I Got a New Digital Watch

I got a new watch. It's digital, it's Sony, and it has more features than I will ever need in my lifetime.
There's an alarm, of course, and stopwatch and timer features, but also a multiple time zone feature which will allow me to set the watch, in advance, for up to 10 cities. There's a calculator option, as well as a calendar.
And now I'm sitting her at my desk, it's getting late at night, and I'm trying to figure all of these features out, without using the instruction book. This is an uphill battle, to say the least.
But for the moment, it's entertaining. And it's keeping my mind off the serious issues in life. And no, I really don't want to talk about those. I know that some people use their blogs to talk about all of the "big issues" that are happening in their lives, but that't not me. I use this blog talk about fun stuff.
And right now, that means my new watch.
I just made it beep, twice, very loudly. Not much else happened, though. Trying the other button, the screen flashed the world "error" at me.
Setting the time, which I did earlier today, was easy. Setting the multiple time zones was also pretty simple. Getting the watch to cycle through the times, so I can see my local time again, after checking on DC, London, Rome, Jerusalem, New Dehli, Tokyo, Honolulu, and Los Angeles is not so easy. The watch doesn't want to stop scrolling.
I'm thinking that if I can't this working pretty soon, I'll either break down and open the instruction book, or I'll open the back of the watch and pull out the battery.
I don't really want to do that, though, because I'll lose the current settings, and invalidate the warranty for 500 meter water resistance.
Ah, decisions, decisions....

I Went Out on a Date

Karaoke night. What else is there to say?

Yup. Like the title says, I had a date recently. With my wife. It was a lot of fun. We arranged a baby sitter, and then we went out to a little bar and grill not far from where we live, where they have Rolling Rock for a dollar, and the best chicken fingers in town. And karaoke.

We didn't know about that last. We found out that it was karaoke night when we got there. After a brief consultation, we decided not to sign up. This had more to do with my wife's perception that I cannot carry a tune, and my perception that she cannot carry a tune (honestly, I am not sure that either of can, but we both think we can), than it did with any sense that karaoke isn't fun.

Because it is fun. It's a lot more fun to sit and watch, though. Especially when there's dollar beers to be had. So we just found a table in a relatively dark corner, sat back with our chicken fingers, barbeque sauce, honey mustard sauce, and Rolling Rocks, and watched the show.
And what a show it was. If we thought that we can't carry tunes, we soon got a lesson in poor singing. Now, maybe it's not nice to have fun like this at other people's expense, but these people were volunteering for it. First, they were drunk enough to act stupid unselfconciously, and second, they were belting out 80s and 90s hits like they thought they were stars.
I think I know how the judges on American Idol must feel, when they get those contestants who are bursting with enthusiasm, but have no skill at all. It's scary.

It was also a blast to watch. Especially because we knew most of the songs, and were mostly sober, so we could just sit back and sing along quietly with each other, while all around us, drunks were making fools of themselves. A sociologist could have written a paper on it...
Eventually, it was time to go home, and so we did. But we'd gotten out together, and had a good laugh, and that's what really counts, of course.