If you're longing for sea duty, here are 22 simple steps to
simulating life in the Navy.
1. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet
door with a
curtain. Six hours after you go to sleep, have your wife
whip open
the curtain, shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble
"Sorry,
wrong rack".
2. Renovate your bathroom. Build a wall across the middle of
your
bathtub and move the shower head down to chest level. When
you take
showers, make sure you shut off the water while soaping.
3. Every time there's a thunderstorm, go sit in a wobbly
rocking
chair and rock as hard as you can until you're nauseous.
4. Put lube oil in your humidifier instead of water and set
it to
"High".
5. Don't watch TV except movies in the middle of the night.
Also,
have your family vote on which movie, then show a different
one.
6. (Optional for ex-engineering types) Leave lawnmower
running in
your living room six hours a day for proper noise level.
7. Have the paperboy give you a haircut.
8. Once a week blow compressed air up through your chimney,
making
sure the wind carries the soot across and onto your
neighbor's
house. Laugh at him when he curses you.
9. Buy a trash compactor and only use it once a week. Store
up
garbage in the other side of your bathtub.
10. Wake up every night at midnight and have a peanut butter
and
jelly sandwich on stale bread, if anything. (Optional:
Canned
ravioli or cold soup).
11. Make up your family menu a week ahead of time without
looking in
your food cabinets or refrigerator.
12. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during
the night.
When it goes off, jump out of bed and get dressed as fast as
you
can, then run out into your yard and break out the garden
hose.
13. Once a month take every major appliance completely apart
and
then put them back together.
14. Use 18 scoops of coffee per pot and allow it to sit for
5 or 6
hours before drinking, or biting off and swallowing.
15. Invite at least 85 people you don't really like to come
and
visit for a couple of months, and call them Marines.
16. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your
coffee
table and lie under it to read books.
17. Raise the thresholds and lower the top jambs on your
front and
back doors so that you either trip over the threshold, or
hit your
head on the jamb every time you pass through one of them.
18. Lockwire the lug nuts on your car.
19. When making cakes, prop up one side of the pan while it
is
cooking. Then spread icing really thick on one side to level
off the
top.
20. Every so often, throw your cat into the swimming pool,
shout
"Man overboard, ship recovery!", run into the
kitchen and sweep all
the pots/pans/dishes off of the counter onto the floor, then
yell at
your wife for not having the place "stowed for
sea".
21. Put on the headphones from your stereo (don't plug them
in). Go
and stand in front of your stove. Say (to nobody in
particular)
"Stove manned and ready". Stand there for 3 or 4
hours. Say (once
again to nobody in particular) "Stove secured".
Roll up the
headphone cord and put them away.
22. Wake up at 0-Dark-30, line up in the driveway in a light
drizzle, and have your mother-in-law criticize your clothes
and read
you the newspaper.