Feeling Old and Out of Touch: Thanks Mindset List

You want to take a trip down memory lane, and feel really old at the same time? Here’s how you do it. Get on the Web and search out Beloit College’s Mindset List for the Class of 2014. A small college that dates back to when Wisconsin was still a territory, Beloit puts together a fascinating list every year to give us some insight into “the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall.” You know, stuff that we older folk used to find commonplace, but today’s incoming freshmen will scratch their heads and say, “What you talkin’ ‘bout, grandpa?” Because, think about this, most freshman now hitting college campuses like the one I work at were born in 1992. NINETEEN-NINETY-TWO!!! As the list points out, these little dudes and dudettes never had to worry about a Russian nuclear missile hitting the U.S. A read through it gives you an idea of how much things have changed, and how quickly. What was once standard in our lives are now little more than historical relics or forgotten pieces of the past.

Continue Reading

I’m Trying … I’m really Trying! … to Eat Healthier

Whoever thought eating healthy would be so dang hard? It’s enough to make you throw up your hands and scream, “Bring on the Pop-Tart sushi!” (In case you were looking for signs of the end of civilization as we know it, I give you Pop-Tarts World — the nutritional apocalypse. It’s opening in Times Square and will sell, I kid you not, Pop-Tart sushi. I gained a pound and lost a year off my life just reading about it online.) Thanks for kicking us while we’re making progress, food companies. Here we are becoming interested in what we eat, and adjusting to organic squash and multi-grain pasta. Then you have to go and give us that. I’ve always been a relatively healthy eater, but in the past year I’ve turned even more so. Or at least I’m trying.

Continue Reading