Three Ways to Improve Your Life

My philosophy prof in first year university would, from time to time, make announcements about things he thought we should know. I don't know what he called them exactly: "arguments for the general good" or "public service announcements", but they were supposed to be of use to us, even if not connected directly to philosophy. I remember one of them was advice to steer clear of hard contact lenses, but I'm sure that if there were some kind of problem, it has long since been resolved. Today I would like to make an announcement of my own and recommend three things that might well improve your life.

1. Buy a waffle iron! A month or so ago I bought one of these and it's been great. My mother used to have one and I've been missing the occasional waffle for breakfast for years, but hardly realizing it. My suggestion is to try a Belgian recipe that uses yeast like this one. You don't have to separate the eggs--the recipe works great even if you don't.
2. Do one kind thing for someone else every day if possible. It has a remarkable effect on your life as well as other people's. For one thing, the constantly looking out for only your own interests and advancement is very wearing and for another, doing kind things for other people usually creates a rather surprising and beneficial atmosphere.
3. Buy the newly-inexpensive release of the Emerson Quartet's complete Beethoven String Quartets here. It is less than $26 and worth every penny. To complete the purchase you should also get a copy of this. The full-size Dover edition of the score to the complete quartets is only $5.99! Even if you don't read music, or don't read music very fluently, following the music in the score will be very illuminating.

So there you go. I don't see how you can go wrong with these three things. Here is some of what you will hear in #3: