John & I Attended Memory Technologies Institute Yesterday

Last Saturday I taught machine knitting at a seminar, and this Saturday, John and I attended a seminar to learn techniques to improve our memory for details, taught my Harold Mangum who is a psychologist with a lively personality and a thick Cajun accent (he is from Morgan City, Louisiana, but he lives in Dallas now). I wanted to be better at remembering names, and goody, the seminar included quite a few strategies for that.

Giving up a whole Saturday for anything doesn't come easily for us. John was lured by a  Studebaker event Lone Star Model A Club was attending, and I wanted to knit so badly my fingers were itching. The cones of yarn yell at me about how much they want to become sweaters and ask what's keeping me.  I thought about the upcoming memory seminar, and even though I was the one who attended one of Mr. Mangum's talks to a group of CPAs and signed us up, I was thinking a whole day sitting in a hotel learning something on Saturday sounded like too big an effort.

However, we had a blast. Harold Mangum has a very clever method of making it possible to remember large lists of things - you choose what you wish you could remember and he's got a way to remember it - and he's funny, and a little zany, and fully engaged with everyone in the room all day.  We had friends there, too, CPAs we know and their families.  My life has its circles, knitting and accountants and Scouts...

At lunch we walked out of the downtown hotel looking for a restaurant and wandered through the Pecan Street festival a while. There are all kinds of booths, art, t-shirts, jewelry, live music, and carnival food. John and I ate a lovely lunch at the Paradise Cafe of 6th Street (the famous Capital of Music 6th Street).

We had fun at the seminar, ran into friends there, and bought a pile of CDs and workbooks to help us practice the techniques. I wish I'd had this back when I had to memorize all sorts of information in college!  I could always learn concepts because of my curiosity about "why" but it was difficult to memorize data.  Mr. Mangum's memory methods are amazing.  At one point I was jotting down the answers to one of his exercises and put the pen down with a huge rush of satisfaction, realizing I was utterly amazed I could do it!  Oh, these are brain "stress balls" from the seminar.