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Everyone had those childhood rebellions. No matter how small or how silly those rebellions were, they were attempts to assert ourselves as right. Me, I refused to eat mushrooms and onions. I hated them and balked at the ‘you’ll enjoy them when you grow up’. Aside from the obvious ‘Well, I sure don’t enjoy them now’ retort, I stuck to part of my rebellion. Though I now love mushrooms, onions are still on my top ten watch list.

In junior high, I put forth another rebellion. It typing class we were told that we needed to learn to touch type. 1) it would help us tremendously in the future. 2) there was no way we could ever get fast enough to pass if we were looking at the keys. Well, I showed them! I quickly read the paragraph, memorized the whole thing and watched the keyboard the whole time I typed. Though I was nowhere near the fastest in the class, I did pass. So ha!

But I hate it when people are right. I couldn’t touch type. As a writer, this was a huge problem. It’s really hard to untrain yourself from looking or to learn to do consciously what you can do if you just don’t think about it. Chew on that – I typed so much that if I could get out of my head, I COULD sit back and touch type, but the second I thought about it, I had to look at the keys.

Later during a course book writing project I started developing the early warning signs of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome and also made my left arm numb to the elbow. In researching how to fix what I’d done and prevent further damage, I bought wrist braces, got gelfoam wrist supports to put in front of my keyboard and tilted the keyboard away from me rather than toward. And then I came across the Dvorak keyboard.

Qwerty keyboards (the standard set-up) were designed to slow you down – so that the strike keys on the old manual keyboards didn’t become entangled. Dvorak set up his keyboard for speed and ease of use. The most common keys are the home keys and your fingers don’t have to move to the bottom row very often. All the speed typing records were set on Dvorak boards and the Dvorak keyboard is a built-in option for most all operating systems. Wikipedia has one of the best explanations on the web http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dvorak_Simplified_Keyboard and another site shows the difference in finger movements with Dvorak and Qwerty boards http://patorjk.com/keyboard-layout-analyzer/ (I suggest you try this site and check out the blue pie charts showing the dramatic difference in home, top row and bottom row key usage! In will analyze anything you type!)

In spite of all this, Dvorak has never really caught on. But when have I been one to let something like that get in my way? And here in my mid-adulthood I was finally ready to admit that I ‘only hurt myself’ by not learning to touch-type in junior high and that it was high time I did learn how.

So I converted over, got myself an elementary learn-to-type book and practiced every day. Immediately, my wrists began to feel better and so did my heart. I could actually type without looking at the keys! Though the benefits are many, there are some drawbacks, too.

Pro: my wrists don’t hurt. In the past if I wrote as much as I have this month, I’d be sleeping in my wrist braces. Right now – despite days of 5,000+ words. I don’t have a twinge.
Con: no one else can work on my system.
Pro: no one else can work on my system. No one touches my sh!% : )
Con: I’m picky about how my keyboards feel and there are very few keyboards available in the Dvorak layout.
Pro: key/letter stickers make dull keyboards fun and convert any keyboard to Dvorak.
Con: Have you ever touched a sticker about thirty thousand times? Stickers feel really gross when they start to slide off the keys.
Pro: one company makes good high-use stickers. (Thank goodness!)
Con: due to clustering high frequency letters, typos are more likely to make a real word.

When I couldn’t touch type, I seemed to develop motor patterns for common words and sets of letters. For example – I could touch type my password, because I had learned that pattern. I also had one for ‘the’ and other high use words. Apparently, I also had them for ‘ing’ ‘tion’ and other endings. It was difficult to type ‘tusk’ because I had a ‘uck’ pattern and would type ‘tuck’. I am grateful every day that there is no word ‘fusk’. I still have not lived down an old Qwerty typo I sent to my primary editor/sister. In the scene, soldiers are dying in a field after battle and a duck comes up. I had tried to write ‘the approaching dusk’ but my motor pattern had typo’d me to ‘the approaching duck’. She called me, ranting “Why is there a duck!? I don’t get the duck! Why on earth is there a duck?”

With Dvorak, though I don’t typo anywhere near as much, the proximity of certain letters leads to things spell check will never catch. For example, when typing ‘whole’ I can shift one letter and get ‘whale’ or even better ‘whore’.

I did figure out that a good friend of mine is just as geeky as me when he chatted one day that something was ‘uneful’. Knowing that ‘s’ and ‘n’ are right next to each other on the Dvorak board, I tentatively asked him if that’s what he was using. Lo and behold, he was on Dvorak. He’s completely geeky like me – who else would be using a Dvorak keyboard!? – and we got to chatting about the typo problem.

Eli S. to me: Dvorak typos are the bust!
Me: Clone but no cigar.

Recently we celebrated Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday. Facebook and Twitter lit up with MLK Jr quotes and bold statements about acceptance. Though I have never heard this quoted anywhere else, I have always thought that MLK Jr had the following principle at heart: if you wish to be accepted by society, you must first show society that you can be a useful part of the culture. King suggested that his people be peaceful protestors who advocated their own worth, and even today this continues to be a valuable idea.

There’s value to the other side, too. You don’t have to conform to what’s already in a society to prove you can have value in it. “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it” has its own merits. And every year I lived in Los Angeles, you can bet I wasn’t going to miss the West Hollywood Gay Pride Parade on Halloween. I have never seen better costumes anywhere than what I saw there every year, everywhere I turned. One year, the string quartet from “Titanic” played as they walked, complete with old-time life vests and icicles hanging from their faces and sleeves. Another year, a human Oscar and an Emmy stood on raised daises at one end of the walk. Parade goers could grasp them by the calves and get their picture taken as if accepting a life-sized award. But wearing your purple, thigh-high shazam boots with only a green over-the-shoulder thong isn’t really the way to convince society that you belong.

But the issue of one group trying to get a legitimate foothold in society doesn’t end there: anti-weight discrimination groups are in the mix now. (“We’re here, we’re spheres, get used to it”). But a new group has a dog in the fight, too: the medical marijuana contingent.

Let’s start with a breakdown:
The pros: cannabis has medicinal benefits that can drastically alter the course of some terribly debilitating diseases.
The cons: it’s a street drug, and a lot of the people with prescriptions are abusing the privilege.

While both those arguments are valid, we have to consider that over half the Vicodin and Percocet prescriptions today are for abusers or addicts rather than people with real needs. When I worked in an ER I was shocked to learn that I could easily put myself through college by selling just a handful of small blue pills on the street each week (my students loans are clear evidence that I didn’t do it.) Yet no one is suggesting that Vicodin or Percocet distributors be prosecuted.

The really interesting bit here is that both sides have very valid arguments. So what’s next? Reality TV, that’s what! “Weed Wars” follows Harborside Health Clinic as they distribute medical marijuana to people with actual prescriptions for it. What makes the show interesting is that these people seem never to have heard of Martin Luther King Junior.

One of the guys who runs the clinic is called ‘Dress’ because he’s worn dresses for the past several decades. Not your usual work-wear either. Any woman would be looked at askance if she considered these flowing tie-dyed and knotted concoctions to be office appropriate. I’m all for real gender-equality, but if you want to speak before congress, at least wear a NICE dress!

Another thing not in their favor: everyone – every single person – who works at Harborside has a prescription for medical marijuana. Many of the people who obtain their prescriptions there have clear physical issues – constant seizures, MS, etc – yet no one who works there has any obvious medical need. In fact, one of the partners says: it just makes me clear. Yeah . . . right. Letting “Dress” out in public in an attempt to get people to accept you is a “clear” decision. Well, cocaine makes a lot of people “clear” too. Just saying.

The third partner is an older man with chest length Pippi Longstockings braids made from graying, thinning hair. This is the man who – in the car on the way to plead the local government for more tax leniency – said “I just had an edible. It calmed my nerves.” As best I can gather from the show, edible=pot brownie. If MLK Jr were there, I think he’d say, “Dude! Seriously? Did you listen to NOTHING I said?”

Harborside Clinic is not making tons of money. The legalization of pot means quality control and inspections. It means testing and taxation, and there’s not much profit left. These are smart people who make strong emotional and logical arguments about the need for medical marijuana. But every time they say something profound, the cameras cut away to the same person sucking on a bong.

Oh Harborside Health Clinic, you shoot yourself in the foot so many times. Why does everyone who works there have a prescription? Pharmacists aren’t all on Valium . . . If it’s a legitimate drug, why aren’t there pills or inhalers? Why are all your people smoking it? I don’t know of any physician who suggests you get your morphine based drug, crush it and snort it a la street cocaine.

It’s time to call the great Dr. King! We need you! Oppressed people everywhere need real wisdom rather than catchy chants. When you’re making your rounds, please stop at Harborside first. Explain to these people that smoking their stock does not make them legitimate pharmacists. They need your help, and I do, too. I’d really like to be able to cut back from the two edibles necessary to maintain my calm through each episode.

We just recently went through the end of Daylight Saving Time. Well, most of us did, some didn’t. Lucky Hawaiians and Arizonans. Actually, Hawaiians have it the best, what difference does it make if they do daylight saving time or not? No one can correctly calculate what time it is in Hawaii anyway.

It’s Arizona that may have the most trouble. No one ever knows which time zone they have an alliance with. On the upside, they don’t have to remember to spring forward or fall back, and never pull themselves out of bed an hour early complaining about farmers. Nor do they get that blissful extra hour of sleep the other 48 enjoy.

Oh wait. Half the time we don’t enjoy it, because we forget about it. We often spend our ‘free’ hour in the fall having shown up for something at the time we thought was ‘on time’. So we waste our hour mad at our friends who stood us up or wondering if no one got the memo . . . only to find out that it was our own fault, and that our hour is gone for another year.

Somewhere there should be a “An Affair to Remember”-esque love story about a couple who agrees to meet, at a certain point and time in mid-November. Only they miss each other, because she realizes it’s Daylight Saving weekend, and he shows up an hour earlier because he forgot to ‘fall back’! Or was the one who set the clock forward the one who’s early?!?!?! It’s just so confusing. That’s why no one has written this epic love tragedy! Who can possibly get it right?

How many of us have called someone in the middle of the night and cringed as we said, “Oh, I thought it was evening there . . . Sorry”? How many of us have screwed up something major because we missed that the time said EST and forgot that doesn’t apply to us. (Thank God for TiVo or when I moved to the central time zone I would have missed my TV shows for probably close to a year. It took forever for me to understand that the advertisement that said “Eight/Seven Central” was talking to me. Because showing up for your eight o’clock show at eight is incredibly painful!)

I once visited my Dad in Eastern and had a handful of online meetings from his house. Some of the meetings were country-wide, and thus originally listed in EST. Some were in Central. I converted them ALL! Ooops. Then when I went back home at the end of the week, I converted them back again . . . That next month was epic. They still talk about it at my office.

I also can never remember if we are in Daylight Saving time or not. And if you have that problem, don’t ask anyone for help – no one else knows either. Some people are convinced they are right and they are NOT! I finally stopped trying to figure it out. It’s easier to just spell out ‘Eastern’ when talking about time than it is to look up whether you are EST or EDT.

And another thing people are wrong about: it’s not the farmers’ fault. Farmers don’t care what time it is. When the sun comes up, the rooster crows. The rooster has no concept of clocks. In fact, roosters in Nashville (the far eastern edge of Central Time) crow nearly an hour earlier than roosters in Fort Stockton, TX (the far western edge of Central Time). In fact, the best reports show that Daylight Saving harms farming more than it helps.

It was put into place in the late 1800s to help reduce the usage of energy, but doesn’t do much of that in this modern time. Also, sunlight adjustment (the real reason behind it) is tied to sporting events (that may or may not need sunlight), evening entertainment, health and CRIME! Though I get the correlation between cover-of-darkness and crime, I just don’t see that extra hour being beneficial. Do criminals say “It finally got dark, but it’s almost nine. It’s just too late to rob anyone tonight. Maybe tomorrow.”? I don’t think so. What I do think, is that crime goes up on those two weekends that are most affected. I think people break up with boyfriends and girlfriends when they get stood up. I think people who have to get out of bed an hour early are grouchier, and they take that yelling from their boss about being late even harder. Yeah, bosses . . . you watch out in the spring. That’s all I’m saying.

Honestly, I fail to understand time zone math. And what’s worse: I fail to understand my failure. I can talk intelligently about axial tilt and eastward rotation. I agree that four time zones in America is better than one time zone without the math. (Think about that for a minute. Yeah.) I can sum infinite terms and find asymptotes. Give me a parabola or a quadratic equation, I’m on. But at this point in my life I’ve given up on the simple 1, 2, 3 addition and subtraction of the time zones.

I’m really sorry I posted this blog so late at night. I thought it was earlier where you are.

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Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

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In the olden worlde, the earth was flat. It was the center of the universe and everything else revolved around us. Electricity and natural disasters were caused by gods and magic.

And then, we found SCIENCE!

Electricity became the movement of electrons – which we harnessed, wired and put a dimmer switch on. We realized the stars didn’t work with us at the middle, and it all made a lot more sense if we gave ourselves less importance in the grand scheme of things. We discovered magma and tectonic pressure build-up and virgins everywhere breathed a sigh of relief.

And still we discover more. We can see direct evidence of our postulated atoms. We believe in dark matter. And right now, I’m working on a computer that makes the green DOS prompt of my childhood look like it came from the same time period as the American Settlers. (You have died of dysentery!)

I love reading books with time travel in them. Because they never get it right. If someone today went back in time, he would die a feverish death of some dread disease in his peas porridge. Or else he’d die from his own hand after 9 days of peas porridge. (The rhyme is thought to have originated from people just adding more food to the singular pot that hung over the fire and heating it up each time they wanted it . . . hot.)

If someone from the past came into our world today, it would be similar to watching fainting goats. This person would be so frightened by everything around him, he would pass out at the slightest provocation. Turn on the TV? Out he goes. Pop up the toast? Out again! Wait til the phone rings – it’s funny every time.

If this person could hold it together long enough to stay conscious, he’d think you a witch or a demon. He’d shake his rattlesnake tail at you and demand you ‘Get back, foul beast!’ You could try to win him over with a Pop-tart, but the shiny plastic would clearly be the work of the devil, the sugar would send him into a coma and none of that would matter because he’d pass out when the toaster popped.

And yet, with all of this, as far as we’ve come, and all that we’ve developed, we still have people doing the modern day equivalent of shaking their rattlesnake tail and calling foul.

Why can’t ESP exist? Why can’t prayer harness real power? Why can’t some things be pre-determined? Hello?! That remote control for your TV? Wireless power transfer? The internet? On your cell phone?

Just a hundred years ago, that was all magic. Not science-yet-to-be-discovered, but ‘magic’. All of the science we have today (lighting fires, restarting the human heart, that text message that tells you that you have an email that tells you someone will give you half their Swiss Lotto winnings if you’ll just provide an account number to deposit the money into) was once considered magic. So why can’t the things we don’t understand today go into the ‘possible future science’ category?

I’m not saying it’s all real, nor that we should believe in everything. Sometimes science shows us to be stupid. Yeah, bleeding people when they were sick . . . sorry about that one. Boiling tree bark and drinking the tea was a good one though! The idea of the flat, centrally located earth fell to the wayside, but gravity explained a lot! And so does Relativity . . . and String Theory.

I get that there are a lot of things out there still operating under the people-want-to-believe/snakeoil hypothesis. But if it really isn’t going to work, don’t worry, Penn and Teller will do their best to explain it away. In the meantime open your minds, people!

Oh, gosh. I am going to laugh so hard when we discover that the weather isn’t science based at all. But really the consequences of the whims of a childish deity. That sure would explain a lot.

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

When we see an ad on TV, we usually know it’s an ad. Even when it’s product placement you can usually tell. Done badly (Alias: “Take the Ford F150! It has a hydroformed frame and rear shocks!”) or done well (Handing off Twizzlers or Coke with the label exactly framed to the audience) it’s usually clear.

My kids were hung up on infomercials because they were susceptible – they BELIEVED. “Eggies” started a full bore discussion about how commercials play with your mind. I had to remind my kids that not only was peeling hard boiled eggs not hard, but they actually thought it was fun. Still they begged for infomercial items. So as an experiment we ordered a “Magic Tap” – it’s a push-button spout on top of your milk jug. (No more heavy lifting or spilled milk!)

I made my kids go through the online ordering process with me. I made them click all the buttons and watched their horror as they were offered acne medicines, spot removers, table cloth clips and other useless/unrelated items. We declined a second Magic Tap for just an additional $9.99 and had to confirm the order only knowing that we had ‘standard’ shipping and handling. It wouldn’t say how much that was – which I think is illegal.

The kids were shocked to find that the shipping was $13.95 for the $9.99 item. I wasn’t.

They waited for the magic item to arrive. And waited. And waited. Instead we got a letter that they were out of stock and out of business. I wasn’t disappointed though. It was $23.98 well spent. Lesson learned and all that. My kids now mock infomercials.

Still, there’s more out there. If we look at two ads side by side, we can see the problem.

Let’s first look at the ad for the Kia Soul. In this ad, Giant Hamsters drive a Kia through a desolate wasteland populated by killer robots. Giant Hamsters crank their sound system, everyone starts dancing and is suddenly very happy. Because of the car.

Now, you’re a moron if you think for one second giant hamsters are going to show up and start doing the running man when you buy a Kia Soul. Kia knows this. It’s just kinda funny you know, giant dancing hamsters.

Now let’s contrast. WhoNu is a nu brand of cookie on the market. And they claim to have: as much fiber as a bowl of oatmeal. As much vitamin C as a cup of blueberries. As much Vitamin E as 2 cups of carrot juice. And that aint all. (for a complete list go to their website: http://www.whonucookies.com/Nutrition.aspx) The problem is that the top of that webpage – go look at it! – says “WhoNu? Cookies have:” then it shows pictures of all of these things. There are seven (SEVEN!) healthy, natural, real food items in the pictures of what WhoNu cookies have. It looks like the cookies were made with all these healthy things. The ad insinuates that as well.

Yes, the ad says (like the small words do on the web page) that the cookies “contain as much X (nutrient) as Y (healthy food)” but if you aren’t paying attention it’s easy to get confused, to think that stuff is IN your cookies. I hate blueberries – if I could get the benefits by eating cookies I would.

But these are no dancing hamsters. These are herrings.

The cookies have as much Vitamin C as blueberries. But blueberries aren’t valued for their vitamin C – really. Think about it – if you wanted vitamin C you’d eat oranges. (blueberries are valued for their wide range of antioxidants, anthocyanins, and low glycemic index.) The cookies also have as much vitamin E as carrot juice. But you eat carrots for the beta carotene (which converts to vitamin A not E!). And if you want Iron (the cookies have as much as spinach) well then . . . Spinach is the great joke of the health food world. It doesn’t have as much iron as was often thought. What it had was a misplaced decimal point.

So even if you caught on wholly that the foods aren’t in the cookies, you probably missed that the vitamin comparisons aren’t as good as they look. (some of these are akin to saying “As much Vitamin B as a can of coke!”). So do some digging. Compare the nutrition labels between these and real oreos. Yes, there are 2 more grams of fiber and more vitamins, but remember vitamins aren’t anywhere near as useful when not consumed with the foods that contain them naturally. The fat and calories are identical per serving. But get this – a serving of WhoNu cookies is 3 cookies. A serving of Oreos appears to be about 3.5 cookies. So PER COOKIE Oreos have slightly fewer calories and fat grams. (Now the oreos are slightly lighter (~9.5 grams/cookie) than a WhoNu (~12g/cookie) but you count by cookie and you enjoy by cookie.

I swear to you, I’m fed up with slick advertising that gets around the clause that you can’t legally lie about food with some crafty sleight of hand. In fact, I’m buying the next cookie that someone advertises with dancing hamsters! Wait, there’s a knock at my door! There are elves that came out of that creepy tree and they want me to buy cookies from them. Wait up elves! I’m coming!

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

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We’ve all heard that phrase, and I think it was originally intended as a reminder to eat healthy. In my family, it’s used as a put-down (a good-natured one, but a put-down nonetheless.) But then I started looking at the things we eat, and I got to wondering. . .

I’ve had some of my kids’ friends ask why we don’t eat certain foods (like the cracker packs they sell for 50c at karate class.) After two years of graduate level biochemistry courses, my rule is this: if I can’t identify the ingredients, probably no one should be eating it!

Lately, though, I have been questioning even some of the things I can identify. I think a lot of us are familiar with this standard food used to get gum out of hair: peanut butter. Apparently, it’s just so greasy it breaks the gum right down and out it slides. Did you know you can make your dishes sparkle with a dash of lemon juice and then use that same lemon to remove stains from all matter of things? That is pretty common knowledge. Though it’s not a stretch to realize you can keep your hinges from squeaking with olive oil, you may be concerned to find that it also removes make-up and shines stainless steel.

I start to get worried when I see that vinegar will clean my house. It will make my glass clear and my surfaces shine. Lots of older people associate the smell of vinegar with cleanliness as it was apparently the cleaning agent of choice back before everyone had Windex and 409 in their closet. But when you add in that vinegar will also set dyes (like your easter eggs) and kill weeds (!) I start to wonder. What am I eating???

Don’t worry, the list gets even longer and more disturbing . . .

It’s not surprising that Vodka has a use other than just getting you plastered. That high alcohol content (paired with almost no flavorings) makes it great at killing odors. Like the nasty ones in your sink. Or your sneakers . . . What’s next? A vodka body spritzer after the gym? You wanna disinfect something? Vodka is a great go-to agent.

You may have heard of using mayonnaise as a hair conditioner, I’ve known that for a long time. But recently, I heard of another use from a friend: a de-louser. Yup! If you can’t use that RID stuff to kill lice, you can use mayo! Slather up your kid’s head like a slice of white bread in a southern household! Then wrap it in Saran Wrap and sleep on it. Wash it (and the lice!) out in the morning. Apparently, it works BETTER than the chemical stuff – to which many lices have grown resistant. Is it really good to know that no nit survives a full-scale mayo onslaught?

A lot of people think they are healthier for cutting sugar (and its associated calories) out of their diets. But it gets replaced with things like aspartame. Some people will tell you that aspartame was originally designed as a poison, then one day a lab tech tasted it and thought “Hey! Artificial sweetener!” If that wasn’t bad enough, try this alternate use: ant killer. Yes, ants will make it through nuclear war, but that little pink packet on every diner table will take them out!

My dear friend Coca-Cola is probably the most disturbing of all. We know it’s a tasty beverage, but were you aware it’s also a drain cleaner? (I’ll give you a moment to get that look off your face.) And, even better, Coke will eat the corrosion off your batteries. This is really useful if you drive an old car and it won’t start. Yes, a Coke for you and one for the car, starts like a charm every time.

I have eaten all the things on this list in the name of health! Though I did cut out aspartame out of my diet in favor of real sugar, the rest can be found in my kitchen at this very moment. (Though I’m mostly an organic food person, Coca-cola remains a weakness. . . )

As I pop open the top of a cold fizzy coke to enjoy with the mayo-laden BLT I lightly toasted in olive oil, I hear those words . . . You are what you eat.

But maybe I like it. When I think about what these foods can do, I think to myself “If I am what I eat, then I’m frickin’ invincible!!!”

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Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

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Recently Sis had her second episode of something disturbing. (You should first understand that during the winter months we refer to her as “Sicky McSickerson” or just “Plague”. So Sis having strange symptoms didn’t really strike us as all that odd . . .)

The first time this happened, she found a post on her Facebook one morning . . . a post she had made. And it said she was going to see “Billy Elliot”. She didn’t remember posting this. Nor did she have plans to see “Billy” (She’d already seen it twice!). But lo and behold, her credit card told a different story: Sis was not only the proud owner of a pair of “Billy” tickets, but they were for a show in North Carolina . . . where we don’t know anyone. It’s a good thing she and Brother-in-Law were free.

The thing was, Sis had taken a sleeping pill (something prescription) before bed. And she had gone to bed, then apparently gotten up with a jones for some Billy Elliot tickets. Just this week, she did it again. This time she hit Amazon and ordered up a book of all the dirty signs in American Sign Language. Yes, that’s my sister cussing you out in ASL, we are so proud.

Clearly, if Sis takes sleep meds again, she’ll need to be locked in somewhere or at least have her computer taken away. But who knows? Maybe Home Shopping will be her next stop. I’m not sure she can afford to sleep!

She’s not the only one. Doctors report that some patients do all kinds of seemingly skillful things while asleep. We think of sleepwalking (or Somnambulism for those of you who like the big words!) as just that – sleep walking. But walking doesn’t require much in the way of brain ops for most of us. Sis had to log in to her Amazon account and choose that dirty ASL book and order it. The tickets are even more disturbing, I can barely navigate TicketMaster when awake and sober. Some of the most common things to do while asleep are eat and have sex. I don’t think it’s at the same time, but I wouldn’t put that past anyone.

People who sleepwalk usually don’t remember it in the morning. Sis wouldn’t if she hadn’t gotten a receipt from Amazon confirming the order she placed while her conscious brain believed her to be getting a good night’s rest. I can see this being really problematic for people who are single and have sleep sex.

Also, somnambulism is a common side effect to a good number of medications. One of the smoking cessation medications that has been on the market this last year has been advertising ‘vivid dreams’. Yeah, apparently that’s the nicest way to put it. Let’s just say some of those people have not only stopped smoking but they have made their neighbors very happy.

Apparently, Sis’s problem might be somewhat genetic. My father used to claim that he would wake up in the middle of the night with the answer to all the world’s problems. Imagining himself on the brink of wealth and fame he would happily sleep out the rest of the night, only to discover that he couldn’t remember what the answer was in the morning.

Being a smart man, Dad got a notepad and pen and placed it by the bed. Upon rising one day, he remembered that he had been utterly brilliant while asleep, and that he had remembered to write it down. When he checked his note pad there were three words there: corrugated Oreo cookies.

When you think about it, it is kinda brilliant. The corrugating makes air pockets, thus making them suitable as insulation. They don’t go bad, so they would make good building materials. The round shape would give them a hexagonal stack, which is incredibly stable, and the open spots could be filled in with extra cream. Also, they’re edible. Still, I don’t have a mansion bought for me by my father who solved all the world’s problems.

You can see that my family has a history of accomplishing things while they sleep. Since we are also overachievers, I’m looking to make that sleep time really count. I have to find a way to do ‘somwestilavasm’ (sleep laundry) or ‘somcatilavasm’ (sleep dish washing). Because that needs to get done and I can’t find anyone in this house to do it while awake.

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

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When I was in high school I wasn’t very good at writing essays. (Yeah, bestselling novelist now! Take that Mrs. Finane!) Okay, Mrs. Finane had a point – I DON’T do a good five-paragraph essay. Never have, probably never will. What this meant was that I was bounced out of Advanced English every other year. In the regular English classes I got to diagram sentences and . . . take the ASVAB. (That’s the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery.) Apparently, if you couldn’t write a good essay, you should check out the military.

Since the ASVAB didn’t care if you could write a 5PE, I scored really well. I can diagram sentences like there is no tomorrow. Throw me a vocab word! I can also fold those odd cut-outs into 3D shapes really well. And there was a mechanics section, too – where should the fulcrum go? What’s the blast radius? How much rope and how many pullies does it take to get enough of a mechanical advantage for a small native boy to lift a wounded 300 lb soldier on a back brace?

Who knew that I had this kind of aptitude? Actually, I could have told you this. In my family, there’s a point of pride about knowing how to put something together . . . without the instructions. I can’t tell you how many futons I helped build or repair in my college days. Yes, you can stack the beds in your dorm room, but you have to go to Home Depot and get the right size dowel, and – if you’re smart – some braces and a few wood screws, but don’t tell them I told you that.

My friend Sam was a seamstress as a hobby. She came over one day with a tape measure and took a pile of cheap fabric and turned it into two, fitted covers for our sofas. She had pleats, tucks, and that skirt along the bottom – even though the original couches didn’t. She just measured and ran it through her sewing machine while I watched in awe. It made no sense to me what-so-ever. When she explained what she was doing she used words like ‘just’, ‘clearly’ and ‘obviously’. I wore the same blank expression the whole time. But I fixed her kitchen drawers and installed some shelving. When I explained, I used words like ‘simply’ and ‘plain’.

This skill has come in very handy as I like Do It Yourself projects. My Dad and I shingled our house in LA. There was a lot of “It looks like this goes over here.” And “Nah, it has to rotate like this.” We also built a picket fence with a little advice from the Home Depot guy. It’s a fantastic fence – and aside from the fact that the new owners didn’t paint it to match the new pepto pink color they added to the house – it still looks great.

This ability bumps up a notch from ‘handy’ to ‘necessary’ should you buy anything from IKEA. Their stuff is real hit-and-miss to my taste, but when I like something I get it . . . and then I look at the instructions and think “thank god I didn’t need those anyway”. Yes, five years of Spanish in school left me close to fluent . . . and gives me no usable skills for Swedish directions on how to put together a cabinet. (Thank you! I got both of them put together, they look great.)

But though others may wave that octo-fold sheet of paper at me and said “But it says we have to do it this way” I haven’t given in. I often respond with ‘that doesn’t make any sense.’ Explaining what I was saying, makes people look at me like I’m speaking Swedish. (Which is a shame . . .that would be useful!)

This lack of instruction reading goes all the way back. When I was six, I got a baby sister. My mom and dad picked out a crib. Mom was quite pregnant and anti-mechanical, so putting the thing together fell to my dad . . . and me. My six-year-old self was convinced I was integral to putting this piece of furniture together. I remember seeing the instruction page and my dad tossing it over his shoulder first thing. Second thing, look at parts. Third thing, sort hardware.

Dad and I spent the afternoon saying things like “This is the left end. See the holes here?” and “Here’s where the sliding bar goes, put it in with the short screws.” Though I thought we were gods of assembly we wound up with seven screws left over. This was concerning for two reasons. 1) this was furniture for the new baby. It couldn’t collapse later on us. And 2) seven?

Even then I was flummoxed. How did we get seven left over? The crib was symmetric, every screw had a partner on the opposite side. Many screws came in sets of four and eight (one or two for each of the four posts). But nothing came in an odd number.

In the end, we did the only thing we could do. Carefully searched the crib for missing screws. We read the instructions – which made no mention of spare screws at all, let alone seven. Then we hid the extras. The crib never had a problem. And we never told my mom.

Oh, hi mom.

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

Subscribe to my podcast SMART CHICKENS in iTunes -

If you’ve been paying attention to the other Smart Chickens posts, then you know that my sister and I have each inherited teeth that chip fairly easily [see Dream Weaver post]. When you add in that my sis is one of those people who will always be honest when she can be, you get a conversation like this one.

Dentist: And how often do you floss?
Sis: Do you really want me to tell you?
Dentist: Yes
Sis: Never.

I love that about my sister. Most people lie to their dentist thinking it will make the doc feel better. But I think dentists can usually tell. Unlike my sister, I’m not a ‘never’ flosser, but I totally see her point. My dentist keeps trying to get me to floss regularly – to which point he uses this argument: “But it only takes five minutes a day.”

I guess he didn’t realize that he was speaking to someone who had been raised to worship at the altar of Math and Logic. Oh, and Science.

So, when I was in my early twenties, I ran a – very un-controlled – experiment on myself. My dentist insisted that if I flossed daily I would see a difference. So I did: for three years, I flossed daily . . . and chipped more teeth in that time period than in any other three years of my life (and I was doing nothing chip-worthy!) But maybe it was just because I was getting old, so I followed it up with three years of no flossing. You guessed it. No chipped teeth in that time.

I know you are saying, what does flossing have to do with chipped teeth? You’re right, I don’t know. But I didn’t have any cavities either. My gums are fine. The dentist still says so. So screw flossing. I just do it when I feel like it, because I have scientific evidence that flies in the face of all other scientific evidence. No bad breath problems, no dental issues (other than a random chip!) so forget it. You know you probably don’t do it daily either. Most people don’t – they just lie to their dentist about it.

When my dentist responded to my ‘scientific evidence’, I parried with math: 5 min of flossing each day = 35 minutes a week. You can see where this is going. 30 hours and 24 minutes a year. You may be thinking “That’s more than a whole day!” But it’s really almost 2 whole days, if you put in 8 hours of sleep daily. Even if you only count 6 hours for sleep, you still have 1 & 2/3 days each year lost to flossing. It’s enough to make you reconsider even brushing your teeth!

Okay, no. Keep doing that. The rest of us appreciate it.

My friend David has a 17 minute brushing and flossing routine each day. Apparently, it really does help him; he swears by it. But here are his numbers: 6 days each year. I hope your teeth last a long time, David. You’ve earned it.

Yes, I worship at the altar of Math and Logic. Conditioning my hair? 3 minutes every other day . . . just over 9 hours a year. Doing dishes? 15 minutes a day . . .4+ days per year. And that’s with 65 days off and 6 hours of sleep. It’s enough to make you convert to paper plates and sporks.

I worry about women (and metrosexuals) who take an hour or more to get ready each day. (You knew this number was coming: 20 days a year. And that’s with generous math!) Spend a little more than an hour and you’ve lost a whole month.

Yes, the same numbers apply to those of you who are smirking at this and thinking “I’m much lower maintenance than that!” – do you check email and Facebook for about an hour a day? Yeah, there went your month. And God help those of you who spend that long getting ready and then surf the web for an hour. What’s left?

It will make you think twice the next time someone wants you to add something to your regimen. When they say, “But it’s only 10 minutes a day!” You can say, “That’s three and a half full days a year. I don’t think so.”

So the last time my dentist tried to sell me on the simple five minute flossing regimen he wanted, I said “Sorry doc. It just doesn’t add up!”

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

Subscribe to my podcast SMART CHICKENS in iTunes -

A few weeks ago my brother-in-law had his birthday. And he’s a science geek like me. (Last year we got him lab glass-like kitchen ware.) This year I found a cake idea so big I didn’t want to tackle it all by myself. Luckily, each spring a bunch of friends get together and stay at my house and my sister’s for the week. As they are all science geeks, too, it seemed the perfect time. . . I’d not only have help making this gargantuan cake, we’d all have help eating it, too.

I emailed around before hand asking a few others with kitchen skills if they’d help. Everyone opted in. (It’s a cool cake!) . . . although we decided to go with brownies instead of the suggested cupcakes. Brownies would be easier to frost and would better retain the necessary square shape. Also, we could make them a little smaller than cupcakes . . .a good idea since we were going to have 114 pieces of ‘cake’ by the time we were finished.

We were going to make a periodic table of brownies!

During this early round of emailing we went a little nuts. By the time we were done, it wasn’t just a periodic table of brownies . . . no, we had four different kinds of brownies to make. Dark chocolate brownies would make up the Alkali and Transition metals. Blondies (chocolate chip cookie-like brownies) would be the Noble gasses and non-metals. And we had half-n-halfs for the area where the two met. But then we had all the ones at the bottom to deal with . . . After several emails we came up with tuxedo brownies: milk chocolate brownies with cheesecake swirls.

We were all set. We got together. We told my brother-in-law (who likes baking) to butt out. And we set to work. Even the non-bakers joined in . . . they helped mix frosting colors (of which we had SO many!), frost all 114 brownies, and even pipe on the elements in chocolate . . .

We had pulled a periodic table off the web and printed it. We were just about to pipe on the first letters when all us science geeks said “Hey! The first element isn’t Po!” Someone (namely me *shrug?*) had pulled the “Hairdresser’s periodic table” by mistake. Who knew there was a hairdresser’s periodic table??? In fact, when I went back, I also found a baker’s version, a football version and a color one (Mg = Magenta, not Magnesium). When did it become cool to jack the science stuff? And it must be cool because I found all of these listed when I googled “periodic table of elements”. Just to be clear they were all listed BEFORE the actual periodic table. So they must be cooler than the real one. So sad. It seems the science geeks are at the bottom of the pecking order even for their own tools.

We printed off the correct version of the table, lamented our continued lowly status, and got back to work.

Finally we revealed our masterpiece to the birthday boy. And he – who always remains nonchalant – dropped his jaw and didn’t speak for a full minute.

We were proud.

We were so proud, in fact, that no one wanted to be the first to eat one of the elements. We ate frosted brownie scraps for a full day before someone finally ate the first piece of the actual ‘cake’. Unfortunately, that ‘someone’ was my dog, Chaos. She nosed her way under the saran wrap and ate the ENTIRE Lanthanide and Actinide Series’! (For those of you who don’t automatically recognize the magnitude of that . . . she ate both pink rows at the bottom.)

Yes, my dog consumed twenty-eight tuxedo brownies, with pink frosting. We watched her carefully for the next 24 hours . . . luckily, the chocolate didn’t seem to have ANY negative effects. I almost wish it had . . . now she knows how yummy brownies are.

Needless to say, with the table now touched, we started scarfing it down. Being geeks, we had to identify each element before we ate it. And not long after that we started eating combinations . . . One of us ate “Aluminum Chloride” and another ‘alcohol’ (O and H). I saved my favorites . . . I finally polished off the periodic table by eating C (carbon) and N (nitrogen) . . .

Yup! I ate Cyanide. And it was sooooo good.

Listen to AJ's Podcast SMART CHICKENS

Because Sometimes We All Just Want to Fly the Coop!

Subscribe to my podcast SMART CHICKENS in iTunes -