“Go everywhere,” he said at last, in a low, kind voice; “do everything; get everything out of life.  Be happy – be triumphant.”
– Osmond, in The Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James

The Mission: Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

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

not started/in progress/completed

Start date: August 1, 2009

End date: April 28, 2012

Creative

1. Find a way to sing again – in public

2. Work my way through one quarter of  “No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog” (0/25)

3. Start keeping a personal journal again (without the pressure of feeling like I need to “recap” everything that’s happened since I last kept one, which is the reason I haven’t started doing it before now) (I started again on 8/15/09 and have written twice; I haven’t decided how long I have to keep it up before I mark this one as completed.)

4. Make 5 more journals and give them away (0/5)

5. Draw something suitable for framing

6. Blow up and frame a photo I took (I’m calling this in progress since I bought the frame last weekend  (9/26/09) – now I’m just trying to decide on the right picture)

7. Blog at least three times a week for 3 months (0/12) (0/3)

Travel

8. Go to 5 states I’ve never been to (0/5)

9. Take a train somewhere far away enough that I have to book a sleeper car

10. Visit a national landmark I’ve never seen before

11. Visit a tourist trap I’ve never seen before (like the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, or something)

12. Spend a weekend in Amish country at a Bed & Breakfast

13. Visit my friend who lives in LA

14. Spend a night at the Wigwam Village Motel in Holbrook, Arizona

15. Ice skate at Rockefeller Center

16. Finally Yelp! Fat Matt’s Rib Shack from our trip to Atlanta (short version: go there) (done 8/3/09)

17. Go back to the Excellent Dumpling House in Chinatown in New York (where they really do serve excellent dumplings)

18. Go to Coney Island (when it’s open this time)

Tourism at Home

19. Take a Duck Boat tour of D.C.

20. Visit the September 11 Pentagon Memorial

21. Take a tour of Old Town with one of the colonial guides

22. Take a Segway tour of D.C. with my mom

23. Go see the dolphin show at the Baltimore Aquarium

24. Go to the National Zoo

25. Go to 5 new museums in D.C. (0/5)

26. Go to Arlington Cemetery

Home

27. Finally finish unpacking the books (done 9/18/09)

28. Try 2 new recipes a month for 6 months (4/12) (for August – Oven-Fried Pork Chops and Glazed Sesame Pork, both from Cooking Light) (for November – Cinnamon Buns from Pioneer Woman (see #32 below) and Beef Burgundy from Cooks.com)

29. Put loose recipes into binder (done 8/11/09)

30. Go through boxes of high school and college memorabilia and toss everything that no longer holds meaning (done 9/20/09 – it’s amazing the crap I hold onto)

31. Host a dinner party

32. Bake something that requires yeast (which scares me) (done 11/3/09:

Cinnamon Buns from Pioneer Woman’s recipe!)

33. Enter a baked good in a contest

34. Hang curtains in bedroom (done 11/14/09, finally)

35. Bake a cheesecake from scratch

36. Cook meals for lunches at work two weekends a month for 3 months (0/3)

37. Find out what, exactly, chipotle en adobo is, get some, and then make something with it

38. Find dulce de leche and re-attempt Death by Caramel Bars

39. Grow mint so I can learn to make my own mojitos

40. Get caught up on putting photos in albums and printing photos from my camera

41. Buy a scanner (done 10/16/09 and finally all set up today, 10/25/09 – see #70!)

42. Upload old photos (this is in progress as of 10/25/09, but I’m not sure when I’ll consider it completed)

43. Go through photo files and name all photos

44. Buy an apron, maybe from Etsy

45. Find a recipe for beef burgundy and try it out; see if it compares to this (done 11/7/09, and it was pretty good – not like that one, but very close to one I had in a French restaurant about a month ago; the link to the recipe is in #28 above)

Health & Fitness

46. Lose 40 pounds, 5 pounds at a time (-9/40)

47. Journal food intake (i.e., get back on track with Weight Watchers) for 30 days (finished 10/8/09)

48. Run another 5k

49. Take a kickboxing class

50. Take a dance class

51. Get off my medication

52. Floss every day for 30 days (0/30)

53. Take Pico to the vet three times (more as medically necessary) (1/3) (went 11/12/09; turns out he needs follow up for some abnormal blood work in 3-6 months)

54. Take my vitamins every day for 30 days (finished 8/30/09 – and still going strong, save one night on vacation)

55. Work out 5 days a week for one month (0/20)

56. Finally upgrade my processor or get my back-up processor fixed

Financial

57. Establish a savings account and deposit money from every paycheck

58. Create and implement plan to pay off credit card 1 (if all goes according to plan, I will be credit card debt-free by July 2010)

59. Create and implement plan to pay off credit card 2 (if all goes according to plan, I will be credit card debt-free by July 2010)

60. Create and implement plan to pay off car

61. Figure out whether and how to roll over old 401(k)

Recreation

62. Attend an NFL game

63. Go ice roller skating (I changed this one because David pointed out I already have “ice skate at Rockefeller Center” on the list)

64. See games at 3 Major League ballparks I’ve never been to (Done! Astros-Cubs at Wrigley Field on 8/31/09; Indians-Tigers at Comerica Park on 9/1/09; Yankees-Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre on 9/3/09)

65. Go horseback riding

66. Fly a kite

67. Go to the drive-in

68. Join a bowling league

69. Go to a monster truck show

70. Drag David into a photo booth get a photo strip of pictures of us (done at the Henry Ford on 8/30/09:

And I did, in fact, have to drag him, but he was a good sport.)

71. Bowl a perfect game on Wii Bowling (my best game so far is 212)

Enrichment

72. Read Anna Karenina

73. Learn to play Euchre, so I can play with David’s family

74. Learn all the state capitals by heart (completed 9/7/09 – made it through the list 5 times over our ten-day trip without missing any, but David says he’s going to retest me in 6 months!)

75. Take a class at the community college

76. See half of the movies on AFI’s  list of the Top 100 Films of the Last 100 Years that I haven’t seen (0/23)

77. Finish Heart of Darkness, even if it kills me

78. Learn to use 3 new features on my digital camera (0/3)

79. Watch the third Godfather film (I’ve seen the other two, and I need to know if this one’s really as bad as they say)

80. Re-read all 7 Harry Potter books

Community

81. Volunteer with the Girl Scouts

82. Do 10 nice things for strangers and don’t tell anyone about them (2/10)

83. Leave a secret in a Post Secret book at the library or bookstore

84. Write three letters to companies whose products I enjoy or who provided excellent service (0/3)

85. Write three letters to companies when I have a problem with a product or service (2/3) (8/21/09 – wrote to AMC about multiple misspellings and improper punctuation in the captions of the season premiere of Mad Men; 10/26/09 – wrote to Belk to express my displeasure at their statement that they canceled my order because the item wasn’t in stock – despite the website indicating it was – without ever notifying me (I only found out after I inquired because I’d only been charged for one item))

86. Send a care package through AnySoldier.com

Personal

87. Ask my grandmother to write down five memories of her own mother for me

88. Have the Princess and Conductor spend an overnight with me in D.C. and take them to do fun stuff

89. Write actual letters to 10 people telling them how much they mean to me (0/10)

90. Go one weekend (from 6pm Friday to 7am Monday) without using the internet (including from my cell phone)

91. Do something special with Aimee in 2011 to celebrate 20 years of friendship

92. Take David on a picnic

93. Continue the Christmas cookie weekend tradition with Karen (0/3)

94. Get a haircut and maintain it with regular (every 6 months) trims (8/22/09 – hair cut (trim due 2/10))

95. Write myself a letter at FutureMe.org to be delivered on the end date of this challenge

96. Find a new job (I have several applications in, and I had an interview on 8/18 for a job I didn’t get; I had a phone interview for another job on 11/5)

97. Finally get my diploma and bar certificates framed (I finally went to Michael’s for their big framing sale today (11/21/09) and my items will be done in 2 weeks!)

98. Send someone flowers for no reason

99. Buy new running shoes

100. Buy new iPod

101. Marry David