101in1001

As I prepare for what I'm told will be a GREAT weekend, not just okay, but actually GREAT, no PRESSURE or ANYTHING, I am going to leave you all with a couple of updates, a few more related to the site itself than me.

Last year on my birthday, I made a list of 101 things I wanted to accomplish in the following 1,001 days.  A few of the things on that list involved other people, and some of those other people aren't in my life anymore.  Along with the home I was making, which consumed a pretty big chunk of the list.  And so, one year and one month into the list, I have replaced many items on it.  The list is here.  Items 1 - 13 are new.  Numbers 14 and 15 are major modifications of previous list items.  And yes, there are now 2 items that are private.  I may confess to what they are when I've completed them.  But I haven't decided yet.

I removed my links page because it hasn't been updated since I switched from using Bloglines to using Google Reader for my RSS feeds and I think half of the sites don't even exist anymore.  Working on a new version.  I don't think any of you will miss the traffic, it's not like my blogroll was resulting in as many hits as, oh, say . . . the link to Marc's dating site profile.

Put up a bio again.  I have a love-hate relationship with bio pages.  I never update it.  But the person telling me I need one has gotten louder and more influential lately, so there you have it. 

Happy Friday, be it Good or GREAT.  Have a great weekend everyone.

Some big news on the 101 in 1001 front.  I've been quietly updating the list without re-publishing anything to RSS or the front page, but I felt like the last batch of accomplishments was worth a mention.

1.)  My hair.  For the last few weeks, I've suspected my hair had reached tailbone length, but have you ever tried to mess around with your own hair without tilting your head?  So I feared that I was sticking my chin up to make my hair longer to falsely reach the goal, and last night, I brought in an independent consultant, a man who knows everything there is to know about having too much hair, and I told him he had to be the judge.

But Dano agrees with me.  So.  My hair has now reached my personal goal length and I'm free to cut it all off whenever I feel like it.  Don't worry, I'll take lots of pictures before I do it.  If I ever work up the nerve.  Believe me, there are days when I'd jump out of that airplane a hundred more times before I would take more than half an inch off of my hair. 

2.)  Hooters.  Because this weekend is the one year anniversary of the day I visited 9 Hooters locations in 1 day, as part of visiting 25 different Hooters locations in 8 months, I've been thinking about Hooters.  Next Friday, the 11th, will be the 6 month mark and I will be able to say that I didn't set foot in a Hooters for half of a year.  So that item is very close to being completed.  I still don't feel a burning desire to go back, I haven't quite recovered from the nightmares and the wing sauce sweats, but I'm getting there.  And I have a horrendous craving for fried pickles.  But it was all worth it for the stick-figure party.  (If you've never read anything in my archives, that post right there is the one to pick.  Click it.)

3.)  Hot Air Balloon Skydiving.  I know it seems disingenuous to edit the list so that I can complete items, but some of them just make sense.  If I'm confronting a slight fear of heights via a balloon, then I think I am justified to say that I accomplished the task in a much better way, via actually jumping out of the airplane.  There may be other modifications like this.  We'll see how it goes.  Some of my list items just honestly don't even make sense anymore to me, even just 6 months into it.  For example - seeing 10 movies in a theater.  When I wrote that, I had gone to MAYBE 2 movies in the theater in the last 3 years.  And then Stinky Ferret Boy came back into my life, and Dano went from being invisible to being visible, and look at me.  I'm always in a movie theater now.  So I'll accomplish that one easily, but it feels like less of an accomplishment now.  Conversely, skydiving feels like way more of an accomplishment than riding around in a hot air balloon.

My tattoo may be coming sooner rather than later, and it may not be the tattoo that I originally intended to be #1.  For a couple of years, I've had a design/inspiration in mind for a #1 and a #2 tattoo, and now I have a #3.  But I might make the third the first.  We'll see.

I have a couple of items that I could easily easily complete on any given day but I'm holding off on them because people in my life have requested to be involved, and I love that.  I really fucking love that.  You just have no idea.  So while I could finish the list a lot faster, I am you are going to make it a lot more meaningful to me in the end.

I just updated the 101 in 1,001 list and I'm feeling pretty good about it.

I have changed "Take swimming lessons" to an in-progress item, because I advanced quite a bit in the hotel pool in Bismarck, and I'm actually excited about taking real swimming lessons based on how much I learned from Duke and my mom and brother over the weekend.

The "Diner's, Drive-Ins, and Dives" item is half-complete after our stop at Donatelli's in White Bear Lake, MN on the way home from North Dakota.

Here's Dad, out front:

And Duke, with a cheese issue:

I've completed one item.  I learned to play Euchre with Duke on Saturday.  I'm not good at it.  But I learned.  And that's all I promised him.

I don't remember where I first saw this idea, there are a million different bloggers doing it.  I know that the last person whose 101 list I read was Your Wishcake, so ultimately, I consider her my inspiration.

I didn't intend to start it on my birthday when I first started making my list, but as my list grew slowly and my birthday approached, I decided it was as good of a day as any. 

So, I present the list of 101 things I will accomplish in the next 1001 days.  My 101 in 1001.

This logo now appears over yonder -----> somewhere and I will be updating the list as I complete them.  I will not be displaying it on the front page, so only RSS readers will know when I've changed something. 

Now, go on and read it.  I have to go now.  I have a lot of stuff to do.

Start Date: 3/6/09

Completion Date: 12/2/2011

Not Started / In Progress / Completed

1. Take a trapeze lesson

2. Learn how to ride a motorcycle

3. Design a Wordpress theme from scratch

4. Have an offline conversation with Rosanne Cash

5. Ride a horse

6.  Drive a zamboni

7. Complete at least 3 AFF jumps (post-4/2/10)

8. Five new race tracks (post-4/2/10, not counting Anderson in list item #85, nor New Jersey Motorsports Park, rainouts count as long as I’m physically at the track when it’s called)

9. D.C.

10. Atlanta

11. East Jesus Nowhere, Nebraska

12. This is private list item, the sequel.

13.  Bring back the long hair.  BSL minimum.

14.  Take guitar lessons

15. Run a 5K barefoot/VFF-style

16. Take another creative writing class or attend a workshop

17. Take a photography class

18. Take a PhotoShop class

19. Buy 2 new lenses for my camera  (50mm, February 2010)

20. Learn how to sew

21. Go to BlogHer (2009, Chicago)

22. Attempt to knit, once, just to say I did

23. Complete NaNoWriMo

24. Read 25 books: 1.) Ghost Rider, 2.) In Defense of Food, 3.) On the Road, 4.) Traveling Music, 5.) The Book Thief, 6.) Born to Run

25. Get a new pet turtle

26. Reupholster my grandfather's rocking chair

27. Make 2 more Minica movies

28. Try 100 new recipes

29. Bake bread from scratch

30. Learn how to roll sushi

31. Figure out/learn great-grandma's kuchen recipe

32.  Post something to blog daily for 90 days

33. Buy the equipment and get back into thermal biofeedback

34. Complete a Flickr 365 project of some sort, even if it's not self-portraits

35. Lose 40 lbs

36. Complete the P90X program

37. Go 30 days without eating meat

38. Go 15 days without consuming HFCS

39. Attempt to ski, snowboard, or wakeboard once

40. Take swimming lessons

41. Roller skate Baumann Park

42.  Get a manicure

43. Get a pedicure

44. Add $5,000 to my emergency savings account

45. Make a car payment to myself every month for one year

46. Take a vacation by myself

47. Visit 1 state I've never been to before (New Jersey, October 2009)

48. Leave the country

49. Put my feet in an ocean (in Atlantic City, October 2009)

50. Return to North Dakota for no reason (no funeral, wedding, or other event) and with no plan and giving no notice

51. Ride in a hot air balloon – Modified to Skydiving, completed 9/1/09

52. Go to the Chili Bowl one more time, even if it kills me (DONE.  ALIVE.  2010.)

53. Go to the Knoxville Nationals one more time

54. Tour the Farnsworth House

55. Spend a night in a skyscraper

56. Visit Marc at school (January 2010)

57. Visit a national landmark I've never seen before

58. Play a game of tennis with my mother

59. Go to at least 2 "Diners, Drive-Ins, & Dives" restaurants with my Dad - (1) 3/22/09, Donatelli's in White Bear Lake, MN, (2) Glenn's Diner in Chicago.

60. Write a song with Wags

61. Sing a karaoke duet with Pipes

62.  Volunteer at a no-kill shelter or dog rescue group

63. Volunteer for a political campaign

64. Join a community organization

65. Raise $1,000 for Little Angels: 2009 total: $1,010.

66. Spend one day on ride-along with a service technician

67. Spend one day in the field with an installer

68. Practice Inbox Zero for 30 days straight, both email and paper variety

69. Figure out how to program my "new" phone that is almost 3 years old

70. This one is private.

71. Make 5 new friends that I didn't know at all on the start date

72. Go an entire weekend (Friday, 4:30 pm to Monday, 7 am) without checking my email, cell phone text messages, signing into IM, Twitter, Facebook, or any other social network that may or may not be invented yet

73. Grow my hair to my tailbone – Completed 9/4/09 and verified by independent witness Dano

74. Learn how to put my hair into 3 different up-dos by myself

75. Get a tattoo

76.Change a tire 100% by myself

77. Install my new car horn (5/28/09)

78. Clean out my car once a week for a month

79. Go at least 6 months without eating at a Hooters: Last visit March 11th, 2009

80. Learn to play poker or any other card game of Duke's choosing - Euchre, 3/21/2009

81. Host a Sequence tournament

82. Buy chaps

83. Ride in a combine again

84. Spend one more night scraping mud from a sprint car or midget

85. Go to a race track I've never been to before (May 24th, 2009, Anderson Speedway)

86. See 10 movies in the theater: 1.) Taken, 2.) The Soloist, 3.) Terminator: Salvation, 4.) Away We Go, 5.) Up!, 6.) Bruno, 7.) Funny People, 8.) District 9, 9.) 500 Days of Summer

87. Make every effort to track down my old friend Bill from the old AOL sprint car message board

88. Write snail-mail letters to 10 different people, out of the blue. 1.) 6/16/09

89. Send holiday cards, but the holiday doesn't have to be Christmas

90. Replace my entire wardrobe

91. Buy a hat that has nothing to do with keeping warm or keeping the sun out of my eyes

92. - 101. Go to at least one event of each: MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLS, NHRA (Joliet, June 2009), NASCAR, IRL (Milwaukee, May 2009), WoO (Eldora, May 2009), PBR (January 2010)