Things I Learned This Week: 7/7/07

Because I want to spare you from experiencing some of the things I endured over the last few days, I post “Things I Learned This Week” each Saturday. It’s educational, sometimes insightful and for some reason it never makes me look good. I hope that knowing about at least one item on this list will make your upcoming week much easier. So here are the “Things I Learned This Week” for the week of 7/1/07-7/7/07.

! I learned that when taking my own blood pressure and it shows 200 over 150, that I probably did something wrong. I retried it and guess what, I did do something wrong.

! I learned that I need to pay more attention and NOT watch auto racing while ironing. Too bad it took a partially melted remote control and a few burned fingers to learn this. In short, this lesson could be called ‘don’t put things other than clothes on the ironing board and never reach for an iron without looking where you are putting your hand.’ Although in my defense, it was a race at Daytona I was watching.

! I learned that when the family is away, I am incapable of providing food for myself if it is not able to be prepared on the grill. Slightly related side note: BBQ’d frozen waffles don’t taste as good I as had imagined they would.

! I learned that my coworkers don’t enjoy me rocking out to The Temptations’ ‘Ball of Confusion’ and ‘Psychedelic Shack’ nearly as much as I do.

! I learned that when I hear my electric ice cream maker jam, that I should get up and tend to it right away instead of continuing my blogging while under the assumption that the ice cream maker will somehow magically unjam itself. According to my spellchecker, I also just learned that unjam is not a real word, as is the case with many words I try to use, like ‘stupendify’ and ‘unintelligistic.’ Did I mention that I used to make a living as a copywriter? Maybe I could go write for the President…

! I learned that Kingsford puts a warning label on their bottles of charcoal lighter fluid for a real bona fide reason. I also forgot how much fun it is to squirt highly flammable lighter fluid on an already burning pile of charcoal. But then sadly, I learned that you can burn a t-shirt by doing this. But the joke is on everyone else because I also learned how to throw that shirt away before anyone starts asking questions. Man, I love the 4th of July!

And lastly,

! I learned that when I didn’t get a good night’s sleep and I am feeling groggy, the last place I should try and relax the following day is Lucy and Ethel’s little swimming pool in the middle of the day. Although I ended up having a very peaceful nap, I can tell you that our Sun is a very vengeful Sun.