In a development that I don't think I could have ever seen coming, my wife bought a Nintendo DS Lite yesterday. She read about the game Brain Age, and decided she really had to have it.
The game is full of exercises that help stimulate the brain, like doing math problems or counting moving items as quickly as possible. It keeps track of your "Brain Age" each day you do these exercises. The ideal age is 20, with worse ages being higher. I guess the concept there is that the brain reaches its natural peak at 20, and after that it's all downhill without exercise.
We both have our own profiles in the game now, and officially, she's doing better (she's 69 and I'm 80). But that's just because I had problems getting the speech recognition on the DS to understand me the first time around when I had to identify colors. The trick with that exercise was that the words would say "Black", "Blue", "Yellow" and "Red", but if the word "Black" was in red, you had to say "red". The DS wouldn't recognize my pronunciation of "blue", no matter how many ways I tried to say it. I ended up having M say "blue" for me when the need came up, but the damage to my score was already done. I tried the test again, this time opting for the test that doesn't require speaking out loud, but the brain score is only recorded once a day, so my 56 was not officially logged.
She also got the DS so she could play New Super Mario Brothers.
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Elmo Tree Update: Elmo's smiling face is still stuck up there!
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This has been one of our better weeks, workout-wise. Two visits to the gym, instead of zero!
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Guess what I never got around to? Finishing last week's iTunes list! That means extra song goodness for you all this week! 9 extra to be exact!
This list is being compiled at home, since I took the day off.
1. "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" - The Darkness
2. "Lucas With The Lid Off" - Lucas
3. "Fire and Ice" - Pat Benatar
4. "You're An Original" - Sheryl Crow (with Lenny Kravitz)
5. "Don't Look Back" - Fine Young Cannibals
6. "I Need A Lover" - Pat Benatar
7. "Since U Been Gone" - Kelly Clarkson
8. "Now We're Getting Somewhere" - Crowded House
9. "I Wanna Rock" - Twisted Sister
10. "Only Time (Pop version) - Enya
11. "Kids In America" - Kim Wylde
12. "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" - Frank Sinatra
13. "There She Goes" - The La's
14. "Please Forgive Me" - Bryan Adams
15. "Hark The Herald Angels Sing" - South Park cast
16. "September" - Earth, Wind and Fire
17. "America, F*** Yeah (Bummer Remix)" - Team America Soundtrack
18. "Strip" - Adam Ant
19. "Thorazine Shuffle" - Bongos, Bass & Bob
20. "Bitch" - Meredith Brooks
21. "Fried Ham" - Eden's Poets
22. "Rumors" - Timex Social Club
23. "Hit Me Baby One More Time" - Britney Spears
24. "Magic Man" - Heart
25. "Aria" - Mediaeval Babes
26. "Vacation" - The Go-Go's
27. "Oo Ah (Just A Little Bit)" - Gina G
28. "We Can Work It Out" - Heather Nova
29. "Stoneface" - Veruca Salt
30. "Stray Cat Strut" - Stray Cats
* The Darkness, a British band, was first played in the U.S. on the morning radio show I used to listen to. One of the DJs had heard the song online and thought it rocked, so he played it on the show, and it took off in popularity. Next thing you know, The Darkness is playing on MTV (or whatever music video channel plays actual videos these days). Would they have taken off in the U.S. if Kirk, Mark and Lopez hadn't given them that airplay? Who knows? It's just as well - The Darkness hasn't been heard from for a while now.
* "Lucas With The Lid Off" is a great song. Kind of a mix of rap and 30's jazz. I don't think I have that on my work playlist. I need to correct that.
* I don't think I have Pat Benatar on my work list either. I really need to look at this.
* "I Need A Lover" is a cover of the John Cougar (as he was known at the time) song. The big difference is that you don't have to wait through 2 minutes of guitar for the singing to start.
* I have three songs in my list with titles that have a variation of "since you have gone" - "Since You Gone" by The Cars, "Since You've Been Gone" by Rainbow, and "Since U Been Gone" by Kelly Clarkson.
* My list at home covers a lot of bases, including Christmas songs! And the Christmas songs cover a few bases, spanning from Frank Sinatra to South Park!
* "September" was the first song that M and I danced to. It was at the Bacchus Ball during Mardi Gras 2004. It's kinda our song now.
* Eden's Poets was a local band around here in the late 90's. They rocked.
* Mediaeval Babes is a group I heard when they visited a local radio station a few years back. They sing in actual Medieval style. Sometimes they also use actual Medieval-style instruments. That's not the case with "Aria", which uses a techno background.
* One night, back when I was a kid, we were listening to "Stray Cat Strut" in the car on the way back from Pizza Hut or somewhere in that vicinity, and my brother and I sang "meowr, meowr, meowr" to the tune of the background "ooh, ooh, ooh" for the. entire. song. Showing infinite patience, my parents did not tell us to stop.
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