Simple Pleasures, April 2011 Edition

On Friday I caught up with some good friends over dinner.  We live in two different towns, so we rendezvous-ed at a big shopping center halfway between them.  The dining options were somewhat limited, and we picked a mass-market Asian fusion kind of place.  The food was not unpleasant, but really sub-par as far as Asian food goes.  I had a dish with tofu and broccoli, and the tofu was just as it would be if you opened a package of smooth tofu and cut it into pieces--bland and slippery, not crispy or flavorful like it often is at Chinese restaurants.  The sauce was thin and not particularly flavorful either.  Nevertheless, the whole experience was very pleasant because I was there with friends and the weather was great.  We got to be silly just like we always are when we hang out, and we got to catch up on what's been going on in each other's lives.  After dinner we had planned to see a movie, but nothing that was playing looked too good, so we just wandered through a bookstore instead.  The evening was a prime example of the power of simple pleasures to bring joy.

Harebrained Schemes

Meaning no offense to the noble hare, I want to talk about crazy, wild, improbable schemes, and how much fun they can be.  Who knows what these two ducks are about to make with their five thousand pounds of wool felt, inflatable palm tree, disco ball, grandfather clock, steel girder, twine, ping-pong balls, croquet mallet, and old bicycle parts?  But you just know it's going to be something impressive.  My harebrained scheme of the day was concocted with my coworker and involved planning to cook large quantities of chili in crock pots.  The part that made it feel like a scheme was our carefully written-up "Chili Worksheet" and the official chili project folder we created to file the worksheet in.  Pretty much anything can turn into a harebrained scheme if you have the necessary expansive mindset and willingness to be silly.  In such cases, I am more than happy to put in extra work for no discernible outcome other than the sublime conflation of the serious and the absurd.  The resulting confusion often leads to childlike laughter, and that on its own is more than worth the effort.

Silly Hats

I'm watching Carolina play Marquette right now, so that probably influenced the choice of silly hats.  But my friend also has a hat very much like the one on the left, so that was what sealed the deal.  Silly hats make everything better, as far as I'm concerned.  True, it can be tricky to navigate low doorways, and there are a certain number of odd looks from passersby, but after all, isn't that kind of the point?