What's the most insignificant act you do incredibly well?

[Boom Sound 416]

For me it's a cup of coffee.

No, not blending various beans to make a great taste.

No, not perfectly grinding said beans

Nor, the actual brewing of aforementioned coffee.

It's making a cup of coffee

Right amount of cream? Yes.

But the secret is to pour the cream in first, then the coffee.

Perfect mix, perfect temperature and perfectly insignificant.

Enjoy

[rug]

1. Well, it's significant to me.

[Boom Sound 416]

118. ...

Ok, took me a while

[pipi_k]

2. Hey!

I make coffee that way too!

Although I heat my milk in the microwave first, for exactly 30 seconds.

Then the hot coffee goes in, with three sugars.

Mr Pipi makes gagging noises (he's a straight up black, no sugar coffee drinker) but I like the way I make mine

[Aristus]

3. I do an absolutely, 100% perfect impersonation of comedian Shelly Berman.

It's perfect, but who cares? Nobody knows who he is anymore. And he stopped doing stand-up decades ago.

[pipi_k]

5. I know who he is :) n/t

[Boom Sound 416]

6. My dad loved him.

Cheers

[Enthusiast]

48. My brother could do Shelly Berman when we were kids.

[pipi_k]

4. So anyway...

the most insignificant thing I do really well is untangling things.

Necklaces. Shoelaces. String. Yarn.

whatever.

for some reason it makes me calm

and I nearly always succeed. It might take a while, but I don't take any guff from a tangled necklace.

[Boom Sound 416]

7. Das what I'm talkin 'bout

Love it

[flying rabbit]

29. Yeah I got that skill.

It's a Zen thing.

[redwitch]

30. Will you please come to my house?

I have the world's messiest jewelry box chock full of tangled chain. I can't see well enough untangle anything.

[pipi_k]

33. Omg

I'm imagining your jewelry box full of tangled necklaces and my fingers are actually itching to get at them!!

[Orrex]

52. That is knot cool

[Boom Sound 416]

113. Whoa! Wait. What?

Don't get twisted

[magical thyme]

73. could you please untangle my princess pony's mane?

The braiding elves visited again last night and really botched the job. Instead of her usual dreadlocks they left her with a giant mane-mat or three.

[surrealAmerican]

76. Have you ever heard of these people:

link:http://www.ravelry.com/groups/knot-a-problem|

It's a ravelry group for people who untangle yarn.

[Ron Obvious]

8. Imitations

You should hear me impersonate David Sedaris impersonating Billy Holiday singing the Oscar Mayer Wiener song. It's eerie, even if I do say so myself.

I also make a fine cup of tea. Hot water on a fresh teabag may sound simple but it's all in the wrist action and the timing.

[Boom Sound 416]

9. Timing is everything

On both counts

[noamnety]

31. oh my gosh

that david sedaris bit is my favorite podcast ever!

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

10. I can quack like a duck

like a male mallard duck, that is. Female mallard ducks make kind of sensual happy sounds almost like squealing but male ducks make a two-beat raspy quack-quack that I learned to imitate from having ducks and even letting their eggs hatch on a hot blanket in my house. They thought I was their mommy and followed me around while I quacked. I sound better than duck calls from sporting goods stores. When I was young however, I would get annoyed when we had company over and my dad would ask me "hey quack like a duck; quack like a duck".

[Boom Sound 416]

11. Now THAT is perfectly insignificantly perfect

[clarice]

70. Please record yourself and post. nt

[La Lioness Priyanka]

12. killing mosquitoes. i am an expert.

[pink-o]

58. No way is that an insignificant skill!

No matter how queasy and squishy anyone feels about spiders, snakes, rats, whatever--it all pales next to mosquitos, the most vile species on the planet. One mosquito in the room with you can destroy your life.

I'd love to have your ability!

[La Lioness Priyanka]

67. grew up in india. lots of practice.

[3catwoman3]

99. My 24 yr old son has always been a complex thinker. When he...

...was about 10, he wished he could go back in time and destroy the first 2 mosquitos that ever existed before they had a chance to mate and make more of themselves. Sounded good to me.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

13. I can sing The Star Spangled Banner one syllable off,

like this:

Oh, say can you see by
The dawn's early light, what
So proudly we hailed at
The twilight's last gleaming. Whose
Broad stripes and bright stars through
The perilous fight, o'er
The ramparts we watched were
So gallantly streaming? And
The rocket's red glare, the
Bombs bursting in air, gave
Proof through the night that
Our flag was still there. Oh,
Say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o'er
The land of the free and
The home of the brave...

So it ends short one note. Drives people crazy.

[Boom Sound 416]

14. Make it stop!

[Art_from_Ark]

120. Dean Martin, is that you?

[steve2470]

15. be me, at my imperfect best nt

[Skittles]

16. OK I will ask

what difference does it make if the cream is first or not? I can taste no difference but I will admit I could just be tasteless.

[antiquie]

17. Cream last is to keep the coffee hot.

The Physics of Coffee & Cream

The Stefan-Boltzmann law says that hotter surfaces radiate heat faster—specifically, the power of emission is proportional to the temperature (in kelvin) raised to the fourth power. So let’s say you have two cups of coffee that start at the same temperature. You pour cream in cup #1 and the coffee drops in temperature immediately. But the rate at which it loses heat also drops. Meanwhile, the hotter black coffee in cup #2 cools so rapidly that within five minutes the two coffees are at about the same temperature. But you still haven’t added the cream to coffee 2! When you do, it cools even more; cup #1 is now the hotter of the two.

3.Viscosity versus evaporation. This is the clincher. Adding cream thickens the coffee (adds viscosity), so it evaporates slower. You’d be surprised just how much heat evaporation carries away. Slow the rate of evaporation and you avoid a lot of that heat loss. (This is also one big reason that coffee stays warm longer with a lid on the cup.)

[Boom Sound 416]

23. That's it!

At least I think so

Only wwwaaaayyy more articulate than my 7th grade physical science teacher explained it.

(Which is what I think about nearly everytime I make a cup)

[Boom Sound 416]

24. See #23

Glad you asked

[mackerel]

43. If you put the cream in first you don't need a spoon to mix it. It just works better.

[Boom Sound 416]

69. As we say in the industry

'That's just smart producing'

[PassingFair]

125. Also, the addition of the unheated spoon will...

cool that coffee down, too.

[BootinUp]

18. vegetating. nt

[sendero]

19. Yes ..

..... but sometimes it is the little things that take the rough edges off of life.

I try, with varying success, to do everything I do well. If I do it enough times, I will get good at it because getting good at it, regardless of how mundane the task, makes the work worth it

[Boom Sound 416]

25. "Do it right"

Was the theme of one of the few sermons that have truly stuck with me.

More than 25 years now.

[3catwoman3]

20. I excel at falling...

..asleep while reading - no matter the time of day or night.

[pipi_k]

34. Oh me too..

In fact it's the only way I can fall asleep

It's got to be the almost hypnotic back and forth motion of the eyes

[3catwoman3]

37. When I have read the same paragraph 6 times...

...or the book hits me in the nose, it's time for lights out.

[LiberalEsto]

21. I weed rather well

and it's great for relieving stress

[Boom Sound 416]

27. By hand I presume

That is akin to meditation.

[magical thyme]

74. I love weeding for that very reason...

it's like picking at potato chips or cheese doodles, but so much better and healthier. And it's great meditation...

[NV Whino]

22. Waking up without an alarm clock

Whatever the time. Need to get up at 3:00? No problem. 6:00? Yep, I can do that, too.

[bigwillq]

26. Me too!

I never use an alarm clock, but I always wake up on time!

[Avalux]

72. Me three!

Insignificant? Perhaps, but it makes me really happy I can do it and don't need an alarm to jar me out of sleep.

[Chan790]

28. I'm really good at identifying things by smell.

Is this a white carrot or a parsnip? Chan's nose knows.



Highlight for the answer: [font color="white"]Those are white carrots.[/font]

[cui bono]

88. Love the hidden answer!

I'm going to do that when I need to hide what I post before the jury does.

[dawg]

100. Parsnips a' plenty.

[laundry_queen]

115. I have an incredible sense of smell

I drive my kids crazy searching for 'the smell' all the time. "Do you guys smell that? I smell something." I'll go around the house searching until I find the source, lol. When we were potty training our puppy, I'd be up in my room (2 storey house) and I'll yell at the kids, "Did the puppy poop? I smell poop!" And they would laugh because sure enough, the dog had pooped by the door...down a flight of stairs on the opposite end of the house. The kids were sitting right in the living room and didn't smell it (because the doggie's poop is not actually that stinky, relatively speaking. My brother's lab, on the other hand...)

I wouldn't say it's insignificant though. When my now-ex and I got together, I smelled something burning while I was upstairs putting away laundry, and when I came downstairs, the old Christmas lights on the tree (it was our first year living together and we had 'inherited' the lights from family) were heating up to the point the plastic on the tree was melting to the bulbs and just starting to smoke. Yeah, now I buy new lights every 2 years, I'm so paranoid. If it wasn't for my sense of smell, the house would've burned down. My ex was sitting in the next room and didn't notice.

I have never TRIED identifying things with smell, but I'm sure I could do it blindfolded, easily.

[noamnety]

32. I can tune out commercials on tv

we'll be watching a show, then my husband will comment on a commercial we are/were just seeing, and I have no clue what he's talking about. My brain just switches off completely when they come on.

[mnhtnbb]

47. I am the same way. My husband uses the remote to mute the TV

and the sound going off/on drives me crazy. I just ignore the commercials.

[Marie Marie]

35. Nobody eats chocolate as well as I.

I am an expert.

[Boom Sound 416]

39. Practice, practice, practice

[fizzgig]

36. my potato salad

everyone gobbles it up and then comes back for more.

two secrets:
dress the taters hot and chill for several hours
bacon fat in the dressing

[Boom Sound 416]

38. Bacon fat in the dressing

Will be the name of my next album.


Well done.

[fizzgig]

78. glad i could be of service

[IcyPeas]

40. mirror-writing

I can write backwards so you have to hold it up to a mirror to read. I drove my brother crazy when he was in the navy by writing him letters like this. It helped keep him sane and made him laugh.

[3catwoman3]

102. That is pretty cool. I can...

...write backwards with my left hand without having to think about which way to make the letters(I'm a righty) but it's pretty messy.

[IcyPeas]

104. only 1 out of 6,500

can do mirror writing according to wikipedia. we are special.

[Art_from_Ark]

122. So you drove your brother crazy but kept him sane at the same time

That must have been quite an accomplishment

[IcyPeas]

124. yes. exactly. I'm good at that too. LOL

This was back in '69 and he's never forgotten my letters.

[Populist_Prole]

41. I'm told I can mimic sounds exceptionally well, espeically other's speech

Right down to the most subtle of nuanaces.

Oh, I make a good white clam sauce as well.

[lovemydog]

42. Walking people to their car.

I like to make sure my friend has made it to his or her car okay. A few friends have remarked that at first it felt kinda weird but they like it now. Makes them feel I care about them being safe. Actually, I really do care about them being safe, lol.

[Joe Shlabotnik]

44. last man standing

Pure, shear, brute force of obstinace. It can be a great trait when a stalwart fighter is needed, but also a dubious trait when involving copious amount of intoxicating stuffs especially over minor details.

[Sherman A1]

45. Sounds good to me

I like mine with a bit of vanilla syrup and a bit of sweetener.

[mnhtnbb]

46. I've developed a technique for catching Daddy Long Legs (spiders) and moving them outside

Every other kind of spider I find in the house I squish asap.

I use a fly swatter to gently nudge DLL into a tall plastic food storage container,
cover the container with the flat smacker of the fly swatter and carry him
outside to release.

Gives me a grin knowing he has been successfully relocated.

[Boom Sound 416]

51. I catch those by the leg

[woodsprite]

55. My daughter, who is deathly afraid of other spiders, does the same thing. n/t

[cui bono]

91. Gives the spider a grin when he successfully relocates himself back in your house

and gets you to take him on that fun ride again!

[mnhtnbb]

92. LOL!

[cui bono]

95. =)

[Enthusiast]

49. I make some great coffee but

filleting bluegills remains my greatest insignificant talent.

[Boom Sound 416]

66. Grits and grunts for breakfast means

We filleted a bunch the night before.

Back in the day, I could do it seconds

[Enthusiast]

96. That sure sounds like a good breakfast.

Where we live it is very hard to locate a body of water that consistently has harvest worthy bluegills. There are very few grunts in Ohio.

[BainsBane]

50. I can mix paint to match colors perfectly

entirely by eye. I discovered the talent a few years ago when I was painting something and ran out of the paint I had mixed before I finished. I asked the person I was with, what do you think the chances are I can match this. Non-existent was his answer, because it's hard thing to match paint perfectly by eye. Companies do it with computer scans and precise formulas. I did it on the first try, and I've been able to do it reliably ever since.

Overall, I have a good eye for color.

[lovemydog]

59. That's impressive

to be able to do that time after time. I wonder what an eye doctor would say about why you're more accurate than most everyone else.

[NV Whino]

75. I have color memory

I can go into a store and match anything to anything no matter the length of time that has passed between buying the first object.

I can also match colors. I've had to repair a few paintings. I take a basic set of colors and can match what is already there. Same thing with matching stain on furniture. Mind you, none of this would pass a spectrometer test, but visually it looks like a match.

[BainsBane]

77. You have me beat

I can't remember the colors that precisely. I have to be looking at them at the time.

[riderinthestorm]

53. I have a great signature. My handwriting is goofy but my signature is perfection

Its elegant yet utterly illegible. No one will ever be able to forge it

[NJCher]

54. spell your name

I can spell anyone's name in any language.

I am a college teacher and my students are not just Americans, but from all over the world. In a class I'm teaching this summer, I have Ukrainian, Chinese, Filipino, Peruvian, Polish, etc.

It's a communication class and on the first day, I teach them how to remember each other's name. For fun, I don't even refer to my roster and I ask them to say their name and I put it on the board while we do the name-triggering exercise (associate name with face). It's a challenge to spell some of these names, especially the Czech and Polish ones, but I do get them and am able to spell them.

Don't know how I do this but I am a voracious reader and I did study foreign languages on my own as a kid.


Cher

[Boom Sound 416]

56. ...

[lovemydog]

60. I bet the students love it when you do that.

[NJCher]

82. they are amazed, relieved, and grateful

the immigrants and foreign students are used to teachers mangling their names, struggling over it when trying to read it on the roster.

A few have come up to me after class to tell me how embarrassing it is for them when the teacher can't get their name right. One student (Japanese) named "Mai" told me a teacher went on for five minutes about "who would name their kid 'my'?"



Cher

[3catwoman3]

103. What that teacher said sounds like something that idiot...

Representative Steve King would say.

[lovemydog]

57. The more I've thought on this, Boom Sound 416,

the more I've learned to appreciate your great skill.

[Boom Sound 416]

64. I can dig it

In a totally insignificant manner, of course.

[pink-o]

61. divide anything, any shape into precise pieces.

If you want to cut a round cake into 6 slices, after I'm done they'll all be exactly the same size. Square brownies too. If I'm at a restaurant and split portions with friends, they hand the plates to me cuz no one will get shafted.

I have some obsolete skills too: I could put the needle on a record at just the right point between songs--or even in the middle of a song and get it where I wanted it. I guess that's good for a DJ. Also, I have perfect pitch, which does no one no good anywhere in the digital world. It'd be great if it helped me sing on key; it only lets me know that I'm not!

[lovemydog]

62. It's tough to get equal slices with a pizza.

A buddy owns a pizza place and said there's always a few slices that are too small.

[Boom Sound 416]

68. I couldn't hold a note with both hands if I tried

But I can hear them, so I hear you

[MrScorpio]

63. Just about everything I do is insignificant

However, how well I do those things is something that's very subjective.

I have a huge blind spot with myself and I'm my own worst critic.

[lovemydog]

65. Oh man, I know that feeling.

I'm more critical toward myself than I am toward others. And I think (I hope!) than they are toward me.

[MrScorpio]

71. The only people who really know who us are ourselves

On the other hand, it's easier for me to deal with criticism from other people. I only regard the opinions of people who know me the best as important. And the people who really know me pretty much love me.

It's not as if I've never had any enemies in this world, it's just that I do my best to prevent them from getting to know anything about me that's important or truly personal.

I can always tell whenever I get criticsm from people who really don't know anything about me. Those people don't bother me at all, even if they go out of their way to insult me.

[LynneSin]

79. I know all the lyrics to "White Lines" by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

I find this to be an interesting skill for the random times I hear the song actually being played, which back in college was all the time.

I also know all the lyrics to 'You Can Call me Al' by Paul Simon.

[Boom Sound 416]

80. The wife and I realized

We still knew all the lyrics to the teenage mutant ninja turtles theme song much to the amazement of our son.

[LynneSin]

81. I hope you're not talking about that tragedy of a song done by Vanilla Ice

[Boom Sound 416]

83. Oh no!

The old cartoon.

But now I have to look that up though

[LynneSin]

84. It was in the 2nd movie - Ninja Rap

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles_II_The_Secret_of_the_Ooze:_The_Original_Motion_Picture_Soundtrack

[LanternWaste]

85. Perfectly fold fitted sheets and make the best pork chops in the universe.

I can perfectly fold fitted sheets, and i make the best thin-cut pork chops in the universe.

[Boom Sound 416]

86. Folding fitted sheets might

Make you more eligible to hold office than most of Congress.

[mnhtnbb]

94. Ok, you can't make that claim about the pork chops without posting your recipe.

[LanternWaste]

98. It's not really a recipe unless we count the spice mix rubbed in the night before.

It's not really a recipe (cook them six minutes per side on a skillet on medium-high) unless we count the spice mix rubbed in the night before.

Garlic salt, salt, pepper, crackedpepper, mustard seed, onion powder, cayenne pepper, such a small amount of curry it's hardly worth mentioning-- except it's there, and cumin.

It sounds spicier than it is... being without a microwave the past three years has turned me into an unwilling, though rather passable, cook.

[NightWatcher]

87. I can sleep like a Boss.

When I turn off the light switch on the wall, I am in bed and asleep before the room gets dark.

I could sleep in a folding chair on the side of a highway. I can find a way to sleep nearly anywhere.

It takes my wife several minutes to fall asleep. She's so jealous

[cui bono]

89. I'm the same way!

I've fallen asleep on an airplane before we taxied out onto the runway!

Anywhere, anytime. Within a minute. I just read recently that it's actually a sign of sleep deprivation though...

[cui bono]

90. I can lace up a pair of shoes perfectly.

No twists in the laces, each end exactly the same length.

And none of this lazy lace up one end all the way through and then the other one so that one end of the lace is always on top, no no no... that won't do. The laces must be done so that the same pattern of crossover is on the whole shoe. And, the lace coming from the outside of the shoe towards the inside of the shoe must be on top.

It doesn't matter whether you start with the lace on top and down through the hole or lace on bottom coming up through the hole, that's a matter of preference and is sometimes dependent on the shoe itself. It is to be determined on a case by case basis. I used to only like starting on the bottom coming up but now I'm a top down kinda gal. Especially when I started putting black laces on my Chuck Taylor sneaks.

[Boom Sound 416]

97. Bam!!!

Great post.

And totally insignificant!

[geardaddy]

93. I know all the lyrics to

the Bruce's Philosophers Song from Monty Python.

[Art_from_Ark]

123. You mean...

Iiiiiiiiiiiiimanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table
David Hume could out-consume Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel

There's nothing Nietsche couldn't teach ya 'bout the raising of the wrist
Socrates himself was permanently pissed

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will
After half a pint of shandy was particularly ill
And Plato, they say, could stick it away
Half a crate of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle
Hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart
"I drink, therefore I am"

Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed

[elleng]

101. Can't think of it!

Must be REALLY insignificant!

[panader0]

105. I can put my socks on standing up.

[Boom Sound 416]

106. How do you get the socks to stand

Or are you dangling your modifier

[hopemountain]

107. i can make myself laugh.

kinda scarey but my humor and self- amusement has led to some wonderfully good moments which i do not share with others.

[Boom Sound 416]

112. With you there.

I get made fun, but who cares. I like it.

[csziggy]

108. Looking up stuff - online, in books, where ever

I am really good at reference accessing. Even as a kid I was good at it. Mom & Dad would save questions for me to look up for them - in their own books and encyclopedia. I aced Reference Materials in Library Science School. I should have become a reference librarian, but I couldn't have dealt with the stupidity on a regular basis.

Even on the internet I am better looking up things than anyone else I know. I've been on the phone with my sister while we're both looking for information on the same thing. I'll find it straight out while she's still getting inappropriate results. Even when I tell her the web site to go to, she still has trouble finding the correct information. She's not the only one I've been through with this - it happens all the time - so it's not that my sister is incompetent.

My role model - Katherine Hepburn's character in "Desk Set" - I saw that movie once as a kid and thought she had the best job in the world.

[shenmue]

109. I can change the staples in a stapler

In seconds flat!

[Boom Sound 416]

114. I,

Could never freakin do that.

I still bungle them all up and that's only if I actually buy the right size for a change.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

110. I can raise my right eyebrow perfectly. All by itself.

How do ya like that???

[Boom Sound 416]

111. Nice

I can do the left.

[TeamPooka]

116. I can get the string that ties the sweatpants back through the hole when it gets pulled

halfway through the pants pants in the wash.
She tosses me her sweats when it happens and says "Do your thing."

[mythology]

117. I can do a round off on my bad side

Ask any gymnast, that is utterly insignificant because they never do anything on the bad side.

[Jamaal510]

119. Getting annoyed at words that people say all the time,

like "selfie" and "epic".

[pinboy3niner]

121. Those of us who do everything only passably well fermently object to this post!

How dare you?!!

[DFW]

126. I grill a mean Teriyaki Tuna Steak

Three or four times a year, I even get the time to do it.