Mental Musings

Anyone who knows my family will find this amusing... My fortune cookie today read, "You have a lively family."

My wife’s grandfather kept his mind sharp by doing the New York Times crossword puzzle everyday. Keeping the mind agile is just as important as exercising the body. I remember watching a movie featuring Patrick Stewart that was about a man who was concerned about Alzheimer’s. He went through daily mental exercises like reciting as many prime numbers as he could, naming all of the presidents in order or going through the state capitals in alphabetical order. Most newspapers include at least one daily crossword puzzle with perhaps a Sudoku puzzle, Word Jumble or other such entertaining mental exercise. There are many other options for those who do not like to support the liberal bias of the printed media. Many websites offer online games such as crossword, scrabble, jumble and more. Then there are the educational video games like Brain Games that has become extremely popular on the Nintendo DS. Other mental exercises include: Reading (reading anything, including comic books, is better th...

Monday evening we entered our room in a posh hotel in the garment district. Although it was not what we expected based on the web photos we had viewed, the room was nice and clean. After squeezing between counters and walls in restaurants and businesses throughout the area, we were not shocked to find out that our room resembled a miniature version of most hotel rooms. Our room was on the street side (the bathroom window is directly behind the hotel sign in this photo). This might seem like a choice location when staying in a hotel one block from the Empire State Building, but the "City That Never Sleeps" stood up to its name. I am not certain how I actually fell asleep, with the garbage trucks picking up trash at 11 PM, the subway trains rumbling underground somewhere nearby, the car horns honking, the music playing loudly from the open-air nightclubs, and, to our surprise, a window cleaning company starting to work on the next door building around 11 PM. I guess exhaustion ...