Who says there is ever enough fun? Life should be fun…if you are not laughing and loving as much as possible well, it’s time to start!

“Can we get more people to choose the stairs by making it fun to do?”

This is the question posed by a group in Stockholm, Sweden who converted the stairs of a subway exit into a giant piano. The answer to the question is an overwhelming “yes” as a reported 66% more people chose the stairs over the adjacent escalator. The project is part of “The Fun Theory” initiative of Volkswagen. Previous projects include adding speakers to a park garbage can that makes throwing away trash sound more dramatic and fun.

The cool part is that it barely promotes Volkswagen (except it still does as I am here) and mostly promotes fun and exercise. I like it.

Check out the video here.

Mob rules.  Get a group together and get bulk discount rates for cool stuff.  But what if you don’t have your own gang or posse? No worries Groupon takes care of all that for you.

Groupon is a website with daily deals too good not to pounce on.  From teeth whitening to spa days to dinner deals at your favorite restaurant, Groupon offers discounts from about 50-70% off normal prices.

And Groupon is growing – they are now in almost 20 cities across the US and hope to be in 30 by year’s end.

The Chicago-based company has sold nearly 500,000 groupons, saving consumers about $23 million according to Andrew Mason, the company’s founder.

That is beginning to translate into big money for Groupon. It makes money by taking a percentage of each groupon it sells, and Mason says the cut hovers around 50 percent.

“It’s really exploded in a way that, if I stop and think about it, kind of freaks me out a little bit,” Mason says.

Why am I writing about it? Simply because I signed up, thinks it’s a very cool idea, and am easily entertained by neat, new stuff…plus it really works and you can save a wad of cash!

Check them out, if not for their good deals, at least for their sharp and witty prose. Each day’s write up can be pretty entertaining.

It seems in our modern times we spend so much time face down in our blackberry world texting and shuffling through life. Now with all our i-gadgets we never miss a call, but seem to miss more of real life passing us by and certainly have less interaction with people and the world around us.

Juan Mann of Australia has started a revolution to buck this trend. How? By hugging it out.  That’s right, free hugs to anyone who wants or needs one.

Who doesn’t love a good hug? I don’t know about you, but for me, there’s nothing out there for sale at the stores that compares to a good old fashioned squeeze around the mid section.  Now, folks in places like Taipei, Tel Aviv, Italy, Ireland, Toronto, and Colorado are continuing his campaign by offering free hugs to strangers in public places. Check out his site and story here and then go hug someone you love…or if you are feeling really ‘huggy bear-like,’ go hug a stranger. Now get to huggin’.

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While I was home in New Jersey living once again with my dad and his new wife in my old childhood house, I helped them sort through 36 years worth of stuff (dare I say crap?) before they sell the house and possibly move to a lovely over fifty-five community where the grass is always green and nicely mowed.

So our house here in NJ is a lovely typical suburban split level abode circa 1972. And it hasn’t changed much since.  As I described earlier, my pink bedroom was nearly exactly as I’d left it 20 years ago. And the same could be said for most of the rest of the house, like the kitchen complete with yellow Formica countertops, yellow linoleum floor, and beautiful faux wood grain cabinets. But, now my dad would be selling and trading up for newer more contemporary digs. So I was helping him sort through all kinds of miscellany and junk, a lot of which hadn’t been touched in several decades.

Here are some fun items we came across in the garage…most of which went straight to the trash:

• Burpee seed catalog circa 1987
• Bicentennial commemorative 1976 hot plate
• A tiny Torah. Mazel Tov!
• Old plasticy table cloths
• Half used cans of WD-40 and Oil-in-One
• 20-30 plastic, cobweb-filled plant containers
• Dried up craft paints
• ‘Cleen! Brite-White’ white wall tire spray circa 1978
• 6-7 ice scrapers and various snow brushes
• Approximately 512 used golf balls
• 1 old red snow sled (a keeper!)
• An unidentified tool that looks like a ray gun from a 1960s sci-fi movie
• Drain snake
• Plutonium reactor (just seeing if you are paying attention)
• Coleus Plant seeds circa 1979
• One Headlight (The Wallflowers would be proud)
• 1 Styrofoam egg container
• Axe handle sans Axe head
• Metal Mailbox Letters
• 1970s hanging lamps
• Random bits of wood, glass, Plexiglas, skin
• 1 Hedge Trimmer
• Solidified Turtle wax
• Various balls of twine, rope, and electric cords

Besides most of this stuff that hit the trash before I could say ‘toss it’ we still decided to have a moving sale—the classic American weekend of fun—hocking old, dirty wares to old, dirty bargain hunters.

The morning of said sale, the darn garage sale groupies showed up around 7:30am. Our sale started at 9:00. They were circling like vultures, just waiting to score that coveted old Sinatra LP or misplaced antique.  The funny thing was these early birds all knew each other…it was like a scary gang, but scary as in ‘get a life’ scary.  I went out at 8:30am to say ‘hi’ and ask jokingly ‘what about NO early birds’ didn’t they understand?! I did relent and let them in at 8:50am…nice salesgirl that I am.

Here are some of the luxurious items I sold throughout the day:

• A mini fridge (which was later returned as it was said to ‘not work’ even though it actually did…later sold it on Craigslist.com)
• My ‘Sew Perfect’ little girl sewing machine
• A small pocket knife
• A green glass dish
• An old transistor radio
• My old Soundesign small radio
• A plastic laundry hanger thingy
• The Hardy Boys books
• Couple other books
• A Sudoku coffee table set
• My brother’s old nun chucks. Some kid is going to attack someone with those soon. At least I made a few bucks.
• An old softball bat
• Random stuffed animals
• Assorted games
• A Nurf basketball set
• Barware
• Watches
• Several wall prints
• Frames
• 2 plastic storage boxes
• A never-used charcoal grill
• Old Sheets/bedspreads
• Brass candlesticks
• A silver ice bucket
• A glass jar for .25. (for the buyer to store her ‘fish food’)
• A beautiful never-used car shammy
• Car Seat Cover
• Basket of fake flowers
• Sunglasses
• Clip on Sunglasses
• Sports flip up sunglasses
• Outdoor Chair Cushions

This is it. This is what my life has come down to on a beautiful Saturday. Hawking lame wares to lame people. Ugh.

The last sale of the day? My Fiddler on the Roof Music box. Sniff, sniff. Goodbye Tevye! Just like him, I wish I were a rich (wo)man…and now I know that having a garage sale is not the way to achieve that.

But there is still stuff left if anyone is interested in a twenty-plus year old outdoor umbrella or a shoe horn shaped like a horse.

As a good friend of mine put it so perfectly: One man’s trash is…well, another man’s trash.

They say art is subjective. But apparently the Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) is full of pieces so bad that they have been unanimously deemed ‘bad art’ hence their motto: Art too bad to be ignored.  Sounds actually a bit more fun and interesting than some other museums I’ve been to and probably a great curating job. Since 1994, MOBA has been true to their mission: to bring the worst of art to the widest of audiences. In fact, the museum was founded when the above painting, Lucy in the Field with Flowers, was fished out of the trash. If you are up in Somerville or Dedham, Massachusetts…check out their galleries.