Sundries - Part 2

52. See a staged version of Angels in America.
61. Join the Foreign Service OR be taking significant educational steps (ie be in grad school) to do so.
64. Visit Atlantis.
72. Learn the dance from Dirty Dancing.
73. Write 101 letters to Washington.
74. Be a member of the live! studio audience of The Daily Show.
78. Accumulate 101 postcards.
80. Bake my own bread for a month.

Details

52. See a staged version of Angels in America.

It just seemed like the kinda thing a mentally-deranged sex-starved pill-popping housewife would do.

61. Join the Foreign Service OR be taking significant educational steps (ie be in grad school) to do so.

When I was little, I read Goodnight, Moon, and the Berenstein Bears, and, of course, every young girl's favorite, The Hunt for Red October. I wanted to be just like Jack Ryan when I grew up, and married to him, and have like ten thousand of his CIA-trained ass-kicking babies - while still making time for ass-kicking adventures for myself.

The next best thing? The State Department, which will, at the very least, send me abroad for slightly more legal adventures in foreign lands. I'm looking forward to my first hardship post in some tropical developing country, learning a new language and living in a completely new and different culture. I'm looking forward to moving on every three years.

I'll tell the truth. I'm really looking forward to the day when, after a long and faithful career of diplomatic work, I am appointed the Ambassador to the Federated States of Micronesia, where I will work in the embassy on the island of Pohnpei and not, as many people believe, on the isle of Yap.

And also Cuba. I'm hoping that when we reopen proper diplomatic channels with Cuba, I'll be able to go down and be a part of it. It seems rather... well, not glamorous, per se; it's not 1950s Havana or anything that I'm envisioning. I don't know what I'm envisioning, except that I think I really, really need to be there or somewhere similar or anywhere that is not here. More on this theme very shortly.

64. Visit Atlantis.

No, I don't actually think I can find Atlantis, and no, you don't get to know what this goal actually is.

72. Learn the dance from Dirty Dancing.

Um, yes. Just. Yes.

73. Write 101 letters to Washington.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

Complaints lodged: 3

74. Be a member of the live! studio audience of The Daily Show.

Another one of those we-always-talked-about-doing-this-and-never-did-it goals. I love The Daily Show and I will gladly sit outside its studio in New York for six or ten or however many hours, in rain, sleet, or shine, to get tickets. No specific date is set for this attempt, but I'm sure that I will be in New York on some weekday between now and the middle of 2012, so... yeah. Daily Show, woot!

78. Accumulate 101 postcards.

Being a college student, particularly one who moved around as far and as often as I did, it helps to separate one's possessions into those than can be easily and cheaply transported and those that cannot. After you've got your necessary, need-this-to-survive-on-a-daily-basis stuff packed, it feels good to add in some personal effects. My favorite ones are books, but that's not always a practical choice. Posters, too, are good to look at and are generally mobile, but sometimes you really just don't have the space for that tube in your suitcase.

Combine this conundrum with that of how to preserve your memories of your favorite works of art when your camera takes truly terrible pictures with the flash off, and you come out with my postcard collection. Right now, I have about 20 postcards of some of my favorite paintings that I can take with me wherever I go and transform my living space into my home. My goal is to visit enough museums and galleries that I expand this collection to include at least 101 such postcards. Whenever I obtain new ones (they will usually be in batches of between two and five postcards), I'll make a post here with scans of them under the secondary label "Postcards."

Postcards collected: 25

80. Bake my own bread for a month.

First, I should explain why this goal is not listed under creativity with the other "Adventures in Cookery" goals: simply, I already know how to do this. Instead of testing my culinary wits or making me learn a completely new set of recipes, this particular goal is a test of stamina and commitment. I know how to bake bread, rolls, and pastries of most every kind. I know my favorite recipe, a naan recipe that can, with no modification, double as a dinner roll recipe completely by heart. I'm by no means a locavore or invested in any way in the organic foods movement, but I do think it is fun and responsible to do simple things for yourself, especially if you already know how.