I was out riding my bike when I was heading to a doctor's appointment. I wasn't late, but would be on time or a tad early if I kept going at the pace I was going. I was riding along in the bike lane when suddenly the bike started wobbling, it felt like the front tire was loose from the rim. I stopped and put my foot on the curb and sure enough I had a flat tire. I was using Schwalbe Big Apples. I loved those tires, but they didn't have the highest rating for puncture resistance. There wasn't much I could do at that point. Luckily, I was already most of the way to the doctor's office, so I found a bike lock ring and locked my bike. I was on foot and hoofed it to the doctor's office and made it there about 2 minutes late. The doctor ordered some tests that would be booked at a later date, then I walked back at a slower pace to my bike. On the way, I stopped by a bike shop and picked up some generic bicycle tubes and a repair kit with tire levers. The brand started with an A, but I usually stick with Contis. Months prior, I had signed up and taken some community courses on bike repair and bike maintenance, so I would be able to handle a tube replacement. I had a bicycle hand pump in my backpack and went to go unlock and retrieve my bike. I found my bike, still intact and unlocked it. I took it over to a street corner near a church. At that corner there was a half wall made of brick that was meant for people to sit on while they waited for the bus or just wanted to rest on the corner for a bit. I sat and prepared my bike. I took off the front wheel and started work on the tire with the tire levers. I wasn't in the best area of the city, but it was still mostly safe, and it was still daylight out. I could sense some people eyeing me up from around me. Then an unkempt man sat next to me and started chatting with me about bicycles. I usually don't talk to these types of people, but I wouldn't be going anywhere for awhile as I had to fix my bike. I humored him and was pleasant. The man was missing some teeth and his other teeth were dirty and he had a bit of an odor on his breath. He mentioned that he also had a bike. He had crashed it some years back. He was riding down a steep hill and he lost control of his bike and he ended up crashing into the back of a bus and wrecked his teeth. He said he thought it was amazing that I can do my own work on my bike. I said thanks. He was retired and kinda just cruising through life now since his wife died. He didn't want money from me, he just wanted to have a pleasant conversation with another human being because people like him generally get ignored by the general public, except for those in his network. He appreciated that I was willing to have a conversation with him. This was one instance when I was a bit more aware of breath. There was another time when the situation was kinda reversed. I was working with some medical residents one time. I met them and we introduced ourselves. Immediately, one of them pulls out some gum and starts chewing. She gave gum to her friends and offered a piece to me. I realized some years afterwards that she wasn't trying to be nice by offering gum, she was trying to be nice by offering gum to help freshen my breath in case I had other meetings with other people that day. My breath wasn't the greatest even though I brushed my teeth before going out. For awhile afterwards, I began using a tongue scraper. It was one of those cheap kinds made of plastic. Either it was poorly made or I was just a little too concerned about my bad breath and was scraping too hard, my tongue was red and kinda bloody. Later, I started using one made of stainless steel and it seemed to work okay, I was scraping a lot of gunk off of my tongue and it did seem like my breath was a lot better. I would brush my teeth and use mouthwash, but it felt a whole lot cleaner and fresher when I used a tongue scraper. I didn't think that it would be possible for there to be a gamechanger to a gamechanger. I ended up switching from a plastic tongue scraper to one made of stainless steel to a plastic tongue brush. I first thought what was the point, couldn't I just use a toothbrush instead. I thought that that would make more sense until I actually used one. The tongue brush is totally different from a toothbrush. The toothbrush just won't do as a replacement to a tongue brush. I used it and was able to get more of the gunk off my tongue and it seemed to irritate my tongue less and I was able to get into more of the cracks and crevices of my tongue. My steel tongue scraper was made in the USA and so was this tongue brush. For me, the tongue brush worked so much better than the steel tongue scraper. This tongue brush has a nice feel to it and feels really well made. You probably don't need to replace it as often as a regular toothbrush, but it would still need to be replaced eventually. It has improved my life by helping me have fresher breath and keeping my tongue clean. I normally use it after brushing my teeth and I use it with mouth wash. Sometimes, you have some sort of sugar alcohol based tongue paste/gel, but I don't think that that is necessary. Just brushing your teeth, using a tongue brush and using mouthwash is plenty and works great.

My buddy and I were friends since grade school. We went to high school and were still friends. We didn't like much of our classes when we were in school. For the first two years, the only classes we were interested in were the computer and keyboarding classes. We had these large keyboards that had the main typing keys and then a bunch of other function buttons on the left side, along the top, and a number pad on the right-hand side. They were very clickety and very loud. It was a keyboarding class where the teacher was teaching us how to use the keyboard with proper finger positioning. After keyboarding class, we would have lunch and we would sit in the cafeteria and eat with our other friends. Sometimes, we would each grab a burger or a pizza slice from the cafeteria or we would bring our own lunch. A girl from my keyboarding class who I wasn't quite friends with approached me. I had bought a burger that day. She asked if she could take a bite since she was hungry and didn't have any money. I was caught off guard a bit, thinking this was probably a dare or a prank. My friends all turned and looked at me and I managed to stammer out, "Yeah, yeah, sure." Before I could even finish speaking, my hands had already ripped the burger in half and my arm was outstretched handing the half burger to her. She thanked me and took the half burger and sat down in front of me on the other side of the table and ate it as we chatted for a bit. I gave her some of my drink well. Over time, my friends and I eventually went our separate ways as we went off to various colleges and universities and the keyboard was still integral to our schooling and work. As the years passed, I would be doing a lot of work on keyboards. I would work at my desk and use my keyboard to write an essay, or a report, or to do some data entry and after awhile my wrists would start burning. Sometimes, there would be tingling along my forearms and along my fingers. The angle of my wrists when using a keyboard would mean that my wrists and forearms were placed at the sharp part of the desk. It would cause strain on my wrists and fingers and put pressure on my wrist and forearm area. I would try to fold up a small piece of cloth or a towel and use it as a makeshift wrist rest, but it wasn't ideal. I liked using this wrist rest at 16" x 3" x 0.75". It was a hard plastic, made of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) which was used in cutting boards, but still did its job very well and it was still very comfortable. I would normally have my wrists resting on the top of the wood desk. It would feel to be about the same hardness, but it was much more comfortable typing and using the keyboard with the wrist rest than without. The problem I had with it was that it slid around. It was very important to keep in one place because it just won't work with it sliding around and it could be very distracting. So what I did was I attached four pairs of the 3M Command hanging strips and used them to fasten the wrist rest to the desk and it stayed firmly in place. Before I put the fasteners in place, I would place the wrist rest on my desk and type for a bit and shift the wrist rest around until I found the perfect spot for it. Then I would place the fasteners on and set them in place. They finished curing after 24h and they would be good to go and lasted years. Other options would be to use a wooden wrist rest from a Japanese company called Filco where the wrist rests were made in Japan. These were excellent, but not my favorite. Aside from that, another option may be any of the gel versions that have a vinyl cover or a fabric cover or anything that had foam. I much preferred the HDPE wrist rest. I just loved the look of it and it was thicker than the offerings from Filco. Don't get me wrong, I still loved my Filcos. I loved the HDPE wrist rest and I actually preferred the feel of it over gel or the wood versions from Filco. I liked the wrist rest at a 0.75" thickness and I felt that 0.50" would also have worked. I liked the texture of the HDPE material over any of the other materials. Because it was made of HDPE, it was chemically resistant, so it had a soft glide sensation over its surface which added to the comfort when typing for a long period of time. I bought the wrist rest from the Cutting Board Company (Atlanta, Georgia).

When I was younger, my brother used to have friends over and they would smoke and party. He would smoke too. I thought he would smoke just to fit in with his friends, but there were many times he would just hang out outside in the backyard and smoke. I didn't like it. I didn't like the smell and I thought it was an unhealthy habit. Despite this, my brother was still more athletic than me. Our family went out one time to an amusement park a decent drive away, but not too far. We got to the parking lot and went in. There were some water attractions since this place was on the lake. I liked some cool attractions, but they were further at the other end of the park. We walked over to the end and we went to the part with the laser light show. It was really neat. You got to sit down in comfy movie theatre-like seats and you got to see a laser light show with what appeared to be holographic projections. It was all really neat. The show was probably 20 minutes long, but it felt longer and it was amazing the entire time. They had some interesting soothing and entertaining music and musical effects and made the whole experience magical and surreal. Afterwards, we went into the nearby maze attraction. The maze has multiple parts, kinda like a friendly fun house where you progress through different themes. They would be different mazes made of different materials and joined together so that you progressed through one after the other in sequence. For instance, one part was just walls, painted drywall and then you got to the end of that maze and progressed further into one that was a hedge maze separated by plants/hedges. When you completed that maze, you left into another maze where the maze walls were made of wire, but thick-coated so that people wouldn't get hurt. This was not the same as another part of the amusement park with hanging soft punching bags. This was the maze sequence part. About half of the way in the maze attraction, there would be a darkened maze with low-light. It had really interesting and soothing, but magical music. There would be a smoke maker and there would be lasers pointing to near the ceiling with colorful background lighting. This was my favorite part of the maze. I would stay there for as long as possible whenever my family went to this park. When I finished running through the maze, I can get a score to see how long I took and if I hit the certain checkpoints. I had a card and there would be card readers at various points. I would always seem to miss one or two checkpoints. Before we left to eat or left the park altogether, we would go on a boat ride. It would be like a roller coaster, but instead of following a metal track it would follow a water path with a plastic waterway filled with water and we would be sitting in a boat running along the watercourse. It was somewhat like a water slide, but the small boat we were in would drift gently along the watercourse. We would seat four to six per boat and go along. There would be decorations and animatronics all along on either side of the watercourse for entertainment and then a part that raises the boat up a path uphill before it comes to flat area and then a downward direction like a roller coaster but all on water. The final splash part is where people raise their arms and scream. I did this ride a few times and I ended up getting a lot of water in my mouth during the drop and splash part. I went home and shortly afterwards, I kept coughing and coughing. I ended up getting sick and it was most likely from the water I got in my mouth. I kept coughing through the night and for the next few days. My face was red and I was congested and didn't sleep well. I looked like a mess. My brother, whose room was next to mine, kept going to my room to check on me to make sure I was alright. He was still smoking at the time. Then suddenly, he stopped smoking and he stopped inviting friends over. He thought that I was having a reaction to the smoking. It was a cool trip going to that amusement park and neat that I got sick and my brother quit smoking because of it. I picked up a Blisslights Sky Lite projector and it reminds me a lot of the laser light show I used to go to as a kid at that amusement park and the laser part/new age music part of the maze attraction. The Blisslights Sky Lite projector generates a blue nebula background that you project onto a wall or ceiling with a stars mode which are green stars generated by a lasers. The stars and nebula can be kept stationary or moving slowly by hitting the second button on the projector. There is a third button closed to the floor which you can use to adjust the brightness. You can leave it on to fall asleep to as there is a six hour auto shut-off built into it. You also have the option of showing just the blue nebula background, just the green laser stars, or both turned on simultaneously. The Blisslights Sky Lite projector improved my life because it creates another form of stress-relief. I can just lay in bed and look at the laser light show and it feels like laying on the grass and looking up at the stars on a clear night. The laser lights can move slowly with the nebula moving kinda like if you were on a planet moving and looking up at the night sky. It kinda makes you forget where you are and you are left with just you and the stars. It's a type of surreal experience that can take you way from your worries and stresses, if only temporarily.