Common Sense Evaluation

1. Buy a dumpster, paint it gray and live in it for 6 months straight.

2. Run all of the piping and wires inside your house on the outside of the
walls.

3. Pump 10 inches of nasty, crappy water into your basement, then pump it
out, clean up, and paint the basement “deck gray.”

4. Every couple of weeks, dress up in your best clothes and go the
scummiest part of town, find the most run down, trashy bar you can, pay
$10 per beer until you’re hammered, then walk home in the freezing cold.

5. Perform a weekly disassembly and inspection of your lawnmower.

6. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays turn your water temperature up to
200 degrees, then on Tuesday and Thursday turn it down to 10 degrees. On
Saturdays, and Sundays declare to your entire family that they used too
much water during the week, so all showering is secured.

7. Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling.

8. Have your next door neighbor come over each day at 5am, and blow a
whistle so loud that Helen Keller could hear it and shout “Reveille,
Reveille, all hands heave out and trice up”.

9. Have your mother-in-law write down everything she’s going to do the
following day, then have her make you stand in the back yard at 6am and
read it to you.

10. Eat the raunchiest Mexican food you can find for three days straight,
then lock yourself out of the bathroom for 12 hours, and hang a sign
On the door that reads “Secured-contact OA division at X-3053.”

11. Submit a request form to your father-in-law, asking if it’s OK for you
to leave your house before 3pm.

12. Invite 200 of your not-so-closest friends to come over, then board up
all the windows and doors to your house for 6 months. After the 6
months is up, take down the boards, wave at your friends and family
through the front window of your home…you can’t leave until the next
day you have duty.

13. Shower with above-mentioned friends.

14. Make your family qualify to operate all the appliances in your home
(i.e., Dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc).

15. Walk around your car for 4 hours checking the tire pressure every 15
minutes.

16. Sit in your car and let it run for 4 hours before going anywhere. This
is to ensure your engine is properly “lighted off.”

17. Empty all the garbage bins in your house, and sweep your driveway 3
times a day, whether they need it or not. (Now sweepers, start your
brooms, clean sweep down fore and aft, empty all trashcans over the
fantail)

18. Repaint your entire house once a month.

19. Cook all of your food blindfolded, groping for any spice and seasoning
you can get your hands on.

20. Use eighteen scoops of budget coffee grounds per pot, and allow each
pot to sit 5 hours before drinking.

21. Have your neighbor collect all your mail for a month, read your
magazines, and randomly lose every 5th item.

22. Spend $20,000 on a satellite system for your TV, but only watch CNN
and the Weather Channel.

23. Avoid watching TV with the exception of movies which are played in the
middle of the night. Have the family vote on which movie to watch
and then show a different one.

24. Have your 5-year-old cousin give you a haircut with goat shears.

25. Sew back pockets to the front of your pants.

26. Spend 2 weeks in the red-light districts of Europe, and call it “world
travel.”

27. Attempt to spend 5 years working at McDonalds, and NOT get promoted.

28. Ensure that any promotions you do get are from stepping on the dead
bodies of your coworkers.

29. Needle gun the aluminum siding on your house after your neighbors have
gone to bed.

30. When your children are in bed, run into their room with a megaphone,
and shout at the top of your lungs that your home is under attack, and
order them to man their battle stations. (“General quarters, general
quarters, all hands man your battle stations”)

31. Make your family menu a week ahead of time and do so without checking
the pantry and refrigerator.

32. Post a menu on the refrigerator door informing your family that you
are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for at least an
hour, when they finally get to the kitchen, tell them that you are out of
steak, but you have dried ham or hot dogs. Repeat daily until they don’t
pay attention to the menu any more so they just ask for hot dogs.

33. When baking a cake, prop up one side of the pan while it is in the
oven. Spread icing on real thick to level it off.

34. In the middle of January, place a podium at the end of your driveway.
Have you family stand watches at the podium, rotating at 4-hour intervals.

35. Lock yourself and your family in your house for 6 weeks. Then tell
them that at the end of the 6th week you’re going to take them to
Disneyland for “weekend liberty.” When the end of the 6th week rolls
around, inform them that Disneyland has been canceled due to the fact that
they need to get ready for Engineering-certification, and that it will be
another week before they can leave the house.

36. In your grim, gray dumpster (refer to #1), with 200 of your
not-so-closest friend (cite par. 12) regardless of gender, suffer through
PMS!

37. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a
curtain. Have you wife whip open the curtain about 3 hours after you
go to sleep. She should then shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble
“Sorry, wrong rack.”

38. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of your
bathtub, move the shower head to chest level. When you take showers, make
sure you shut off the water while you soap down.

39. When there is a thunderstorm in your area, find a wobbly rocking chair
and rock as hard as you can until you become nauseous. have a supply of
stale crackers in your shirt pocket.

40. Put lube oil in your humidifier and set it on high.

41. For ex-engineering types: leave the lawn mower running in your living
room eight hours a day.

42. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.

43. Once a week, blow compressed air up your chimney, making sure the wind
carries the soot onto your neighbors house. Ignore his complaints.

44. Every other month buy green or red marine primer and put it in a paint
sprayer. Spray it over the roof of your house onto your neighbors
car. Ignore his complaints.

45. Lock wire the lug nuts on your car.

46. Buy a trash compactor, but use it only once a week. Store the garbage
on the other side of your bathtub.

47. Get up every night around midnight and have a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich on stale bread.

48. Set your alarm clock to go off at random during the night, jump up and
get dressed as fast as you can making sure you button up the top
button on your shirt, stuff you pants into your socks. Run out into the
backyard and uncoil the garden hose.

49. Once a month, take every major appliance apart and put them back
together again.

50. Install a fluorescent lamp under the coffee table and then get under
it and read books.

51. Raise the thresholds and lower the top sills of your front and back
doors so that you either trip or bang your head every time you pass
through one of them.

52. Every so often, throw the cat in the pool and shout “Man overboard,
starboard side” Then run into the house and sweep all the pots and
dishes off the counter. Yell at the wife and kids for not having the
kitchen “stowed for sea.”

53. Put on the headphones from your stereo set, but don’t plug them in.
Hang a paper cup around your neck with string. Go stand in front of your
stove. Say … to no one in particular “Stove manned and ready” Stand
there for three or four hours. And say again to no one in particular
“stove secured.” Roll up your headphones and paper cup and place them in a
box.