Her Diary Vs His Diary

Sometimes you just need to avoid over-thinking things.

Cooking (Italian) for Men

Pasta is one of the easiest foods you can make.

Seriously, it must have been invented by a lazy man who wanted to be able to just pop it in hot water, boil it, stir it, add some veggies and voila... dinner is served!

Of course to reach that point you first need to have the dry pasta.

HOW TO MAKE DRY PASTA

Ingredients: 5 large Eggs, 1 lb fine Flour, Salt

1 Whisk eggs into flour until thoroughly mixed, or blend with a food processor.

2 Dump mixture onto a clean, floured work-surface.

3 Form a large mound of dough.

4 Knead the dough until it feels smooth and seamless in your hands. This will keep your noodles springy and al dente after cooking.

5 Roll out long, thin sheets of pasta with a rolling pin on a floured work surface from small handfuls of dough. Alternately, use a pasta machine. Be careful to have a long, clear work surface available for this step. Keep rolling the pasta down until it's the thickness you need, for example stuffed pasta should be thinner than noodles like spaghetti or fettucine.

6 Cut and shape your pasta immediately as fresh pasta dries quickly.

DRYING YOUR PASTA

7 Spread out pasta on floured baking sheets or baking paper in a dry environment.

8 Let dry until stiff to the touch. This could be up to five days.

9 Hang long pasta, like spaghetti and fettuicine to dry on a sterilized rack or a pasta drying rack, ideally something designed specifically for this purpose but you can find other ways to hang and dry it as long as it is clean.

10 Put pasta away in glass jars, tupperware, or plastic bags when completely dry and stiff to the touch.

CONCLUSIONS

Okay, so technically there is more work required to first make the dry pasta... but its a relatively simple process, easy to mass produce and you can store pasta up for years. Handy if you ever decide to get Italian cooking lessons in Toronto so you can "up your game" in the kitchen.

And let us be serious about this for a moment, many men out there are not that good at anything in the kitchen. It really is only during the last 100 years that men have begun to take being a chef seriously and even though the word chef now makes people think automatically of a man, men in general aren't particular good at cooking. Getting private cooking lessons thus makes abundant sense if you are planning to up your game. It doesn't have to be Italian either. You could get cooking lessons in Toronto for a variety of different topics.

Offensive Fiat boob job commercial

What is interesting about the following car ad is how it is both offensive, but also accurately depicts what a typical man would think and how he would react in such a situation.

Which makes me think that most women would be utterly offended if they knew what men really thought on a regular basis.

Typical Guy Mistakes at Work

LOVE / SEX - I was tempted to call this post "Being a Bonehead at Work".

As a guy I, on a regular basis, sometimes make stupid mistakes. Bonehead mistakes. Its not that I am stupid... its just that I wasn't thinking.

For women when men do that they call it something else. Being Inconsiderate, because we didn't think of their feelings when we did something stupid.

Now I want to point out that doing a Typical Guy Mistake happens a lot. We just don't think sometimes and we do something and only afterwards realize we were being a bonehead.

Somewhere out there in the world I can guarantee there is multiple men making a bonehead mistake right now... and at the same time there is a bunch of others who are regretting their action.

Typical Guy Mistakes aren't the result of greed, hatred or malice. Although some of them might be done in the name of laziness and/or efficiency. As guys we have a tendency to think of the most efficient use of our time... so if we can carry 3 boxes up the stairs in one trip instead of making 3 trips, well by golly, we're going to carry all three boxes at once!

And that isn't really laziness because we're doing extra effort to make more efficient use of time. It takes us more energy to carry all three boxes at once.

Now if we drop 1 of the boxes and it contained your great-grandmother's antique heirloom knitting needles and the knitting needles get broken... well, gee, we're sorry. We thought we could do it without too much difficulty and weren't thinking about the danger to your precious heirloom.

And such things just happen.

Another Typical Guy Mistake is when we blurt something out and we're being honest. Nothing wrong with the truth right? Ha, if only.

Another Typical Guy Mistake is when we embarrass you by behaving like a dumb*ss. You roll your eyes in embarrassment and look the other way and later berate us later about how its rude to ask Asian people where they're from and conversing with them in their native language (as someone who speaks Korean, Japanese and Mandarin I've done this a lot, mostly because I use any excuse to hone my language skills and get needed practice).

I think you get the point.

The thing about Typical Guy Mistakes is that we know we were being stupid when we made the mistakes, but we don't think we did anything wrong. This is an important disctinction.

Doing something stupid is a whoops. Sorry. I wasn't thinking.

Doing something wrong means we did something immoral out of greed, hatred, envy, etc.

Thus sometimes men will refuse to apologize for a Typical Guy Mistake because we didn't do anything immoral. We already know we did something stupid, but morality isn't part of equation.

We can apologize for our stupidity, but sometimes if we've done multiple stupid mistakes these things add up and women get annoyed at the sheer number of mistakes. If the woman in our life is the type who keeps bringing up old mistakes this isn't going to help either. At some point in resulting arguments she might even refer to him as "a Complete Bonehead".

Being a Complete Bonehead means you're a guy who makes Typical Guy Mistakes on a regular (perhaps even daily) basis. Watch old episodes of Tim Allen on the "Home Improvement" TV show from the 1990s and you will get to see a Complete Bonehead in action.

I am going to give a personal example. One week before Valentines I was at my girlfriend's place and we discussed me staying the night. It was still early in the relationship and she had mentioned wanting to stay up late sometime talking. I was all for snuggling and chatting. However my interest in doing so was apparently misconstrued as sexual lust and she got scared of the seriousness of the relationship and 4 days later we broke up.

Now... did I do anything immoral? Nope. Was it a stupid mistake for me to want to spend the night and chat? Yes.

Now during the actual break up I did another one. I complained about how she frequently changes her mind, cancels meetings, changes meetings and so forth. Sometimes she can't even make up her mind. (If you've ever dated someone like this you know how annoying and frustrating this is.) I felt she was being inconsiderate and selfish by not taking into account my feelings and schedule and the effort I was putting into doing nice things for her. ie. The one time she was supposed to come over for spicy spaghetti and watch movies, but instead she cancelled and went straight home because she was "too tired" from work.

I was upset and said something stupid. Regardless that its true that she does those things, it was still stupid of me to bring up the topic during the breakup.

But in retrospect she was probably just making Typical Girl Mistakes when she cancelled or changed all those meetings. She wasn't thinking, the same way I wasn't thinking.

She knew I was making the meal for her but it never occurred to her that I was making a huge effort making her a special meal and that I would be upset if she cancelled at the last minute.

Such things just happen.

The only thing we can do is try and practice forgiveness and this works equally well for both sexes.

"Lets just stay friends" at Work

LOVE + SEX - Ever started seeing someone and then they suggest the two of you should stay friends for now and then maybe become lovers later? The concept is that you become friends first and then over time a romantic relationship grows. At a snails' pace, if ever.

Well there is something fundamentally wrong with that idea. Several things when you think about it.

#1. You are leading the other person on with the promise of possible romance later. Essentially you are wasting their time.

#2. You are browsing. Having a look but without making any commitments. If you end up seeing multiple people this way but aren't "together" with any of them you're basically just using all of them and taking advantage of them.

#3. The other person may hold off having relationships with other people because they don't believe in seeing multiple people at the same time. Even though you're "just friends" it is implied that romance will eventually follow and most people don't believe in browsing like that because its too much like cheating.

#4. Browsing can lead to cheating. Being "just friends" with multiple people can cause multiple romantic relationships to form and love triangles. This only leads to problems.

#5. People who try to control the flow of a relationship (aka relationship control freaks) usually don't have long term relationships because their controlling nature annoys people and is counter-productive to romance.

#6. This creates an unfair and unequal relationship.

My advice?

Anyone who suggests "Lets just stay friends" should be given either an ultimatum or avoided completely. In my experience these wishy-washy people need to make a decision (especially if they are the cheating type, since wishy-washy people often cheat). If they actually like you they should just date you. If they can't accept such a commitment then they just don't like you that much.

Sort of like the book "He's just not that into you."

There is no point in being left dangling on a hook while the other person continues to fish for bigger and better catches. Keeping you dangling means you're a backup plan, a 2nd fiddle, a spare wheel... except you're not even really that. You're a maybe. A might be replacement who may never be asked to fulfill a role.

And the silly thing is that the other person can change their mind at any time, creating an unfair and unequal relationship.

My advice?

Don't give such wishy-washy people the satisfaction of dangling people like that. They're not worth wasting your time on.

There are plenty of fish out there and you don't need to waste your time with someone who is wishy-washy and can't make a simple decision.