This isn’t an original idea. I’m copying what I’ve seen done on several other blogs, which is an idea started by Day Zero. I’m doing this because I love making lists and then crossing things off the lists–so much that I’ll sometimes add things to my to do lists that I’ve already done, just so I can cross them off.

Anyway, about the list. Day Zero says:

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 stretching (ie. represent some amount of work on your part).

You’ll notice that my list largely consists of reading, eating, and spending money. I hate spending money and shopping and things I need/want to buy have added up. I need to get over it. On the other hand, I love reading and eating!

Start date: January 25, 2010
End date: October 22, 2012

Tina’s List of Things That Will Make Her Leave the Apartment/Put on Pants and/or Experience New Things

1. Read Moby Dick (have never read it!)

2.Double my savings account

3.Begin a CAREER by getting a more professional job with a nonprofit or other cool organization
Was offered a Volunteer Coordinator job on May 24! Went in for my first day on May 27.

4.Take a cooking class

5.Go to a wine tasting

6.Sign up for a library card (have used university libraries for years; can’t believe I don’t have a card)

7.Go to a massage therapist

8.Read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

9.Read The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

10. Learn new crochet techniques, crochet 5 new things

11. Re-read all the Kurt Vonnegut books that I own (Breakfast of Champions, Cat’s Cradle, Hocus Pocus, Mother Night, Player Piano, The Sirens of Titan, Slapstick, Slaughterhouse Five, Wampeters, Foma, & Granfalloons, Welcome to the Monkeyhouse)

12. Hang out with someone new

13. Donate blood at least 10 times
-First donation: January 28th, 2010
-Second donation: March 26, 2010
-Third donation: May 24, 2010
-Fourth donation: July 31, 2010

14. Take a meditation class

15. Visit my friend Crystal in LA (seeing an old friend AND visiting a new city ALL AT ONCE)

16. Try 50 recipes from my new, humongous cookbook
May 19, 2010: Tried recipe Savory Balkan Bean Salad (which is also online here
June 8, 2010: Tried Lemon Cornmeal Cookies
June 8, 2010: Tried Ranger Cookies These were a hit at work.

17. Get a passport or that special WA driver’s license to cross the Canadian border (have never been out of the country)

18. Go to Canada (I live so close!)

19. Take bowling lessons OR join a bowling league

20. Host a dinner/snack/board game party

21. Get those two pair of pants altered

22. Take a class, either a language, sociology, or art class

23. Mail out at least 100 cards and/or pieces of snail mail
3 packages mailed on 3/13/10
2 more packages mailed Easter weekend
Mailed both of my nephews birthday cards in June 2010
TOTAL=7

24. Re-read Catch-22

25. Make kimchee

26. Eat a sandwich from Paseo
Accomplished on 3/17/10. I split the cuban roast and the pollo salad with my sister. It was awesome.

27. Visit Jimi Hendrix’s grave

28. Order prints of the favorite pictures I’ve taken, frame them, and put them up

29. Watch Casablanca (never seen it)

30. Watch Citizen Kane (also never seen)

31. Buy a raincoat (yeah–two years in Seattle without one)

32. Go to Macy’s and let someone put makeup on me

33. Buy a new tv

34. Buy a Wii (!!!!)

35. Buy/borrow a few collections of short short fiction
-Books borrowed from Kirstenon February 3, 2010! I will complete this task after they’ve been thoroughly thumbed through.

36. Try writing a few short shorts. Have at least 5 solid drafts (setting the goal safely low).

37. Put clothes on the Waiting for the Interurban
Achieved on 3/15/10. I put a long beaded necklace on one of the people with my nephew.

38. Bake cookies or bread specifically to give to homeless people I encounter on the street
I’m not crossing this off, though I did specifically buy some fried chicken and dog food for a homeless lady with a dog the other day (Sept 2010)

39. Learn how to count to ten in Japanese

40. Watch Attack of the Killer Tomatoes

41. Try chickenless chicken nuggets
-Had some for dinner February 3, 2010. They were so-so. Will give them/another brand another go.

42. Buy a sewing machine (used, likely)

43. Buy toys for disadvantaged children for Christmas

44. Participate in a walk—an AIDS walk or March of Dimes, etc.

45. Learn the difference between “who” and “whom”
March 2010: Funnily enough, I read up on this and then also stumbled on a few blog entries about it over the course of a few days. “Who” is used when it’s referring to the subject of the sentence. “Whom” is used when it’s referring to the object. Now if I could just feel more confident in correctly identifying subjects and objects.

46. Go to another Sounders game

47. See a psychic

48. Eat a vegetarian diet for one month—just to say I tried it Had a Meatless May. Will not do this again.

49. Go to the Asian Art Museum (I have a pass, but I’ve only used it at the main museum)

50. Make homemade laundry detergent

51. Make homemade herbal tea

52. Bake a homemade pie–make the crust myself

53. Read the William Shatner book that Maurine gave me

54. Bake and elaborately decorate some cupcakes

55. Send homemade cookies to someone in the mail
Sent peanut butter cookies to 3 people on 3/13/10. None of them broke! More cookies to be mailed soon.

56. Eat at theFareStart restaurant

57. Host a couch surfer or meet one for coffee/drinks

58. Get my CPR certification

59. Take a grant writing class

60. Re-read The Grapes of Wrath

61. Subscribe or resubscribe to a literary journal

62. Clean out my sock drawer (Really, do I need those worn out heel-less socks? Why is this drawer so full?) Accomplished on Sunday, June 13, 2010

63. Learn to work with children better by participating in a volunteer activity with children

64. Re-read The Odyssey

65. Read that book of Fifty Great Essays that I’ve had since I took advanced composition in college.

66. Read that other book of great essays that I found on a bench.

67. Re-read that book I have about writing creative nonfiction.

68. Grow a sweet potato plant

69. Submit work to at least 5 credible literary journals
Work submitted to one journal, 4/12/2010

70. Get a new computer that doesn’t have to be restarted twice before it works
-New computer arrived 2/19/2010! The old one gave me a middle finger and crashed.

71. Get my student loan debt down to $15,000 (and I even went to grad school for free)

72. Begin and complete my mission to buy The Ugliest Christmas Sweater Ever

73. Make some homemade meatless meatballs
I made some homemade seitan on April 12, 2010, and I think that counts well enough.

74. Try to eat sushi again, and this time eat something more risky than a California roll
Done on 3/15/10 at Blue C Sushi. I’m not a big fan of fish.

75. Take my vitamins regularly, at least 951 days of the 1001 days (can’t skip it more than 50 days, so I’ll keep a tally of each day I forget)
oops 1. Forgot to take vitamin, 1-30-10
oops 2. Didn’t take vitamin on 2-1-10 because multivitamins make me nauseous if I don’t have food with them, and I was so hungover I couldn’t eat any food. Lame.
Um, to be perfectly honest, I’ve been taking my vitamins regularly but not keeping track of the couple days I’ve missed. I knew I shouldn’t have chosen things that would take a lot of tracking. I’m done with this one and will now replace it with this new goal:

Go play bingo somewhere.

76. Bring my lunch/dinner to work more often—on average, do not buy lunch at work more than once a week (that’s about 143 weeks, so I’ll tally anytime I buy lunch—should not exceed this number)
1. Bought a Raw Revolution (coconut agave) bar and a Sweet Leaf Raspberry tea for lunch, 1-30-10
2. Bought a cup of chili at work on 2-1-10 because I was hungover all morning and didn’t eat and the thought of preparing food before work made me want to barf. By the time I had a dinner break at work I was starving. Very lame.
Like the vitamin tracking, I suck at tracking this and give up. I’m replacing this goal with:

Go to a roller skating rink OR go to a roller derby game. Two different things, but whatever.

77. Fill up my dream journal notebook

78. Visit the Olympic Peninsula

79. Contribute my own piece of gum to the gum wall
Completed on 3/15/10! I put a piece of gum on the wall, and then it fell off onto the ground, but it counts still, right? There’s lots of gum on the ground too.

80. Go ice skating (have never done it!)

81. Visit Bruce Lee’s and Brandon Lee’s grave (in honor of my Poppy, who was obsessed with dead actors and often visited and took pictures of their graves)
Achieved on 3/14/10.

82. Visit Jim the Wonder Dog’s grave (this is in my hometown, so I’ll have to do it when I visit my parents)

83. Learn my neighbor’s first name (because she knows mine)
3/6/2010. I’m pretty sure her name is Laura, which is what I thought it was. I just thought I was wrong because she reminds me of another Laura that I knew before moving to Seattle. Anyway, I heard her Irish husband saying her name in the hallway, and there was a package for her waiting at the entrance. Her name is Laura. Unless that’s her 2 or 3 year old daughter’s name.

84. Bake some gluten free cookies. Just to try it out.

85. Take pictures in a photo booth
accomplished on 8/29/10 at the Seattle Art Museum for the Andy Warhol photo wall.

86. Have a picnic

87. Send flowers to someone

88. Learn all the bones in the human body (I know many of them, thanks to my 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Shull)

89. Visit Portland

90. Find a dentist (assuming that I eventually get health insurance)

91. Visit the Museum of Glass in Tacoma

92. Make pancakes with Batter Blaster and document the experience because it is such a ridiculous product that I need to adequately make fun of it

93. Spend a day making casseroles/meals that I can freeze for easy preparation later

94. Re-learn all the state capitals (Seriously, shouldn’t I easily know all these? I knew them in high school)

95. Finish reading The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks. As interesting as that book is, it’s been half-read on my nightstand for months.
Finished on May 22, 2010

96. Join meetup.com and attend an event.

97. Make a cake from scratch

98. Play some frisbee

99. Take Bryan to Gasworks Park

100. Re-watch The Muppets Take Manhattan and Follow That Bird—because why the hell not?

101. Go to a concert–and it has to be a band/artist that I am actually familiar with

—
So here it is. I guess I had better put on some pants and get started.

p.s. Do you want to do any of these things with me? Make a reservation!

I teach an English as a second language class once a week with a great non-profit. Last Wednesday was the first day back after a three week holiday vacation. When I entered the classroom, there was a middle aged woman that I had never seen before there. I heard her speaking with some of the students, so I assumed she was either a new volunteer or a staff member. When my co-instructor came into the classroom, the lady explained that she was sick and congested and needed some fresh air, so that’s why she was there, sitting in front of the window in front of a fan (you know, spraying her germs all over the place). Fine. No big deal.

Well, other than the fact that this lady jumped into the lesson a few times (with information not particularly relevant to the students’ needs in this class), she really was sick. She had a very wet cough and a distinct wheeze. And, at random intervals, when we were going about our lesson or having students present information, I’d hear these little snorts coming from the corner where the lady was sitting.

That’s when the inappropriate-laughter-response wanted to kick in. I could feel the wad of laughter welling up in my chest and throbbing in my throat where I kept it.

Then, as if it wasn’t inappropriate enough to want to laugh in the middle of class at this lady’s sickly snorting, I started thinking about the time I attended a wedding led by a minister with a broken voicebox:

This happened over five years ago. I went to a wedding as someone’s +1, so I didn’t even know the couple being married to begin with. It was a tiny rural church in a tiny rural Missouri town. The minister came out wearing a headset with a microphone. I had never seen that before, except maybe on tv clips about megachurches and evangelists. Then the minister started talking, and it was immediately obvious why he had to wear the headset. Something was wrong with his voice. He must have been injured or had cancer or something horrible and not funny, but I couldn’t help it. I immediately looked over at my date, who was obviously having the same reaction as me. I had to look down, concentrate on my hands, and keep the laughter in my throat.

It was painful to not just laugh–because not only did I have to keep quiet, I also had to keep from shaking. Midway through the ceremony, I had beads of sweat running down my face, my back, and even my shins. I thought I was going to pop a blood vessel in my face or have an aneurysm. And just when I thought it was about to be over, a whole new aspect of funny came along.

For some reason, someone thought it would be a good idea for this couple, newly married, to hold hands and stare longingly at each other while a terrible contemporary Christian song played. The minister with the broken voicebox sat to the side, pressed play on the tapeplayer, and engulfed the attendees with bad quality electric keyboard and generic, praise Jesus vocals.

That’s only part of the funny. The funniest part was that the minister still had his headset on, and while the music played, we could hear him licking his lips.

That, my friends, is funny.

By the way, I learned that the lady who sat in our classroom on Wednesday was not a volunteer or staff member, but a student in a computer literacy course. Of course, I thought she had another course and that’s why she chose to hang around the building–but no. When the class was almost over, she bundled up into her coat and hat and left.