandemic, so what we want to eat and drink have become more of our own responsibility. At one point, we felt like having agua con gas, but hadn't gone to the store to get any. Well, that very quickly led to the realization that we could make our own if we purchased one of those machines that carbonates your beverage. It arrived recently, and we have been happily making our own carbonated drinks.

You want to know the best part? We call it the agua con gasifier. It shouldn't take too much guesswork to figure out why we chuckle every time someone calls it that.

Meeting a Deadline

2021-05-23T20:00:00.001-07:00

Lately, the Mild Wife and I have been getting into plants and flowers. We've always appreciated having flowers of some type around the house, but it has become more of a point of emphasis lately. I can't quite pinpoint when exactly this change happened, but there are now more plants around the Mild Home.

If I had to guess, part of it was that we have been sending flowers to my family members more often during the last year or so. In essence, it's become more of a part of our lives, so I'm guessing that some of that energy has been directed to the Mild Home. I mean, think about it; if you peruse the websites that sell plants and flowers more often, it's more likely to come to mind when thinking about your own abode.

The funny thing about that is that it forms a cycle that feeds in on itself. If we're thinking about plants more often, we're also going to think about them as presents more often. We're way down the rabbit hole at this point.

So, it should come as no surprise that we recently decided that we purchase a monthly flower delivery for my mom. As the previously-linked post shows, the "we" in that is not exactly split half-half between the Mild Wife and I (let's just say that my dad correctly pointed out that this sort of gift was not happening very often when I was single). Still, the Mild Wife and I thought it was a nice way to show her that we're thinking of her, so we invested a little bit of cash into this.

As with most of these services, you could choose the delivery date. So, we planned ahead a little bit so that the monthly delivery would also cover Mother's Day. I mean, if we're going to send her flowers, why not make sure that she was covered for Mother's Day way in advance? That way we'd avoid the crazy rush, the jacked-up prices, and the potential stress of having to hunt something down. We figured it was a win, all the way around.

Little did we realize the folly in this plan.

You see, this plan hinges on one basic premise: that they delivery service would deliver when they said they would. When we hadn't seen a confirmation email by the Friday prior to Mother's Day, we started to get concerned. The Mild Wife called them up to make sure everything was okay, and then she had one heck of a conversation with them.

For some goofy reason, they did not have the order pending. The periodic delivery was not going to happen during the weekend, and they tried to justify this. The first excuse was that the standing order was for every 4 weeks, instead of being monthly. Well, that's not what we expected, but a quick glance at the calendar showed that in this case, 4 weeks should have been even earlier. Four weeks after the initial delivery should have been on the Wednesday before Mother's Day. But as was readily apparent to everyone, no flowers had been delivered on that day.

The next part was what really prompted to write this, and that made the Mild Wife and I laugh like heck once we got over the initial frustration. Once the person on the phone realized that the four week excuse wasn't going to fly, they switched tactics. I don't know what the exact wording was, but the Mild Wife reported that it was something to the effect of, "don't worry, the flowers will still show up in May."

Let me repeat that in case it takes a moment to sink in: this person claimed that all was right in the world because the flowers that we had requested show up every month on a certain date were still going to be delivered at some point during that month. I mean, if I could pull off that trick at work, I'd never miss a deadline ever again. Don't worry, Boss, I know I said I'd get this done by June 1st, but it'll still be done in June. I got you. Just imagine the look on a supervisor's face if I tried that.

Like I said, there was an initial bout of frustration and anger when they said this, but after some back and forth, they refunded that month and sorted the order as best they could. It was still late, much to our chagrin, but they did try to rectify things.

Now that the indignation has worn off, though, we can laugh about it. Don't worry, guys, I'm still keeping to my weekly blogging schedule. I'll just make sure that if I miss one, it happens sometime that month. That'll make everything better.

New Options

2021-05-16T20:00:00.001-07:00

The Mild Wife and I have always appreciated a little bit of time to watch something together via a streaming service. We sometimes partake in other activities while watching (and they're probably not ones you can guess), but there are quite a few posts on here about Netflix-related amusement. Heck, last week's post was inspired by something that we watched on Netflix.

Now, all that is fun, but this post isn't about Netflix. You see, we recently ventured into Amazon Prime Videos. We've actually had Amazon Prime for a little while, but we have never really bothered to check what movies or shows were available to us. For one, we already pay for a streaming service, so we didn't really have a huge desire to pay for even more content. Neither of us really minded choosing from Netflix's collection.

However, we happened to be browsing through Amazon recently when we realized that there were free-to-us options. These movies force you to watch some ads, but otherwise, there's no additional costs once you've paid for Amazon Prime. Well, we've paid for Amazon Prime. So, these options are effectively free to us, if we're willing to tolerate some ads in the middle of the movie.

We figured, "why not?" and decided to give it a go.

The interesting thing about this isn't so much that there's a new option for content, it's that we approached it like a novel new toy. I mean, this was a little bit like finding money in your pocket; we didn't expect to be able to watch these things. So, we were intentionally looking for movies that we wouldn't have watched otherwise. Suddenly, we found ourselves adding 90's rom-coms and always-on-cable fare to our list. Under normal circumstances, we probably wouldn't have looked twice at some of these options, but we were throwing our usual tastes to the wind for novelty's sake. I'm not going to lie, it felt sort of like a giant giggle-fest.

And that, my friends, is how we ended up watching "Hardball" one afternoon. It's sort of an inner-city version of "The Bad News Bears," with a bunch of ragtag kids learning to play some baseball. My favorite part, though, was that the movie has a sound track that reminded me of songs I heard from back then. It wasn't exactly an award-winning set of songs that has stood the test of time, but I did get a little nostalgic when hearing them.

Still, my favorite part was that the Mild Wife had never watched the movie or heard the songs before. She didn't have that same nostalgia for this, so when she heard the "Hardball" song, she reacted objectively. She's missing that "oh wow, haven't heard this in forever" thought, so she went immediately to, "uh, this is not the greatest song." Objectively, I know this, too. Emotionally, I sort of want to hear the song for old times' sake one more time. Let's just say that the Mild Wife disagreed with this notion.

To me, that was the cherry on top of an afternoon of whimsy. We were watching movies on a lark using a service we'd never tried before, and the Mild Wife was rightfully harumphing about so-so music. Maybe you just had to be there, but the whole thing culminated in even more giggling.

I suspect this is not the last time that we are going to giggle over something we watch on Amazon Prime.

Chopper

2021-05-09T20:00:00.001-07:00

Recently, the Mild Wife and I started watching "The Big Family Cooking Showdown" on Netflix. I don't remember whether it was recommended based on previous watching history or if we just decided to pull it up on a lark, but we started watching it nevertheless. If you've ever seen "The Great British Baking Show," this show has a very similar look and feel. It is a cooking competition, but it's not cutthroat at all. It very much feels like a family-friendly show featuring friendly families.

Since this show specifically focuses on home cooking, you get folks cooking things that look like something we might actually attempt to make at the Mild Home. I mean, it can be fun to watch some professional chef cook a giant lobster and top it with caviar and truffle sauce, but I'm never going to make something like that. The stuff that these folks make, though, looks something we might actually attempt to make. We might not make the recipe exactly as is, but we sort of recognize it as something that falls within the realm of our possibility. Basically, it's been a lot of fun to follow along.

That said, this eventually prompted a question: if we were in these contestants' shoes, who would we pick from our families to be on our team? The teams are made up of three people, so at minimum, the Mild Wife and I would need one more person. Would it be cousin So-and-So? Or what about that niece from the other side of the family? Our parents? Siblings? In the end, it prompted a fun discussion about which family members' cooking skills would complement which other skills, or how we would approach the show.

Given that we had this much fun with it, we then posed the question to my siblings. We figured they might have some fun with the notion, as well. As it turns out, my sister had the best answer. She actually put a fair bit of thought into it, because she had a bunch of questions. Did she have to be on the team? Was there a pre-defined theme? Which in-laws counted? You get the idea; this was not a flippant, off-the-cuff response.

That said, what was really interesting was the way she mentally organized her team. She picked one person to be the "head chef" and another person to be a "taster." She still picked people whose cooking skills she thought were up to snuff, but she wanted them to fill specific roles. The head chef would plan out the menus and dictate general direction, and the taster would be responsible for figuring out specific details during the execution.

The best part, however, was the last role, the one she reserved for herself. She handles herself okay in the kitchen, but she was intentionally picking other folks to be the superstars on the team. So, she relegated herself to the role of "Chopper." Yup, chopper. She would be responsible for a lot of the prep work and chopping of ingredients. I don't remember too much else from that conversation, because I started cracking up once I saw that. That's one heck of a way to describe the prep work.

Of course, I couldn't help but point out that in the Mild Home, we call that the "Sous Chef." In either case, I'm going to start looking for the Chopper on each team as we watch this show. I suspect there will be a fair bit of giggling during this process.

Cow Marco Polo

2021-05-02T20:00:00.001-07:00

The Mild Wife and I recently decided that it was safe enough to hazard a hike at a nearby trail. We were still good about wearing our masks and socially distancing, but hiking is probably a particularly good solitary activity. It's not like you need to team up with other people in order to make it to the end of a short trail. What's more, we also made sure to get there early to avoid lots of people, so there were plenty of precautions involved.

In either case, this meant that we found ourselves on a trail doing a morning hike. As you can probably imagine, it's been a while since either of us has partaken in this particular activity, so we definitely noticed that there were a few muscles we hadn't used in a while. I mean, we've still been trying to exercise during the pandemic, but sometimes there just aren't great substitutions for the real deal. Let's just say that the Mild Wife and I both remembered the next day that we had been hiking the day before (note: this also means we have resolved to try to go on hikes more often).

However, the most interesting bit about this particular hike had nothing to do with the exercise involved or our muscles. No, it involved some cows.

You see, this particular trail has cows that roam near it. It is, in effect, a part of nature. It's clearly a trail and has a very intentional path that cuts through the hillside, but there are signs saying that sometimes you will see cows nearby. You're not supposed to get too close or mess with them in any way, since they are still large animals in the wild. They're not exactly the first thing you think of in terms of dangerous animals, but an adult cow easily outweighs an adult human by a factor of 3 or 4 (and that's for the smaller ones). You don't want an angry one coming at you.

So, when we heard a cow mooing loudly near the trail, it caught our attention. Now, I haven't been around cattle enough to understand their mooing, but this did not sound like a nonchalant communication. The Mild Wife and I both got the sense that this cow was distressed for some reason.

One other detail that caught our attention was that this cow kept walking parallel to the trail (and on it, for a spell). We've been on that trail before, and we've only ever seen the cows cross over from one side to the other. They take their time doing so, but they rarely follow the actual path of the trail. I would assume that since there's no grass on the trail, it's not particularly appealing to them.

So, this cow was walking on and around the trail, mooing somewhat insistently. At some point, we heard a response from a different cow, so it almost sounded like they were communicating to each other by yelling out. I sort of theorized that it was a mama cow looking for her baby cow, calling out repeatedly to see if she could find her calf. That would have also explained the "urgency" that we heard, since that seems like a scenario where the adult cow would be distressed.

At that point, we gave that cow a wide berth. Again, these are animals that outweigh the Mild Wife and I by at least one order of magnitude. Disturbing an agitated one that has maternal instincts kicking in is not something I would describe as a good idea.

What was really interesting was that the cows kept doing this. The cow-on-the-trail kept calling out. I don't know if this invalidated our theory or not, but they did the call and response several times. By this point, we had bumped into another pair of hikers, who were also giving the cow a wide berth. We chatted for a bit as we slowly, slowly trailed this cow, and I remarked that they were still calling out to each other.

Basically, they were playing a cow version of the "Marco Polo" game on the trail. Our newfound friends were highly amused by this turn of phrase, and it stuck. Fortunately, the "Marco" cow wandered off the trail shortly thereafter, but by then we had an amusing anecdote to tell.

I know I said that the Mild Wife and I want to go on other hikes, but I sure hope we don't get a repeat of this performance. Funny or not, I'm not sure I want to relive Cow Marco Polo.

Sunscreen

2021-04-25T20:00:00.001-07:00

Sunscreen and I have an interesting relationship. On the one hand, I am fully aware of the value of sunscreen and the dangers of melanoma. I get that I should wear sunscreen, and I accept this fact. If I know I'm going to be out in the blazing sun for a whole day or even an afternoon, I will put on sunscreen. I don't gripe about it, I just do it. It's what you're supposed to to to protect yourself from prolonged exposure, so I do so.

On the other hand, I have had quite a few adventures with a lack of sunscreen. In one case, I ended up with a farmer's tan because I didn't reapply the sunscreen when hanging out with a friend. In another, I ended up with a sunburn on the inside of my knees because I almost covered every part of my body, but didn't quite manage to do so. Essentially, I'm not meticulous about the process, oftentimes with hilarious results.

If I'm really honest, I think part of that is because I don't really like the process of applying the sunscreen. It can leave your hands and face feeling somewhat sticky if the sunscreen has a residue, and it involves taking off my glasses and rubbing stuff all over my face. It just feels a bit more bothersome than I would prefer. I'm not saying that this is why I forget to wear sunscreen sometimes (see the story about the farmer's tan above), but I have to imagine that my subconscious aversion to the process isn't helping matters any.

The Mild Wife, on the other hand, is quite good about wearing sunscreen. In fact, I know this because she is often the one who reminds me that I should apply some before we head out. I always reply with a semi-surprised realization that I should, in fact, wear sunscreen, and then apply some. The end result is that I am protected, but we have both come to realize that I am not the biggest fan of the process.

Still, the Mild Wife is a problem solver, so she did a bit of research into this. Don't ask me what prompted this or how one even goes about searching for solutions to this conundrum, but she did. And the solution was hilarious.

You see, this is apparently more of a problem with young kids. They sometimes don't like putting it on, so parents have to find a way to simplify the process or make it more palatable to them. As the Mild Wife would later tell me, amidst several chortles, she came across a chart that asked how reluctant your child was. The extreme end of the scale was the "baby" end, where babies wanted to part of this. The implication was that as children matured, they became more familiar with the process, and the older kids needed less hand-holding. It's the same basic approach to toothpaste: toddlers get toothpaste they can literally swallow in order to make the process work okay, and older kids don't need special toothpaste because they've learned how the process works.

So, as the Mild Wife laughed her head off while measuring me on the baby-to-older kid scale of sunscreen application, she came across an application process meant to make things simple: a stick. It's not a cream or a goop, it's like a stick of deodorant:

Notice the brand name

That is clearly meant for a munchkin. Hell, the brand includes "Baby" in the name. Still, this particular item has the bonus of being ridiculously easy to apply. You turn the knob at the bottom to expose some (again, think of a deodorant stick), then you rub it on your skin. That's it. No goops, no having to rub it in and wait for it to set, nothing. You just apply, and then you go.

So, the Mild Wife decided this was perfect for me. I'm not going to lie, this was a genius idea. If it weren't for the fact that the package was tiny, this would be perfect for me. I rub some on, I leave the house. I can live with it being intended for a different audience if it checks all of the boxes that I want. Sure, there will likely be all sorts of giggling every time the sunscreen makes an appearance, but it works for me. I will happily accept the accompanying giggling.

Apparently, I like the applicator for baby sunscreen. I certainly didn't see that coming, but life's full of curve balls like that.