A Few More Stories

The first story I am going to tell is an update about my Bike Build. Due to the several requests, my next story will be the Increased Memory story. Then I will tell about how Nicole and I made some extra cash.

Bike Build, Work Stand

I have obtained many more parts and many parts are on the way, however the bike still looks the same. Nothing has been put together yet, that is because I am still lacking some of the parts needed for the first steps of the build. But the focus of this update is the part that I built myself, working on a bike is not easy when the bike is sitting on the floor. I have wanted to get a work stand for my bike but they typically cost a hundred plus dollars. Since I really enjoy building things myself I decided that it shouldn't be that hard to build a bike stand myself either. It was actually really simple and not to mention, a lot cheaper than buying one.

As you can see in the pictures, the stand is simple pieces of steel pipe. I wish I could say that I used scrap material for this, but I went to Home Depot instead. And for the clamp I used a Hand Clamp that I got for under $1. I cannot take complete credit for this because when I decided to build my own stand I did some research to help find a simple design. There is a website called "Instructables" that I browse every now and then, the site had several different suggestions for homemade bike stands. Here is a link to the one that I modeled mine after. It is basically the same; however I used a few different size parts. http://www.instructables.com/id/DIY-Bicycle-Repair-Stand/ I did want to add an additional piece, but I forgot when I bought the parts. I wanted to put a tool shelf on it, all I would have to do is get some kind of clamp that could clamp to the vertical pipe with an attached tray which could slide up and down. For now my tools and parts can sit on the floor.

Increased Memory, One Pill At A Time

To start I want to say that I have been planning on blogging about this for a while but I always seem to forget about it. This topic comes as a result of me being a graduate student and having lots of stuff to remember. In law school I read many different cases with many different details and facts. All of which lead to an important rule to remember, well I am not very good at remembering sometimes. Just as many other struggling students have done, I searched for something to help increase my memory and brain power. I wanted a miracle pill, something that could help lead me to win Jeopardy someday!

To my disappointment and really what I expected, such a thing does not exist. There really is no miracle pill that will make me smarter, however I did find some pills that claim to help increase and aid memory and concentration. So I went and purchased a bottle of Ginkgo Biloba pills. There is no real evidence that Ginkgo does what it claims, but I wanted to give it a try anyways. I was really good about taking the once-a-day pill for a week or so but then my diligence slowly faded. I usually would take the pill in the morning after I ate breakfast and the problem started when I would come home for lunch and I couldn't remember if I had taken a pill yet that day. As this started to become more frequent and has I began to forget to take the pills altogether I decided that the pills were not working that well. I decided that the pills were not increasing my memory if I kept forgetting to take them. I did notice some benefits though, almost immediately after taking the pills I was able to concentrate a little better. My conclusion on the Ginkgo pills is they can't hurt if you can remember to take them.

Bowling for Ice Cream

Nicole and I do not go bowling often but we both enjoy going Cosmic Bowling. For those that do not know what Cosmic Bowling is, it is when the bowling alley turns out the regular lights and turns on the black lights and disco ball.

They usually have a live DJ and sub-games while bowling. Typically the games are things like; who gets the most pins bowling backwards, who does the best victory dance, doing dance steps while bowling, and other various fun activities. We ended up going to a small bowling alley in a nearby town; their Cosmic Bowling was nothing like what I just described. The black lights were overpowered by the real lights and the disco ball did not spin. And the live DJ consisted of a Juke Box that we had to put coins in. Despite the lack of all things that make cosmic bowling fun, this was the best cosmic bowling that I have ever been on. I say that because Nicole and I came out with about $80 cash winnings. The bowling alley compensated for the lack of exciting cosmic bowling by having randomly placed colored pins that if you bowled a strike when the pin was in the right place you would win cash. Combined Nicole and I ended up winning loads of cash! Neither one of us is great bowlers but somehow we got lucky when the pins were in the right spots. We decided to take all those that came with us out for Ice Cream after bowling, but since we live in such rural communities everything was closed except for the gas stations. So we treated everyone to gas station ice cream bars.