OW TO SIMULATE BEING A SAILOR

1. Buy a steel dumpster, paint it gray inside and out, and live in it for six months.

2. Run all the pipes and wires in your house exposed on the walls.

3. Repaint your entire house every month using gray paint.

4. Renovate your bathroom. Lower all showerheads to four and one-half feet off the deck.

5. When you take showers, make sure you turn off the water while you soap down.

6. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, turn water heater temperature up to 300 degrees. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, turn water heater off.

7. On Saturdays and Sundays tell your family they used too much water during the week, so no bathing will be allowed.

8. Put 5W-20 lube oil in your humidifier, instead of water, and set it on high.

9. Leave your lawn mower running in your living room 24 hours a day to maintain proper ambient noise level.

10. Once a month, disassemble all your major appliances and electric garden tools, inspect them and then reassemble them. Do this every week with your lawnmower, weed whacker and other gasoline powered tools.

11. 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.

12. Raise the thresholds and lower the headers of your front and back doors, so that you either trip or bang your head every time you pass through them.

13. Raise your bed to within 6 inches of the ceiling, so you can't turn over without getting out and then getting back in.

14. Have a fluorescent lamp installed on the bottom of your coffee table and lie under it to read books.

15. Sleep on the shelf in your closet. Replace the closet door with a curtain. Have your spouse whip open the curtain about 4 hours after you go to sleep, shine a flashlight in your eyes, and say "Sorry, wrong rack."

16. Make each member your family qualify to operate each appliance in your house i.e., dishwasher operator, blender technician, etc.

17. Find the dumbest guy in the neighborhood and make him your boss for the next two years.

18. Have your neighbor come over each day at 5 am, blow a whistle so loud Helen Keller could hear it, and shout "Reveille, reveille, all hands heave out and trice up."

19. Have your mother-in-law write down everything she's going to do the following day, then have her make you stand in your back yard at 0600 (6 A.M.) while she reads it to you.

20. Empty all the garbage bins in your house and sweep the driveway three times a day, whether it needs it or not.

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

22. Watch no TV except for movies played in the middle of the night. Have your family vote on which movie to watch, and then show a different one.

23. When your children are in bed, run into their room with a megaphone shouting that your home is under attack and ordering them to their battle stations.

24. Post a menu on the kitchen door informing your family that they are having steak for dinner. Then make them wait in line for an hour. When they finally get to the kitchen, tell them you are out of steak, but they can have dried ham or hot dogs. Repeat daily until they ignore the menu and just ask for hot dogs.

25. Bake a cake. Prop up one side of the pan so the cake bakes unevenly. Spread icing real thick to level it off.

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

27. Set your alarm clock to go off at random times during the night. At the alarm, jump up and dress as fast as you can, making sure to button your top shirt button and tuck your pants into your socks. Run out into the back yard and uncoil the garden hose.

28. Every week or so, throw your cat or dog into the pool and shout, "Man overboard port side!" Rate your family members on how fast they respond.

29. Put the headphones from your stereo on your head, but don't plug them in. Hang a paper cup around your neck on a string. Stand in front of the stove, and speak into the paper cup "Stove manned and ready." After an hour or so, speak into the cup again "Stove secured." Roll up the headphones and paper cup and stow them in a shoebox.

30. Place a podium at the end of your driveway. Have your family stand watches at the podium, rotating at 4-hour intervals. This is best done when the weather is worst. January is a good time.

31. When there is a thunderstorm in your area, get a wobbly rocking chair, sit in it and rock as hard as you can until you become nauseous. Make sure to have a supply of stale crackers in your shirt pocket.

32. Buy a trash compactor but only use it once a week. Store up garbage in your bathtub.

33. Invite at least 375 people, most of whom you don't really like, to come and live with you for about 6 months.

34. Lock-wire the lug nuts on your car wheels.

35. Start your car and let it run for 4 hours before going anywhere, to ensure the engine is properly "lit off".

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

37. Make coffee using eighteen scoops of budget priced coffee grounds per pot, and allow the pot to simmer for 5 hours before drinking.

38. Have the paperboy give you a haircut with sheep shears.

39. Submit a request form to your father-in-law, asking if it's OK for you to leave your house before 1500 (3 PM).

40. Take a two-week vacation visiting the Far East, and call it "world travel".

41. Lock yourself and your family in the house for six weeks. Tell them that at the end of the 6th week you are going to take them to Disney World for "liberty." At the end of the 6th week, inform them the trip to Disney World has been canceled because they need to get ready for an inspection, and it will be another week before they can leave the house.

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

Now, who's ready to go back to sea?