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December 20, 2007

Practical Jokes

Don and the Mysterious Locked Suitcase

One time at church camp I had a roommate named Don who was very private and security-conscious. He always locked his suitcase and kept the key on a chain around his neck. Of course, this caused my fellow roommates and I to be even more determined to get in his suitcase.

Late one afternoon before dinner, he went to take a shower. We tried jimmying the lock to no avail. We eventually came up with the idea of taking the key chain from the hook in the little drying-off area outside the individual showers.

We raced back to the room with the key and unlocked the suitcase. We didn’t mess up anything or take anything, except to take out his camera. Stripped down to our underwear, we took pictures of each other with his camera, put the camera back in the suitcase, locked it up, the returned the key chain back to the hook. In Don’s thinking, nothing ever happened.

That fall we had a reunion, and Don thanked us for the extra pictures.

Punk-Rocker Surprise

My brother Dan went to the University of Michigan, just about an hour from my parent’s home. I was five hours away at Miami University in Ohio. I arranged to pick up Dan and surprise our parents. I also brought along some props to make it an even bigger surprise.

We got home and came into the house. I put on a multicolored punk-rock wig and some gold wraparound glasses. We came into the house, and Dan called out, “Hi, Mom, I’m home.”

My mom called out that she was back in her bedroom. Dan went back there, and I was a bit behind in the hallway. Dan said, “Hi, Mom, I just wanted to surprise you for the weekend.”

My mom said, “Oh, Dan, it’s so great to see you.”

“I brought a friend with me from my fraternity,” he said as I came in the room. “Mom, this is John.”

“Hi, John, it’s nice to meet you.”

It was then that I pulled off the sunglasses and wig to her total surprise. We all got a good laugh.

December 17, 2007

Funny One Liners & Quotes

1.. My husband and I divorced over religious differences. He thought he was God and I didn’t.

2.. I don’t suffer from insanity; I enjoy every minute of it.

3.. Some people are alive only because it’s illegal to kill them.

4.. I used to have a handle on life, but it broke.

5.. Don’t take life too seriously; No one gets out alive.

6.. You’re just jealous because the voices only talk to me.

7.. Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

8.. Earth is the insane asylum for the universe.

9.. I’m not a complete idiot — Some parts are just missing.

10..Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.

11. NyQuil, the stuffy, sneezy, why-the-heck-is-the-room-spinning medicine.

12..God must love stupid people; He made so many.

13..The gene pool could use a little chlorine.

14..Consciousness: That annoying time between naps.

15..Ever stop to think, and forget to start again?

16..Being “over the hill” is much better than being under it!

17..Wrinkled Was Not One of the Things I Wanted to Be When I Grew up.

18..Procrastinate Now!

19..I Have a Degree in Liberal Arts; Do You Want Fries With That?

20..A hangover is the wrath of grapes.

Mental Math and slowing down aging

I can’t prove this but I bet that doing lots of mental Math can help slow down aging. In studying a number of techniques for doing fast arithmetic I notice a number of mental skills at play:

  1. Pattern recognition. Many tricks involve recognizing and exploiting a pattern.
  2. Visualization of processes. Multiplying large numbers together requires you to hold a mental image of multiple steps.
  3. Alertness. Falling asleep will cut way down on your efficiency in every technique!
  4. Mental speed. Impressing your friends will require you to develop speed in your technique.
  5. Memory. Efficient arithmeticians memorize more Math facts than others. Some people, for example, find memorizing the squares of all numbers up to 25 to be helpful in certain techniques. Also, you often need to maintain a running total in your head and keep track of carries..
  6. Concentration. When multiple steps need to happen in a sequence your powers of concentration will improve.

A friend and I were discussing how mental Math could help maintain the plasticity of the brain, its ability to reorganize itself in response to new information. She thinks that doing a number of cross-multiplications every day can keep the brain active as we age. I agree.

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