Recently in Ramblings Category

Last weekend I accidentally gave a chubby Mexican kid who couldn't put more than 2 words together at a time $10 in quarters to play a video game in a laundrymat because his curvaceous mom was wearing a low-cut top. It's ok because the quarters weren't mine.

Serene laughed for about 20 minutes then gave me a big snuggling hug that made me blush all the way up to the top of my bald head. I think she likes doing that, but I haven't figured out if it's because of the bright red blush or the snuggling.

. Topher

Ight, this just kills me. Are you ready for this? Heh heh.

Yeah, so, in this one building I frequent there is a conference room with a VLW (Very Large Whiteboard). On that whiteboard are all kinds of boxes and squiggles with little blurbs that must be significant to somebody scrawled near, around and over them. Standard fare for a VLW, don't you think?

Yeah, so, splattered over all of this scrawling are 20 or 30 post-it notes stuck to the whiteboard with more scrawlings on them. Yes, post-it notes stuck to the whiteboard.

And of course, just to add that finishing touch, a nice "Do Not Erase" in the middle.

Ha! That kills me.

So, Leigh had an "Oh My God I Get To Go To Singapore For A Whole Month" party a few weeks back. As usual, she was in hot pursuit of jumping pictures of all sorts.

She's there now. In Singapore, I mean, wandering around, taking pictures, I dunno what all.



It seems I can't jump without making a really dorky face.


My Superman Moment. I FLEW! For about 1/3rd of a second.


Katie and Serene performing the Kick Out and Bonk Heads Amidst Raucous Laughter Jump.


"Yeah. I'm coo. So coo. I'm gonna land right here."


Cutest. Thing. EVAR!

I often refer to myself as a "Honky White Boy." Thus, my ass is, quite understandably, often quipped as my "Honky White Ass."

I attribute my fond embracement of my Honkiness to my father. See, my dad was born a poor white boy in Texas, working the farms and praising the Lord. I guess you learn to value those unique qualities that get you razed in some circles, because no matter how much we teased him, he has never lost his fondness for cowboy boots. (Though we have managed to get them gallon hats toned down to a fedora or a John Deere cap.) And he often referred to himself as "just a poor honky white boy."

So there I am, thirty-something years along in life, thinking I'm the definition of "Honkiness." I'm sitting in some cheesey rice place (that is to say, a place which serves rice covered in cheese) under the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur, a happy honky white boy. My oh-so-lovely girlfriend, a Chinese-Malaysian who speaks English better than many Americans, points out a table of rather loud and raucous Chinese and says, "See them, they're all Honky's."

"Ruhr?" I eloquently grunted. "They're what?"

She giggled, "We call them Honky's because they're from Hong Kong."

And there I was, amazed again at how ego-centric I so often am, and realizing that Americans often are. Which, of course, made me realize that I'm the definition of "American." ... Woe.

Yeah. For those of you thinking about elk, burritos and other such things, just keep on thinking.

Gentlemen, I've learned a secret. Not just any secret. I've learned a secret that gets girls HOT. There's no ingestion of any pharmaceuticals of any sort involved here and no shrubberies, herberies or highly concentrated powders. It has nothing to do with chocolate or diamonds, the number of cylinders your truck has, or the size of your... hands.

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Girls LOVE it, they actually think it's SEXY (I'm not exaggerating here) when a guy washes their dishes!

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So there we were at this party in Seattle this past weekend. There were several women there. One particular guy, a guest, kept ending up in the kitchen washing dishes. I said, "You know, I've heard that girls think one of the sexiest things a guy can do is her dishes."

The girlfriend of this guy suddenly appeared at his elbow, "Oh no," she said, "Don't you go doing my dishes for me. Those are my dishes."

I gotta admit, I was a bit confused. So out I went to the main room. In a nice loud voice I said, "I've heard that girls like it when a guy does the dishes for her. Is that true?"

Every woman in that room got all bright-eyed and perky. "Oh that's so hot," they said. One girl piped in, "Oh, and mowing the lawn... soooo hot!"

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I know what you think. You think maybe they were just using a nice little psychological trick to get their guys to do a few chores around the house, right? Heh. Yeah maybe, but I'd bet if you were to conduct your own little empirical study you will find a direct correlation between doing the dishes and doing the girl.

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I was just walking around the building in which I work. It's something I do sometimes on nice days to keep my brain from getting too irradiated from the 3 monitors which bombard it with all those speeding photons throughout the day.

Walking through the foliage between the one parking lot and the other, there was suddenly something flopping around right where I was about to plunk my foot. I'm proud to say that I didn't scream like a girl! It was really more of a man's scream.

Anyhow, so there was this cute little green hummingbird flopping around like it had a broken wing. I crouched down and looked at it. It looked at me, then flopped again.

I'm sure there's something sage to say about this little incident, but the thing my simple little mind keeps spiraling back on is: I almost stepped on a hummingbird!

I'm pretty sure it didn't really have a broken wing. I could be wrong, in which case I must wonder if the beak would irritate the cat's stomach. At any rate, I left it there to flop for the next poor soul to wander through.

. Topher

The building in which I work has all automatic bathrooms. Like at the airport. You walk up to the toilet, do your thing and walk away. It flushes after you. You walk up to the sink, wave your hands under the faucet and it turns on. Wave your hands under the soap thingy, wave them again with a flourish and you might get some soap out.

Of course, then you have to touch the door handle to get out, spreading germs and contamination to every single person in one foul step. How can we live in such filth?! But nevermind that for now.

So, there I was just this very morning, standing there doing my thing all alone. Suddenly the urinal next to me flushed. I looked over wide-eyed as it drained it's contents and refilled. Then one of the sink faucets turned on. I looked behind me at the sink; nobody was there. I finished up quickly, took my own turn at the sink and headed back to my cubical muttering under my breath about haunted office buildings and bathroom necromancy.

. Topher

We're a small crew at the place I'm working nowadays. There are only 8 of us on the R & D team. We sit in a sort of bull-pen type area, all around the edges.

In the middle of our bull-pen is a table with a bunch of snacks on it. We buy bags of chips and crackers and trail mixes and what-have-you and throw them all on the table to share.

At some point over the weekend a bag of Mango Tortilla Chips has magically appeared. Yes, you heard me correctly, Magically appeared. It must have been magical because nobody is admitting to bringing them. And yes, you heard me correctly, Mango Tortilla Chips.

It was a few hours before anybody got up the nerve to open the bag.

If I can take a moment here to reflect: After spending some time in Southeast Asia I can honestly say I've had some very delicious savory mango-based dishes, like chicken in a mango sauce, and a fantastic mango chutney. And I can certainly imagine a yummy mango salsa type dish. Mmm. This is making my mouth water.

But mango corn tortilla chips just sounds wrong. Wrong. Indeed, it tastes wrong too. It's a strange combination of undefined sweet overlaying otherwise plain corn tortillas. Even as a novelty, it's pretty weak.

.  Topher

There we were strolling along the bay at Seal Point Park. There was a couple down by the water with their 2 black labrador retrievers. The man was throwing a big honking stick out into the bay, and one of the dogs was plunging into the water after it, swimming all the way out to it and dragging it all the way back to shore.

For those of you who don't know I have a dog, a cross between a black lab and a boxer. Chip is a beautiful mutt with a fantastic temperment. He's a mid-sized dog but he's a bit on the beefy side, weighing in at about 70 pounds. He still thinks he can fit in my lap. And he loves to chase down thrown tennis balls.

But I'm pretty sure that if I threw a tennis ball into the bay he'd look up at me with those big brown doggie eyes and say, "Now what'd you go and do that for?"

He'd try to find a way, though, because... well... he's a dog. He'd go right up to the edge of the water and look at it, maybe test it to see if it really was wet. Then he'd run over to another spot and check there. And after a few times he'd look up at me and say, "I can't get to it. It's out there in all that water."

And after a while, I think we'd go home sans one tennis ball.

We had just finished polishing off a stir-fry dish with some rice. We have rice a lot these days. I guess that happens when you live with an Asian woman.

"Is there any more rice?" I asked hopefully.

"Yes," she answered without hesitation, "One."

"One?" I echoed, not quite sure I'd heard correctly.

"One," she repeated looking intently at a single grain of rice on her plate.