The science of play

How: "I can't even finish my sudokus anymore!"
And + Pen: ??!
How: "I'm serious! I tried to do one today and I couldn't finish it! So I put it down, cause you know sometimes if you put something away and come back to it, your brain can finish it then? And I came back to it and I still couldn't finish it! It's worrisome."
Pen: "You know, I think this is one of the sad things about not working that people don't talk about. Cause you know how architects are constantly moving things around and making connections and putting things into little boxes...making mental calculations and making things fit? I think if your brain isn't doing that on a daily basis - you start to lose that skill. Or it starts to deteriorate."

Even though I was partially kidding, there's a reason why a lot of current psychologists and neuroscientists constantly encourage people to continue to do brain exercises up until their 70s and 80s. It's why a lot of older people play chess, bridge or other strategy games or do the crossword. It's not because they're old, but it's because they've continued to exercise their brains that they ARE old. AndHow and I were joking, but as part of the 'recession special' events they've been trying to brainstorm - cause seriously, when we were kids, we had no money, plenty of free time and we still managed to amuse ourselves - I started to try to come up with a new board game that we could play. It didn't work out so well - ARCHITEXs! the game doesn't sound like that much fun. But still, playing games is one of the way that we can all keep our brains from becoming just gray squashy moosh.

One of my favorite ways to multi task at work is to listen to things like podcasts or TED talks in order to stimulate both sides of my brain. This one below by Stuart Brown talks about the importance of play to child development and also to continued growth as we get older. In fact, one of history's most notorious serial killers was actually shown to have his play habits restrained and limited when he was a child and grew up not knowing how to interact or relax around others.



It's amazing no? This is why I'm going rock climbing next week. Keep playin' y'all!

And also, AndHow cooked me these for the very first time, and they were INCREDIBLE. Little nubs of herby spaeztle mixed in with green beans. Nummy. I have no idea what Bavarian sauce is, but it basically equals delicious. The funniest thing was that I opened up their freezer to see three boxes of this stuff and I was about to give the boys shit for it. I mean, come on - it sounds borderline Dinty Moore beef stew! And I've never seen spaeztle and green beans mixed together before, well I'm telling you people. Get your asses to Andronicos before I do, cause this shit will be gone!

How: it's hard to make spaeztle.
Pen: No, it's not! Is it? It's like just making dumpling mix!
And: No...wait...yes, I guess it's hard to make smooth.
How: Yeah, Elka said you have to have authentic Germans around. Cause you have to stir it pretty hard. And I was thinking, "You mean you have to have big German women to stir it?"
And + Pen: bwaahahah!