How To Simulate Life In The Navy

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. 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.

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

5. 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.

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

7. 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".

8. 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.

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

10. 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.

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

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

13. 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)

14. Repaint your entire house once a month.

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

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

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

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

19. 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.

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

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

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

23. 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")

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

25. 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.

26. 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.

27. 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.

28. 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."

29. 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.

30. 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.

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

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

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

34. Lock wire the lug nuts on your car.

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

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

37. 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.

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

39. 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.

40. 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."

41. 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.