I slept on the couch last night. It’s no secret that Mike is a snorer. I can usually sleep right through it (8 years of marriage and eventually you get used to it), but he has been sick and when he is sick his snores transform into some of the most horrific noises you’ll ever hear. I don’t mind sleeping on the couch, in fact I find it quite comfortable, so I’m happy to let him have the bed so he can stretch out and get some good sleep.

Last night I must have been sleeping a little too well because I woke up with a crick in my neck. It’s fairly mild so I’m sure I’m going to make it, but I’ve had them much worse. You know what I’m talking about. The kind of crick where any slight movement in the wrong direction feels like a knife in the back of your neck. What sucks is when you forget that you have the crick and turn your head to the side, causing your entire body to jump in pain. Let me tell you, when you sit at your desk spontaneously convulsing every few minutes people just think you’ve gone completely mad (as opposed to 83% mad, which was the previous speculation).

I’m wondering if there is a cure for crick in the neck. What do I do whenever I’m wondering? I google it!

The View from Sports Center says a crick in the neck is mostly caused by a sprained ligament. “Whatever you do, don’t stretch. Respect the pain, slow down, and allow your body to heal.”

Most of the search results gave different advice but this one seems to make the most sense. I usually try to rub and stretch the pain out as if it was a sore muscle, but sore muscles are not usually an acute pain. Sprains and strains give you sharp pain and stretching would only make it worse. I guess I’ll just have to be patient and give it time to heal.

Technorati Tags: health, neck pain

What kind of blogger are you?

Technorati Tags: quizzes, blogging

This is something that far too many Michiganders forget how to do. Snow comes every year without fail, yet every first sticking snowfall of the year turns a bunch of experienced drivers into fifteen year old drivers’ ed. students. Listen, if you can’t remember the rules of driving in the snow and ice, either put a yellow sign on top of your car and stamp the back with a reflector that reads “Driver In Training” or don’t get behind the wheel. So, in case you are one who has forgotten, I have provided a condensed list of general rules to follow (you can get the full version here):

1. Be prepared – snow tires, chains, full tank of gas, warm clothing and an extra blanket or two.
2. Slow down – if you’re going too fast, antilock brakes won’t help you, and on ice those big ole’ tires will only help once you’ve landed yourself in a ditch.
3. Look ahead – leave plenty of distance between you and the car in front of you – four car lengths for every 10 mph you are traveling. I was way off on this one but was kindly corrected by my driving guru (the hubby).
4. Break before you enter a corner – the key word here is before. Before.
5. Practice the smooth and effective use of the vehicle’s controls – know thy vehicle and how it handles.
6. Be informed – again, know thy vehicle and where the bulk of it’s weight resides.
7. Learn how to control a skid – the hubby’s advice to everyone for this is to practice on an empty, snow covered parking lot. Experience will burn those instincts on your memory so they’ll be there when you really need them.

Be safe people. Leave yourself plenty of drive time. It’s better to be late than dead!

Technorati Tags: driving, ice, snow

FreeRice has two goals:

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

It’s a vocab game! For each word you get right, they donate 10 grains of rice.

Check it out!

I’ve been blogging since 10/24/03!

http://mindyrichmond.home.comcast.net/~mindyrichmond/blog.html

It’s interesting to go back and read what I was doing ages ago. There is some fun stuff in there including the news about my third nerve palsy, and an adorable picture of John Cusack.

(I know, I’ve been blogging a lot lately. Yes, it’s slow at work. Once it’s time for month end billing again you’ll have plenty of time to catch up reading my posts. Because I know you were concerned.)

Mike is the president of a dart league here in town. Since he is the president, he can do whatever he wants, like post pictures of his kid on their website CADA Darts 

Go to the site and scroll down to see Luke with his future girlfriend (who happens to be the daughter of the previous CADA president, and she’s a redhead!). When they met the first thing Luke did was lift her shirt. We’ve got to teach that boy some manners.

(I’ll put the picture here too in case he takes it down)

Luke Richmond and Abrielle Fountain

Okay, this thing is awesome. Choose and arrange your pages, print it on one piece of paper, fold it up and it fits in your pocket! Free!! Check it out!!

The PocketMod

A coworker was asking me what the lyrics were to the Little Bunny Foo-Foo song. Do you remember? Little Bunny Foo-Foo hops through the forest, scoops up the field mice, and then bops them on the head? Well we couldn’t remember the rest of the song so of course I had to show off my internet searching skills to find it. I quickly found the lyrics on www.bussongs.com. I also found lyrics to a lot of other great songs! I have been singing songs to Luke but I am always forgetting the lyrics. This is great, now I know the second part to Pop Goes The Weasel and I can stop singing “la la la la la la la la, la la la la la la la…” The La’s get old after awhile.

I’m a big fan of sing along songs. As a young girl I remember singing along to Raffi songs with my mom on car rides. I remember she also had a giant book of sing along songs that we would sing from. It had a white cover and there were picture diagrams of hand motions that went with many of the songs. One of my favorites from the book was “On Top Of Spaghetti.” “On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball… when somebody sneezed!” I still think of it whenever I eat spaghetti with meatballs.

I remember singing with my cousins in the basement at the cottage up north. We used to jump around and make up our own motions and dances. We would sing songs we thought we knew, but as I got older I was amused to discover we had been taking some major liberties with some of the lyrics and melodies.

If you like to sing silly songs with your kids, or just by yourself when you are driving to work and back, check out www.bussongs.com. I think some songs even have sample audio in case you don’t know the melody!