Today is not Yesterday

My Day

I was going to write last night, but instead I watched Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory... I thought it was pretty cool.  I don't really know what to write about here today, yesterday had a bunch of stuff in it that I really enjoyed but seeing as I'm inexplicably cranky today it's almost like I don't want to remember having a good day yesterday.

Anyways, work was fine, a good balance for calls and green time.  People sitting nearby to talk to is always nice too, acctually remembered to bring a lunch too, which is a nice thing.

After work wife, sister, brother in law and I went out to "Joeys Only" sea food. I had a "shrimp trio" and it was good, but not as good as the leftover snow crab leg bits I stole from jeremy.  I also figured out how to use one of the crab-meat-extraction tools that no one else could figure out.

After that we went to Price Club and bought a bunch stuff we probably don't need very much but will likely taste very good (I recall something about fruit and lunch meat and taco seasoning, and the C&TCF DVD). Saw the "Series of Unfortunate Events" boxed sets and was a little annoyed to see them a lot cheaper then I payed for the individual ones. I kinda wonder why they are having 4 boxed sets of 3 books and where the 13th book is supposed to fit.  Also had some free sushi, which was nice.

After that we went back (all 4) to our (wife and I's) place and played first a game of "1000 Blank White Cards", which turned out well (people don't like a lot of my cards but I don't see how that's supposed to make the game any LESS fun for me... I like being annoying) I think.  After we played a game Jule Ann Calls "Hat" which is basically a combination of Cherades and Taboo.

Then the movie and the sleeping and the not writing mentioned earlier.

Retail Therapy<Tetris

Apparently they have figured out that shopping increases Dopamine levels in peoples brains, that's why they get addicted to it, it acctually makes them phisiologically "happy".  I read a study a while ago about a similar effect from certain types of video games, particularly in women playing Tetris.

Basically the explaination is that women (and probably men for that matter, these old studies made assumtions I don't think we NEED to bother with, but seeing how this is related to Shopping and Tetris I think we all will asume it's mostly women who are most affected anyways) who play Tetris register heightend Dopamine (or other Endorphins os something, stress relieving happy drugs, you know, like the ones you get from chocolate... women again?) levels.  The reason sited was that Tetris is a chaos resolution situation.

Apparently people get really stressed playing a level, or when they get close to top and the blocks start coming faster, and the music get's more and more stressful and the brain copes with this by increasing the flow of stress relieving goo into the system.  When you beat a level, or even when you lose, the stress is immediately resolved leaving you with more stress relieving brain goo then you really need for your current situation.  Then you repeat this process over and over again for a while and kind of solidify that happy feeling.

The idea behind this study about shopping making people feel runs along similar finds, you put yourself in an artificially stressful situation, and then feed youself with a minor success like finding a nice pair of shoes. Buying new shoes might not seem all that feel goody, but all that extra brain goo left over from trying to deal with the stresses of shopping make it seem like you've won the nobel prize or something because your brain is in "dealing with stress" mode while you're acctual situation is positive.

Something like that... Anyways, Tetris and Chocolate is a lot cheaper then shopping so I think it's better...

Work Sucks Quite a Bit

Everyone calling me continues to be stupid, annoying, too nice, too rude, too smart, too fast, too slow or otherwise imperfect causing me increased stress... and the chocolate bar and coke I had for lunch are loseing their positive effects.

Making origami inflatable frogs sometimes helps.

Christmas Is Coming, and so is Winter-een-mas

So I havn't done any christmas shopping yet,  Trish has so that means I'm "covered" for everything but her.  I'm not sure what to get but she's given me a good list for me to completely ignore.

Don't forget Winter-een-mas the last week of January, a time to celebrate Video Games and all the other things that keep us safe and warm inside while the world is covered in horrible horrible coldness.

Benjie