Exercise Tips

You know how important exercise is, as we grow older. Here are a few suggestions. I start each morning by standing outside behind the house and, with a five pound potato sack in each hand, extending my arms straight out to my sides and hold them there as long as I can.

After a few weeks I moved up to 10 pound potato sacks, then 50 pound potato sacks and finally I got to where I could lift a 100 pound potato sack in each hand and hold my arms straight out for more than a full minute!

Next, I started putting a few potatoes IN the sacks, but I would caution you not to overdo it at this level

I must have lost my humour

Who said laughter is as good as exercise? This isn’t funny, this is a true story:

While waiting for my first appointment in the reception room of a new dentist, I noticed his certificate, which bore his full name. Suddenly, I remembered that a tall, handsome boy with the same name had been in the High School 40 years ago.

Upon seeing him, however, I quickly discarded any such thought. This balding, gray-haired man with the deeply lined face was too old to have been my classmate. After he had examined my teeth, I asked him if he had attended the local high school.

“Yes,” he replied. “When did you graduate?” I asked.

“In 1964.”

“Why, you were in my class!” I exclaimed.

He looked at me closely and then asked, “What did you teach?”

Does Laughing Keep Us Healthy–Even Make Us Well? …

Does Laughing Keep Us Healthy–Even Make Us Well?
Absolutely. When we laugh, our metabolism rate picks-up, muscles are massaged and stimulated, and a variety of biochemical substances rush into the bloodstream. Studies have demonstrated that, after a period of laughing, subjects not only feel momentarily relaxed, but they also have fortified themselves against depression, heart disease, and heightened their pain-resistance.

Sounds better than exercising. Know any good jokes?

I don’t get the joke

Is this a joke? I found an old news article at ABC Science News

It basically says that you won’t lose your sense of humour as you get older, but you might find it harder to “get” some jokes.

The research is by Dr Prathiba Shammi, a psychologist with Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care in Toronto, and PhD supervisor Dr Donald Stuss.

In research designed to probe humour comprehension and appreciation, Shammi and Stuss found that while older people were just as capable as younger people of “getting” wordplay jokes, they were not as good at recognising funny cartoons, or identifying funny punch lines to jokes. Nevertheless, when the older people did get a joke, they responded appropriately, showing they were still capable of appreciating jokes they understood.

“The good news is that ageing does not affect emotional responses to humour – we’ll still enjoy a good laugh when we get the joke”.

Housework can’t kill you, but why take a chance?

Two Stirring Quotes

I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.
Phyllis Diller

When I was young I was amazed at Plutarch’s statement that the elder Cato began at the age of eighty to learn Greek. I am amazed no longer. Old age is ready to undertake tasks that youth shirked because they would take too long.
Groucho Marx

Kudos, anyone?

Anyone reaching my age has got a lot of things to be sorry for

I’m certainly not going to bore you witless with a list of my crimes, but there’s one thing I’m really sorry about. The people I can no longer say ‘thank you” to, or phone up for a quick chat, or just put my arms around.

My renter, Stephanie at Magickal Incense, has an excellent solution for people like me. This week she’s handing out kudos to a lot of people and encouraging readers to submit their own “kudos”.

I’m going to make it part of my life from now on – acknowledge a few people that I take for granted.

In your dreams!

Scientists say you can increase the strength of your muscles just by sitting back and imagine yourself taking exercise — a discovery that could help patients too weak to exercise to start recuperating.

Muscles move in response to impulses from nearby nerve cells called motor neurons. The firing of those neurons in turn depends on the strength of electrical impulses sent by the brain.

Dr Guang Yue, an exercise physiologist at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, says that this suggests you can increase muscle strength solely by sending a larger signal to motor neurons from the brain.

New Scientist magazine reports that Dr Yue and his colleagues have already found that visualising exercise was enough to increase strength in a muscle in the little finger, which it uses to move sideways.

I’m all for visualising instead of doing

Green Ham and Eggs

My tenant Stephanie at Mystickal Incense is having fun with paint at the moment (I thought only kindergarten kids did that) but the pigs at National Taiwan University are green from the inside out. Yes, green. And they glow in the dark.

Back in my University days when the world was young, I would have loved to been part of breeding a green pig. Or better still, one that could fly. Fabulous for Protests. We all did a lot of chemical experimenting in those days, and at times I may have glowed green myself. I certainly flew.

While on the subject of trivial mutations, whatever happened to Alba, the Green Rabbit who was created by French genetic researchers for artist Eduardo Kac? She had green jellyfish genes, and glowed in the dark.

What good are these creatures? Not much at all, unless you’re a Raelian clone and glow in the dark yourself.

I suggest bedside lamps

New Tenant moving in ….

Welcome to my tenant, Stephaniem who uses her blog for both personal & business entries — clever girl! She actually hand-makes all of the incense, candles, bath & body products she sells.

But Stephanie also adopts stray cats. Well not just any old stray cat, but one that’s going to cost her heaps. $400!

Drop in and say Hello to Stephanie

Usless Trivia

The = sign was invented by 16th Century Welsh mathematician Robert Recorde, who was fed up with writing “is equal to” in his equations. He chose the two lines because “noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle”.

When faced with danger, the octopus can wrap six of its legs around its head to disguise itself as a fallen coconut shell and escape by walking backwards on the other two legs.

and get this … “Restaurant” is the most mis-spelled word in search engines.