The Final List

1. Learn to make my own pasta.
2. Learn to make good bread.
3. Lose 80 pounds.
4. Do yoga 3 times a week for 12 weeks 2 times. {{{0/3}~{0/12}}~{0/2}}
5. Run a 5k by the end of summer 2010.
6. Eat breakfast together at the table 3 times a week at least 15 times. {{0/3}~{0/15}}
7. Eat dinner together at the table 3 times a week at least 15 times. {{3/3}~{1/15}}
8. Take a multi-vitamin daily for 30 days 7 times. {{0/30} ~ {0/7}}
9. Give up processed sweets {homemade sweets okay} for 30 days 5 times.{{0/30}~{0/5}}
10. Eat at least 7 servings of vegetables a day for 30 days 5 times.{{0/30}~{0/5}}
11. Make my own font.
12. Make 50 Morsbags.
13. Plan a gala for A.H.
14. Get the basement cleaned out.
15. Get a new job.
16. Write a book {word count: {0/100,000}}.
17. Get an academic legal article ready for submission.
18. Get a nonprofit article ready for submission.
19. Learn to make a good pot roast.
20. Make Martha’s Thanksgiving Turkey {fresh} without fire, smoke, or flame.
21. Switch to earth friendly household cleaners.
22. Walk dogs every day for 90 days 3 times. {{0/90}~{0/3}}
23. Do 2 special events with Kathryn a month – 10 months.
24. Learn to ride a horse.
25. Have vegetarian day 15 times.
26. Go to a fun concert.
27. Take Mom out for a mani-pedi.
28. Get all student loans consolidated.
29. Get the complete Prince cd/iTunes collection.
30. Take Mom out for Chinese 1 time a month. {0/33}
31. Learn how to make really good shortbread cookies.
32. Plan a Walk for Hunger/Homelessness for A.H.
33. Teach Zeus or Delilah 2 new tricks. {0/2}
34. Go to church every other week for 1 year {0/26}.
35. Clean out car every week for one year {0/26}.
36. Write to the Grandmas 30 times.
37. Get the ECHS cookbook done!
38. Start, monitor and stick to a budget for 3 months.
39. Host a board game night.
40. Get a henna tattoo.
    
41. Host a Christmas party.
42. Cook fifteen different meals for my family & friends. {6/15}
    See number 68.  This one is redundant and might get changed.
    
43. For two weeks, eat no take out or fast food. {10/14}
44. Take a picture a day for 1,001 days & post them on the blog! {2/1,001}
    Amended to Take a picture a day for 365 days & post pictures to the blog. {6/365}
    
45. Take a cooking class.
46. Make a good pizza from scratch.
47. Send at least 20 postcrossing postcards.
48. Take a family portrait once a week for a year. {0/52}
49. Improve my credit score by 100 points.
50. Donate of all the clothes I don’t actually wear.
51. Donate 1,000,000 grains of rice. {610/1,000,000}
52. Get passports for myself, Mom & Kate.
53. Use said passports.
54. Get up by 6:30 a.m. every morning for 30 days {0/30}, get up by 6:00 a.m. for 30 days {0/30}
55. Find 50 geocaches. {0/50}
56. Replace all the carpet in the house with sealed flooring.
57. Donate $5 to Advent House & the Eaton County Humane Society for each item on this list that I do not complete.
58. Make a Blanket of Hope.
59. Make Christmas cookies for all of my friends and family.
60. Have good family portraits taken with Mom, Dan, Kathryn, Katie, Talus, Zeus, and Delilah.
61. Take a belly dancing class.
62. Get one other person to participate in 101 things in 1001 days.
63. Get a fancy SLR camera.
64. Pay off one of my credit cards.
65. Do a photo scavenger hunt with a friend 6 times {0/6}.
66. Visit 3 US cities I've never been to before {0/3}.
67. Complete the 100 Strangers Project.
68. Make 25 new recipes. {0/25}
1. Cheesy Penne
2. Chili
3. Broccoli Cheese Soup
4. Mac & Cheese
5. Chicken Kiev 
6. Belgium Waffles
   
69. Track my weight 3 times a week. {0/3}~{0/143}
70. Decorate the house for Christmas.
71. Decorate the house for Halloween.
72. Document each goal as it is achieved with photographs.
73. Get rid of 101 things that I don’t actually need {0/101}.
74. Clean all dishes before going to bed every night for a week 52 times. {0/7}/{0/52}
75. Grow something we can eat {and then eat it}.
76. Help Kathryn host 12 sleepovers. {0/12}.
77. Learn how to can something.
78. Take Kathryn to a large museum.
79. Finish a 30 minute screenplay for Kathryn.
80. Film and edit the 30 minute screenplay.
81. Finish a feature length screenplay for Kathryn.
82. Film and edit the feature length movie for Kathryn.
83. Make my linkedin.com account complete.
84. Learn and use 75 new words.{0/75}
85. Create and use a composting bin.
86. Do not use the elevator for distances of less than 5 stories for 30 consecutive days 9 times. {0/30}~{0/9}.
87. Wreck a journal with Kathryn.
88. Make a good homemade pumpkin pie from scratch (from fresh pumpkin).
89. Help Kathryn finish her screenplay.
90. Blog every day.{0/1,001}
91. Exercise every day for 30 days for 15 months. {0/30}~{0/15}
92. Identify 100 things that make me happy, then do/see/experience all of them. {0/100}
93. Print and frame 25 photographs. {0/25}
94. Make a pretty party dress.
95. Wear the pretty party dress somewhere nice.
96. Make a fundraising plan for ECHS to increase revenue by 10 - 20%.
97. Drink 96 ounces of water a day for 30 days 12 times. {0/30}~{0/12}
    
98. Take a golf lesson with Mom and Kathryn.
    
99. Be able to do a real push-up.
    
100. I will participate in the Daring Baker eight months for every twelve months of the 101 goals, not missing two consecutive months. {0/12}~{0/12}~{0/12}
     
101. Make another 101 in 1001 list and do it all over again.

The Daring Kitchen

I signed up to be a daring baker with the daring kitchen.  I am excited.  I am bummed that I can't start until October 1. That is goal 100.  I will participate in eight months for every twelve months and not miss two consecutive months. I am adding The Daring Kitchen badge to my site even though I can't start until October 1.

2 days to go!

My project starts in 2 days and I still need to come up with goal number 100.  I am thinking about going with Joining The Daring Kitchen and completely at least have the challenges.  But I need to review the last year of challenges to make sure I am likely have the necessary equipment.

Possible dresses

I want to make a rockabilly or swing style dress.  (See #95. Make a pretty dress.)  I am having a hard time finding swing style dresses that I like.  Here is a modern example of a pattern I like. It doesn't really fit either of the two styles but it has a light-ness to it that I like.

Vogue Pattern V8470

I really like this dress:
Cherry Sun Dress

I don't think I'd do it in the cherry pattern.

This black & white dress is pretty as well.

101 Goals . . .

So I am redoing my list, making it really focused on me, what I value, what I care about.  The old list was supposed to be a joint project.  Then we broke up.  {He is trying to take care of the issues which drove us apart and I am letting him.  I am also working on my issues. So maybe it will work out, maybe it won't.} Kathryn read through most of what I have so far on the list yesterday.  She is excited.  Here is what I have so far for a draft list & the rules.  I am planning on starting October 1.

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific {ie. no ambiguity in the wording} with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and require stretching {i.e. represent some amount of work on my part}.

1. Learn to make my own pasta.
2. Learn to make good bread.
3. Lose 80 pounds.
4. Do yoga 3 times a week for 12 weeks 2 times. {{{0/3}~{0/12}}~{0/2}}
5. Run a 5k by the end of summer 2010.
6. Eat breakfast together at the table 3 times a week at least 15 times. {{0/3}~{0/15}}
7. Eat dinner together at the table 3 times a week at least 15 times. {{0/3}~{0/15}}
8. Take a multi-vitamin daily for 30 days 7 times. {{0/30} ~ {0/7}}
9. Give up processed sweets {homemade sweets okay} for 30 days 5 times.{{0/30}~{0/5}}
10. Eat at least 7 servings of vegetables a day for 30 days 5 times.{{0/30}~{0/5}}
11. Make my own font.
12. Make 50 Morsbags.
13. Plan a gala for A.H.
14. Get the basement cleaned out.
15. Get a new job.
16. Write a book {word count: {0/100,000}}.
17. Get an academic legal article ready for submission.
18. Get a nonprofit article ready for submission.
19. Learn to make a good pot roast.
20. Make Martha’s Thanksgiving Turkey {fresh} without fire, smoke, or flame.
21. Switch to earth friendly household cleaners.
22. Walk dogs every day for 90 days 3 times. {{0/90}~{0/3}}
23. Do 2 special events with Kathryn a month – 10 months.
24. Learn to ride a horse.
25. Have vegetarian day 15 times.
26. Go to a fun concert.
27. Take Mom out for a mani-pedi.
28. Get all student loans consolidated.
29. Get the complete Prince cd/iTunes collection.
30. Take Mom out for Chinese 1 time a month. {0/33}
31. Learn how to make really good shortbread cookies.
32. Plan a Walk for Hunger/Homelessness for A.H.
33. Teach Zeus or Delilah 2 new tricks. {0/2}
34. Go to church every other week for 1 year {0/26}.
35. Clean out car every week for one year {0/26}.
36. Write to the Grandmas 30 times.
37. Get the ECHS cookbook done!
38. Start, monitor and stick to a budget for 3 months.
39. Host a board game night.
40. Get a henna tattoo.
    
41. Host a Christmas party.
42. Cook fifteen different meals for my family & friends. {0/15}
43. For two weeks, eat no take out or fast food. {0/14}
44. Take a picture a day for 1,001 days & post them on the blog! {0/1,001}
45. Take a cooking class.
46. Make a good pizza from scratch.
47. Send at least 20 postcrossing postcards.
48. Take a family portrait once a week for a year. {0/52}
49. Improve my credit score by 100 points.
50. Donate of all the clothes I don’t actually wear.
51. Donate 1,000,000 grains of rice. {0/1,000,000}
52. Get passports for myself, Mom & Kate.
53. Use said passports.
54. Get up by 6:30 a.m. every morning for 30 days {0/30}, get up by 6:00 a.m. for 30 days {0/30}
55. Find 50 geocaches. {0/50}
56. Replace all the carpet in the house with sealed flooring.
57. Donate $5 to Advent House & the Eaton County Humane Society for each item on this list that I do not complete.
58. Make a Blanket of Hope.
59. Make Christmas cookies for all of my friends and family.
60. Have good family portraits taken with Mom, Dan, Kathryn, Katie, Talus, Zeus, and Delilah.
61. Take a belly dancing class.
62. Get one other person to participate in 101 things in 1001 days.
63. Get a fancy SLR camera.
64. Pay off one of my credit cards.
65. Do a photo scavenger hunt with a friend 6 times {0/6}.
66. Visit 3 US cities I've never been to before {0/3}.
67. Complete the 100 Strangers Project.
68. Make 25 new recipes. {0/25}
69. Track my weight 3 times a week. {0/3}~{0/143}
70. Decorate the house for Christmas.
71. Decorate the house for Halloween.
72. Document each goal as it is achieved with photographs.
73. Get rid of 101 things that I don’t actually need {0/101}.
74. Clean all dishes before going to bed every night for a week 52 times. {0/7}/{0/52}
75. Grow something we can eat {and then eat it}.
76. Help Kathryn host 12 sleepovers. {0/12}.
77. Learn how to can something.
78. Take Kathryn to a large museum.
79. Finish a 30 minute screenplay for Kathryn.
80. Film and edit the 30 minute screenplay.
81. Finish a feature length screenplay for Kathryn.
82. Film and edit the feature length movie for Kathryn.
83. Make my linkedin.com account complete.
84. Learn and use 75 new words.{0/75}
85. Create and use a composting bin.
86. Do not use the elevator for distances of less than 5 stories for 30 consecutive days 9 times. {0/30}~{0/9}.
87. Wreck a journal with Kathryn.
88. Make a good homemade pumpkin pie from scratch (from fresh pumpkin).
89. Help Kathryn finish her screenplay.
90. Blog every day.{0/1,001}
91. Exercise every day for 30 days for 15 months. {0/30}~{0/15}
92. Identify 100 things that make me happy, then do/see/experience all of them. {0/100}
93. Print and frame 25 photographs. {0/25}
94. Make a pretty party dress.
95. Wear the pretty party dress somewhere nice.
96. Make a fundraising plan for ECHS to increase revenue by 10 - 20%.
97. Drink 96 ounces of water a day for 30 days 12 times. {0/30}~{0/12}
    
98. Take a golf lesson with Mom and Kathryn.
    
99. Be able to do a real push-up.
    
100. I will participate in eight months for every twelve months of the 101 goals, not missing two consecutive months. {0/12}~{0/12}~{0/12}
     
101. Make another 101 in 1001 list and do it all over again.

What a streak!

So today will day 13.  How great is that?  I am down 2 pounds. You might be thinking 13 days of exercise and she is only down 2 pounds?  But remember, except one day, I haven't changed my eating.  I haven't even been doing a good job at drinking all my water.  Also, all of this exercise hasn't been all that much work.  For example, yesterday, I walked 2 miles.  We walked to the ATM and the video store and home.  Not that hard. Thursday, I walked 2.5 miles with the dogs and did not maintain the best of paces.  Wednesday night, I went to my yoga class.  That was a lot of work.  That hurt, in a good way.

Today, Kathryn and I will be walking back to the video store to return to of the movies.  So I'll be getting in another 2 miles.  We need to get some things accomplished around the house and it is already 12:40 p.m.  It is not looking hopeful for another exercise session to be done today.  But I might do my Walk at Home dvd - which is a great workout!

8 Days!

Wow, I can't believe I've made it 8 days!  Last night was night 8!  Last night was a stretching night.  I'm so glad I decided to use that time to just focus on stretching out my muscles. Today I feel so much better!  I didn't weigh myself this morning.  I am planning to tonight.  My other new goal is to drink 96 ounces of water a day.  So far today, I am half-way through today & half-way through today's water. Off to a good start!

7 days!

Today was day 7 of my exercise run!  Tonight I walked all three dogs a total of 4 miles at a rate of 17 minutes per mile.  Eventually, my goal is 10 minutes a mile for 3 miles.  But that is some time off in the future.  I can't believe I have a 7 day run going!  Tomorrow, I am going to have to get up early. 

This morning/early afternoon in worship, in addition to all of the wonderful testimony given today, I thought for quite some time about the word namaste.  My yoga teacher had explained it as "the divine in me bows to the divine in you."  As I was thinking about it, I decided that it made more sense that I bow to the divine in you and the divine in me.  Then getting ready to write about namaste, I had to look up the spelling (I wasn't even close).  Wikipedia tells me that it means:

• "I bow to that inherent in you" (That refers to divinity, or "that which is divine".)
• "I respect divinity within you that is also within me."
• "The light within me honors the light within you."

I think we could all spend a little more time bowing to the divine that is in each of us. Imagine how our political discourse would change if we all respected and honored our divine creator and that we are each divine creations.  No, I don't mean that we are each gods.  I mean that we are each and every one of us fashioned in the image of the creator.  That is a wondrous thing.   We are each of us uniquely formed.  Imagine the impact on our health care debate.  Imagine a world without an angry, vitriolic Glenn Beck.  Imagine. Okay, end cheese.  Back to the real world. :)



It is late, it is time for me to check in on my little empire in Realm of Empires, my current facebook addiction.  Then I need to head to bed, all this exercising is tiring.  Hopefully, tomorrow I'll have time to tell you about the Potato, Tomato, Spinach Soup I made for potluck after first day meeting.  I have some pictures.  It didn't turn out as planned and required 3, 3!, separate trips to the grocery store.

4 Days!

I am on a roll!  I have 4 consecutive days of exercise in.  Tonight will make 5! Last night, I did the Walk at Home  "FAST & FIRM! 4 really 'BIG' Miles!"  Today, my legs are a bit sore.  I wasn't as focused as I could have been because I was also watching the latest episode of Warehouse on hulu.com at the same time. 

I made it!

Woo hooo! No candy or cookies yesterday. I did have a glass of chocolate milk with dinner (made with Quik) and a granola bar for dessert.  So I am going to do it again today.  No candy, no cookies -- there are peanut butter oreos upstairs.  They were there yesterday too and I resisted them!

Candy & Cookies

Today I am not eating any candy or cookies.  I am on a three day exercise streak as well.  So I am going to be keeping track of each streak (1) giving up processed sweets and (2) daily exercise.

update: 12:15 p.m.
Lunch is late. It didn't get ordered.  I am hungry.  Still staying strong. I am eating my grapes instead.

update 1:29 p.m.
Lunch had carrots in it, so I had my favorite. Jimmy Johns.  #4, with cheese cut in half, ez lettuce, no sprouts, no toms.  {In case you were wondering.}

Starting over

Well folks, I'm single again.  It is okay, it has been coming a while now.  I am redoing the list so that it is just me.  I hope to have it done in the next couple of days and then I will set my new deadline.  I will let you know when I am ready!

Team of Rivals

I finished Team of Rivals quite some time ago. Life has been getting in the way of blogging lately, as has work. While listening to Team of Rivals, my friend CK pointed me to Ta-Nehisi Coates over at The Atlantic. Ta-Nehisi writes some great stuff on race, the civil war, politics, etc.

My interest in the American Civil War was prompted by listening to NPR and thinking about the civil war strife that is taking place in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although there is the element of religious strife not as strongly present in our Civil War, I am mystified by these neighbors whose children played together, who shopped at the same market, sometimes worked together, and then one day they want to kill each other. Families torn apart, brothers, fathers, sons, joining up with the "other side." Every time, I would think to myself, why to "these people" do this? There would be this voice in the back of my head whispering, "we did it too." But really, all I knew was that yes, Sherman did destroy the south as he marched through and it did seem to me that reconciliation did take quite some time.

What I learned about Civil War, the lead up to it, and the conclusion of the war, was that we are not that different. The North was quite willing to die for the restoration of the Union. In time, some in the North were willing to die to end slavery. The South was quite willing to die to continue to enslave other human beings. It is my understanding that the number of southerners who actually owned slaves was low. This means that the number of southerners who didn't own slaves but were willing to die to continue to hold slaves was really quite astonishing to me.

The problem with listening to a book on cd in the car is that I can't flag the parts that shock me, make me sad, or interest me. There were so many interesting events and statements in this book. It is even more difficult to recall them all so long after I heard them.

In the end, I still don't understand how people can turn on the people in their lives so quickly and violently. But I do understand that we aren't that special, we did it too.