With age comes wisdom?

Bad Priscilla! Yes I haven't posted in a while. I'm bad. Bad me, bad bad me.

Ok so anyway, I've been out in the real world for over a year now, and I've noticed that I've actually gotten dumber in that time. I keep forgetting words, common words. Like placebo. I was trying to have an intelligent conversation about how a lot of illnesses are psychosomatic. But who is going to take me seriously if I can't even remember the word placebo.

But that wasn't the only symptom of my decreasing mental capacity. I was leaving stuff in random places. I booked a return place ticket for the wrong day and didn't figure it out until the day before I was supposed to return home; that one was a costly mistake. Things that I just wouldn't normally do.

I think the reason I am getting dumber is because I watch too much TV. I bought a big screen TV in March. It is magical, and evil. It entrances me with its trashy shows and its flashing, pretty light. Now I understand why nonagenarians say you need to keep your mind sharp. After a year of not using all the parts in my brain, it was beginning to die. Slowly, but surely. At the rate I was going, it would have simply shut off in much less than 70 years.

So about a month ago, I started to take steps to increase the activity up there.

1) I started watching the Nightly News every day. Brian Williams has a strange cadence, and I seriously miss Peter Jennings, but it'll do.

2) I started watching Meet the Press every week. They have serious political big dogs on this show, and Tim Russert respectfully hits them with the hard questions.

3) I'm reading more books. This entire year I've had a problem starting books but never finishing them, but this past month, I finally finished 2 and am halfway through another 3. The first one was a basic American History book for people who forgot everything they learned in school (aka Me). The second was The Devil Wears Prada, a light summer read. Now I'm half way through The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the Cat's Cradle, and From Beirut to Jerusalem.

4) I cancelled my subscription to Rolling Stone, and US News. Sniff sniff. Mostly because I couldn't keep up with the biweekly (RS) and weekly (USNEWS) issues. Luckily RollingStone.com is pretty much the same thing.

5) Renewed my subscription to the Smithsonian Magazine. It's monthly so its easy to keep up with and its seriously interesting. Also, the membership gives me discounts at the museums and since I'm moving to DC in like a month, that means 15% off of Astronaut Ice Cream. Yum!

6) I removed a bunch of bad tv shows from my Tivo. But then I realized it was summer and everything was in reruns so I put a few back on. But I swear I'll cut down in the Fall. I swear, only intelligent shows like House and Lost. And definitely that new Aaron Sorkin show. I love that man.

7) The final step I haven't actually done yet. Like 10 or 15 years ago, my dad gave me these instructional tapes called Mega Memory. So at some point I'm going to do that so I don't forget words anymore. But I keep forgetting about the Mega Memory tapes. So the cycle continues...