It’s so quiet round these here parts, with half our family gone for the week. I’m sure Martin is loving it: getting to sleep in and play WoW as long as he likes without having to wrestle his sister for the computer. He doesn’t get to wrestle me for it, because if I say I want it, I get it. Snap.
Last Friday I bought season 5 of Downton Abbey (which I’m pretty sure I have typed as DownTOWN Abbey every single first attempt at typing it, ever) and we are already done, plus we found the Christmas special online and watched it tonight as a grand finale and O! so happy about everything except Tom leaving. Martin keeps saying he and Lady Mary should just make out already but I say EW to that.
Martin (while watching the last episode tonight): “Dammit, this show makes me want to be best friends with old ladies” HEH.
So, now once again we have nothing new to watch. I suppose that’s okay, though. I have a lot of reading to catch up on.
Things that are annoying me: how loud the furnace is, how long it takes me to fall asleep at night, another stupid ear infection
I spoke too soon about Martin’s bus card. We got the envelope from the police today in the mail and guess what WASN’T in it? His bus card. His ID was there, his school ID, AND his (cancelled) bank card, but NOT the bus card. Sigh. We raced over to the bank and ordered him a new bank card, so that’s done at least, but now we have to get the details on how to get a new bus card AND pay for it. &¤/#½!!
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The cover band that played at the corporate kick-off last week did a song contest thingie between dinner and dessert. They divided the audience into two and played the opening bars of popular pop and rock songs and whichever side had someone who stood up first and started singing the lyrics won. Our side won, thanks to two of my colleagues who are quick on the draw.
It made me realize again something about myself: When I hear the beginning of a song I know, I know I KNOW it, but I can’t tell you what it is until the singing starts. I don’t know if it’s because my memory is activated by the words or the singer’s voice, but it’s rare that I can come up with the name of a song until the singer starts singing, even though I KNOW I know it. It’s weird.
But it only takes me less than a second to recognize whether a word is misspelled or not, when I’m playing a game like QuizUp. Again, words? Martin says, since he’s up on this stuff thanks to Psychology class, that the part of the brain that stores memory and the part of the brain that activates memory are different. In other words, one part is the filing cabinet and the other part is the minion that puts things in and takes things out. What I wonder, is how many different ways are there to activate memories? I know the senses all do it: taste, smell, touch, etc. But I think it’s interesting that some people can hear the first few notes of a song and immediately start not only singing it, but are able to yell out the name of the song or the singer, while I almost always have to wait until a VOICE (or maybe WORDS, since I don’t know which it is) activates the actual info I’m trying to recall.
I know people all remember things differently and there is a lot of discussion about teaching methods and how some people learn visually, and some learn by reading (again with the words), and some with a mixture. I supposed there are many more ways of learning, and I know that actually WRITING IT DOWN is said to be one of the best ways of handily (hee!) getting a memory to stick, which is why handwriting notes in class is a much better way of getting info into memory than typing or watching or anything else.
What about you? If I played the first few chords of a song you knew, how fast would you be able to say the name of the song?