A Better Lover?

A few years ago, I made a drastic change to my diet. Because of that and the exercise program I was doing, my weight dropped from about 250 pounds to 195 pounds. People who hadn't seen me in a few months were stunned at the result (as was I) and would often ask how I accomplished it. I would happily explain the combination of diet and exercise that had worked for me.

A couple of months into my new physique, my wife's grandma saw me, and her burning question was, "Are you a better lover?"

I was stunned. 

And amused.  

Since the answer to her question is subjective, and I cannot answer on anyone else's behalf, I smiled wryly and deferred to my wife.

Completely mortified, burning face buried in her hands, my wife squealed that she will not be answering that question.

TMI, Grandma. T. M. Freaking. I.

Much Ado About Nothing

My wife and I spent an hour or so on the couch looking at some websites on my phone. Afterward, I got up from the couch, walked across the room, and she then asked "Where's my phone?"

So I did the easy thing and called her phone.

As soon as the call connected, we could hear it vibrating and she declared "I feel it in the couch. It must've gotten stuck between a cushion. Could you get it for me?"

So I pulled off the two removable seat cushions. The cushions along the back and sides are sewn into the couch, however.

No phone.

I call the phone, again. I can hear it vibrating but can't quite pinpoint the location.

I then slide my hands between each remaining cushion, but nothing pops out. I stick my hands in next to the right-hand cushion (where my wife had been setting) and find out that the cloth suddenly stops deeper into the couch.

Uh oh. Did the phone slide into the couch?

Calling the phone again, I can still hear it. buzzing.

So I try reaching deep into the cushions, as far as my arms will go. It isn't far enough to reach the bottom of the couch.

Maybe if I roll the couch onto its back that will put the phone into a reachable location.

Nope. I still can't reach it. Maybe if I tilt the couch against a side-table then the phone will slide into reach.

Still no luck.

I know that couches often have a cloth covering the underside, maybe there is a way to get through that covering to get to the phone.

I take off the rear-right leg to see if it can be opened.

It's secured with staples, not a zipper. Ugh.

Well, I've had this couch for 20+ years. If I destroy it, I won't be hurt to let it go. Time to remove staples to get in there. I want to remove as few staples as I can to gain access so that I do not have to do as much work to put it back together.

Digging around in there, I see a metallic glint staring back at me. Is that the phone?

Nope. A spoon from my bachelor days before over 13 years ago.

Still no sign of the phone other than calling it I can hear it vibrate. But the location of the vibration doesn't seem right to me. It's a little too diffuse and I can't pinpoint the direction. The fabric must be making it difficult to locate the phone.

I've looked on, in, and under all the furniture around me, and I am now looking inside the couch. Time to go deeper since my poor arm cannot reach all the places the phone could have gotten lodged.

So I then peel back half of the undercarriage.

I then pick up my phone to try and call her phone again. Wait, she's calling me? Is this from her backup phone?

"Hello?"

"You can stop looking. I found my phone," she declares.

"Really? Where?"

"In the bathroom. I decided to retrace my steps for today before you completely destroyed the couch."

Oops! She had left her phone in the bathroom a few hours earlier. We can hear the vibration through the floor into the family room; I've even told her how I can hear her morning alarms going off.

That explains why we could hear it vibrating now, but couldn't pinpoint the location. As a human, it's easier to pick out sounds that are coming from the left or right but not above or below.

But that doesn't explain why she could feel the phone vibrating while she was sitting on the couch.

Oh well.

Thankfully, I have a staple gun so I resecured the cover and flipped the couch back into it's original location.

And now I have one more spoon...

96 Towels

My wife and I recently bought a new home. We had several people who were going to visit in a few weeks and we knew that we needed towels and bedding to accommodate all these guests. So I was sent on a Costco quest to obtain the needed towels and bed sheets.

I picked up 4 bath mats, 24 wash cloths, 24 hand towels, and arranged them in the oversized Costco cart. I then sent my wife a photo of this configuration just to make sure that the volume of towels is what she truly wants.

Then I selected 24 bath sheets (larger than bath towels), placed those in one of the boxes they were shipped in, set that box on top of the cart and sent another photo:

Um...This is getting unmanageable but maybe it could work?

But I still need to get 24 bath towels, so I repeated that work with a second box:

Okay, this really isn't going to work. So I went back to the front of the store, grabbed one of the orange flat-bed carts, and transferred all the towels to it.

Then I headed to fetch the 8 sets of Queen sheets, 4 sets of King sheets, and 2 sets of split King sheets (a.k.a. Twin XL). By the way, these sheets are made from bamboo rayon, are not always in stock, and are awesome.

So, I take this heaping cart to the front of the store and pay for everything. I got out to our car and snapped one last photo of what I now need to cram into the mid-sized Jetta.

I pull many of the hand towels and all the bath mats off the top of the boxes and place them in the car. Then I figure I can slide the top box into the back seat. Using the convenient hand-holds on the far sides I lift up the box, walked toward the open car door, and disaster struck:

The bottom of the box popped open and dumped all the bath towels on the ground. I quickly text a photo of this scene to my wife with the message "Good thing we're washing these..." and then I started cleaning up my mess.

Some lady with her 2-year-old stopped by and offered to help me place all the loose towels in the trunk of my car. I am huffing at this point due to wearing a mask for COVID so I reluctantly accept expecting to be able to direct them in a way the helps keep our distance.

At that moment, my wife calls me back to talk to me about this mess, which consumes one of my arms and most of my attention making it difficult to make headway while adding to my anxiety about maintaining a proper social distance. So I ask my wife to release me so that I can clean up everything and she graciously accepts my plea.

It took several minutes of awkwardly shuffling back and forth to get all 50-odd towels into my car, but we successfully managed to clean up that mess (even with a helpful 2-year-old).

I tossed the box aside and then gingerly lifted the other box, from the bottom, and slid it into the back seat of the car. Then I took the collapsed box back to the store (I didn't want to have a repeat when I got home).

Everything fit in, even if it was a giant mess in the trunk. Thankfully we had already planned to wash the towels before using them, otherwise it would have been an even longer unplanned ordeal.

A Curious Mind

I recently went in for an umbilical hernia repair. A few days before the surgery, a nurse called me to ask a bunch of preparatory questions.

Because this was my first time undergoing sedation, I was curious about the process, so I chatted with the nurse. In the conversation, she mentioned that the first question most people ask when they come out of surgery is "When do we start?" This question emerges because most people do not notice when the sedative kicks in and, consequently, do not know when the surgery really begins.

I have a bit of a phobia related to needles. On the day of the surgery, I was very aware of when the IV was inserted, when the tape was applied, and when the lower-temperature medicine hit my arm. I also noticed the ceiling start to wobble like the surface of water, on which I commented as my last conscious statement.

As I was waking, I blurted out the first burning question that had apparently been on my mind. "Did I have an erection?"

"No" was the calm response from the unflappable nurse, whose facial features I couldn't yet make out.

"Interesting. I had a dream, so I thought I might have been in R.E.M."

"Nope."

In the hundreds of times I have replayed this conversation in my mind since, I have blushed and face-palmed aplenty. Had I been more conscious, I definitely would have worded my question more delicately.

I've also grown curious about what else the nurse has seen and heard as she wakes patients from anesthesia, when they are at their most vulnerable and direct... Thank heaven for HIPAA!

#NoFilter

Ye Olde NSFW English

My wife and I recently watched Anne of Green Gables--part of my penance for making her watch Arrested Development when we were dating, but that's besides the point.

A week later we traveled to visit my parents, a 3.5 hour drive from our house. On the return trip my wife decided that she wanted to listen to Anne of Green Gables. So she downloaded Audible, found the audio book, and, because it was only about $1.50, she downloaded it.

Surprisingly, in the first few chapters, a central character, Marilla, "ejaculates" three times. I raised my eyebrows and glanced meaningfully at my wife--all three times.

Running Late

My work had a morale event recently and we went on a small 3-hour tour around the local lake. It was a fun trip with good food, nice drinks (I had two Italian sodas), a lot of casual discussions, and jovial behavior.

After the event, one of my teammates stopped me and one other team member to have a quick, impromptu meeting to discuss what needed to be done tomorrow. We then resumed walking up the hill, rounded the corner and I noticed the yellow school bus starting to drive away.

I turned to my first team mate and asked, "Are you heading back?" and he replied "I'm going back to my hotel."

I looked at the second and he said "I'm going home. I live around here...Is that your bus?"

"Yes"

"You better run!"

Moving Manners

At work we are preparing to move to a new location. We do this from time to time for various reasons. But in preparation for the move I noticed that there were two tables positioned in the hallway, one upside down on top of the other.

I had walked past these tables several times and noticed that there appeared to be some sort of scratch marks on the underside of the table. Curious person that I am, I decided to investigate to figure out what may have caused that discoloration. Was it the sunlight? The natural coloring of the wood? Some sort of bored painting?

Faux Pas

I recently took a trip to Paris France for a conference. I was worried about being able to get around on my own there, but I found that I could manage pretty well. The people were friendly and courteous and helpful.

Learning the subway system was a bit of a challenge. I was trying to get from the Arch de Triumph to Charles de Gaulle airport via the subway, so I talked with the attendant in the information booth. He told me what to purchase and pointed me at the ATMs next to the booth. So I went over to try and figure the software out.

As I was waiting for an ATM, an English-speaking couple were at the neighboring ATM trying to figure it out and a 14-year-old in street clothes came up to assist them.

He made me nervous. He was too friendly and not dressed like the people in the information booth, and he did not look like he was trying to get to a particular destination himself.

Losing It

Some people left their hearts in San Francisco. I left my shoes in Paris, France.

Dialing Dyslexia

I'm preparing to give a presentation at a large computer science conference. As part of these preparations, I needed to call a support line to confirm my membership with this particular professional organization.

So I picked up my phone and dialed their support number.

Adding Insult to Injury

I was having a bad day. I didn't get enough sleep the night before, so I was slow at everything I did. There were too many meetings in the day and not enough useful decisions made. I also did not have enough time to really get anything accomplished.

By the time I got home I was sweaty and exhausted and I couldn't think through my headache to figure out what to make for dinner.

So I did what I usually do when I get home, which is to go upstairs and change out of my work clothes into a t-shirt and shorts. But as I tossed my clothes into the hamper, I saw this:

Ender's Game 2

Driving around town a few months back I noticed a bumper sticker which said

The Enemy's Gate is Down

I turned to my wife and said "That's odd. I wonder what that means. Is the enemy not paying attention to their defenses? Or are they having a tailgate party?"

"That's a quote from 'Ender's Game'," she replied.

"What? I don't remember that at all."

Nuts for Not Hair

By brother-in-law, David, recently participated in a church youth party-planning meeting with some teenagers and a few adult leaders. Someone suggested he invite his good friend, Joe, to the event.

David responded "I'll bring him even if I have to drag him by..." Oh wait--I can't say "hair" because he's bald. "...his not hair!" That's a cute high-school-ly way of putting it.

Two weeks later, someone from that meeting approached David and asked him to clarify his statement about Joe. Apparently this attendee--and several others--heard...

Metaphorically Speaking

The other day my wife and I were driving back from shopping when I suddenly realized "The name 'Ender' from 'Ender's Game' is symbolic of the fact that he always wins; he always ends the game."

My wife responded "You just realized that? How long ago did you read that book?"

I'd read the book 3 times and love it each time. The first time was in 6th grade, the second in 10th grade, and the third time while working on my undergraduate degree. I am now a year past finishing my doctorate.

You'll have to excuse me...I'm a little slow.

Friendly Meetings

I'm preparing a presentation for a large conference in my field of study. This conference has ~2500 attendees who each attend various presentations across roughly 16 tracks which means about 150 people per presentation at the conference.

Nerve-racking to think about all the people who could see my presentation.

As I prepare occasionally my mind thinks back several years and I am racked with guilt, embarrassment, and horror each time this thought comes to mind.

Lingua Franca

My wife and I were sitting behind a car with a license plate frame that said ”alumni” across the top and ”kamehameha” across the bottom. I laughed and said, ”That's a magical incantation from a Japanese cartoon show” thinking that it was some sort of cryptic reference.

My wife looked askance and said, ”He's the first king of Hawaii, and that's probably a reference to a school named after him.”

So I looked up ”kamehameha” on my phone and sure enough, it is the name of the first king of Hawaii and there is a school named after him.

Is it weird that my knowledge is largely informed by pop culture?

Glympse into the Minds of Programmers

I love Glympse. It is a great tool for long trips; I just pick some family members, a destination, click "send" and then those family members can follow my progress to that destination. It's also great for letting people know where you are around town in case you want to meet up.

The app has gone through some updates recently which drastically changed the interface but made it much easier to send Glympses. In addition, some feature came to my attention (either they were added or they were new). One of the features I noticed while setting up a new Glympse is the feature to add a message. So I tapped on it.

Up popped a list of 50 or so canned messages as well as a text box to enter a custom message.

Scanning through the list, some of the messages appear useful. For example, "Almost there!" "I'll be right there!" and "I think I'm lost."

Costco Condiments

I walk back from the soda machines with two root beers and set them down next to our other food. My wife then says to me, "Do you want to take out your hotdog...?"

I cut her off. "So I can condomize it?" My wife's eyes widen. "Er, cond-i-ment-ize it?

"Yeah, so you can condomize it." She chuckles. "That's right up there with your 'banana hammock' story."

And I thought I was doing so well...

What is that Wonderful New Scent You've Discovered?

I emerged from the bathroom after trying out a new flavor of Listerine and sat down next to my wife.

She promptly asked, ”Did you put on Bengay?”

I responded, a little incredulously, ”I used that new Listerine.”

She then, matter-of-factly stated, ”No kisses for you. Your mouth smells like Bengay.”

Note to self: no more listerine.

TMI Hotdogs

No. It isn’t what you think.

I was at Costco the other day. I finished up shopping a little before the store was shutting down. I hadn’t eaten anything for dinner, so I decided to stop by the food court.

When I approached the counter, the attendant asked for my order, and I said

“One hotdog, please.”