Sundries - Part 1

There are a lot of these goals, so I'm breaking them down into three parts of relatively equal size, for my manageability and yours.

3. Be able to do all three splits.
10. Run a real world mile in less than ten minutes.
11. Buy $10 of stock during the first week and do NOT look at its earnings (or losses) until Day 1001.
14. Turn off the internet for a week [in preparation for...]
15. Turn off the computer for a week.
21. Replace every lightbulb in my living space with an energy-saving equivalent.
46. Serve on a grand jury.
47. Fast - 3 days
48. Fast- 5 days
49. Fast - 7 days

Sundry Items 52-80 may be found in Part 2, while 81-101 are located in Part 3.

Details

3. Be able to do all three splits.

In my youth, I did gymnastics and dance. While I wasn't particularly graceful or strong or dedicated, and wasn't able to get very far in either, I did have a lot of fun at it and I enjoyed all the flexibility it yielded me. I've kept up with a stretching routine over the years, but I still feel like I'm old and creaky sometimes. Ergo, I want to reclaim the ability to do left leg, right leg, and center splits. Whenever I make some sort of progress on this goal, it will be posted with an additional tag of "Physical Health."

10. Run a real world mile in less than ten minutes.

I can run a mile on an elliptical in a gym in just over ten minutes with the incline set at 12 and the resistance fluctuating between 6 and 9. For the life of me, I cannot run on a street or outdoor track or through the woods or anything for more than a few minutes, let alone an entire mile or ten minutes. I have never really worked at it, though, except for training two days a week at the gym on the elliptical - if you could call it training. I don't think so, since there was no end point in mind. It was just exercise. And gyms are expensive, and they play loud, bad music, and... so many things. So I want to train up and be able to run a full mile in the real world in under ten minutes. Progress on this goal (including a baseline post) will carry the additional tag of "Physical Health" as well.

11. Buy $10 of stock during the first week and do NOT look at its earnings (or losses) until Day 1001.

This is one of those more ridiculous sorts of goals, but it's one that I think will be very entertaining at the end. As I wrote in the last weekly update post, the stock I chose will probably be on my radar for the first six months or so, but I'll try my hardest to avoid it and my dad promised he would make an effort to keep it off his monitor in the office. Again, I have 8.5 shares in Hyperdynamic Systems (NYSE: HDY(?)) and it will be interesting to see where this baby company goes in the next three years.

14. Turn off the internet for a week.

This goal partially comes out of a hypothetical bet, which in turn came out of a South Park episode in which America loses the internet. The question was whether you would rather go one year without TV or one year without internet. Everyone else said they could just watch TV on the internet, but I felt that was against the spirit of the question and claimed I not only could go one year without the internet, but that I would. For about two weeks at the beginning of the last school year, I firmly believed that my post-collegiate job would be documenting my decision to live in New York City without the internet. That didn't pan out, but I still think it's an interesting experiment since we're the first generation of adults that has been online for all or most of our conscious memory. This goal is also training for...

15. Turn off the computer for a week.

This is obviously in the same vein as the previous goal, but MOAR XTREEEEEME. Nothing else to really say about these two, except that 1) vacations/moving will not count and 2) exceptions will have to be made for work if required. My computer and I are literally attached at the hip for more than half of my leisure time. This will be very, very difficult.

21. Replace every lightbulb in my living space with an energy-saving equivalent.

One year for Christmas, everyone in my family got compact fluorescents because the school was giving them out to us to change out bulbs in our dorm rooms. Changing one bulb doesn't make a big difference, but changing the bulbs of 2000 students... then you're starting to get somewhere. Anyway, they left boxes of bulbs in the vacuum/free box closet of every dorm in case someone had missed the door-to-door exchange, and... well, yeah. Everyone in my family ended up getting some for Christmas. Call it taking full advantage of my student activity fee.

Anyway. These bulbs produce a perfectly fine light when covered with a shade, and save power, and are a bit less expensive than they were two years ago. I know there's this whole contingent of people who think they cause cancer... but what doesn't, anymore?. Some say that the mercury in them seeps into landfills... but if the alternative is continuing to use tungsten bulbs, I can't really see that being an improvement, on balance. And there are ways to properly dispose of them, so... unless LED lights make some major progress in the mass consumer market, CFLs will be it. For this goal to be fulfilled, I need to have my own living space; living at home and replacing the three bulbs in my bedroom will not count.

46. Serve on a grand jury.

First off, I know you don't request jury duty. You do, however, request GRAND jury duty. The difference is that jury duty lasts for one case, and you make the final determination of guilt or innocence, while grand jurors handle hundreds of cases a week and preliminarily determine whether there should even be a trial. A term also lasts three months. For most people, three months of jury duty sounds excruciating. I know it won't be, mostly because I've sort of already done it. While interning at the District Attorney's Office in Dallas, the "learning" portion of the day was spent down in the grand jury room. Maybe it's because I wasn't allowed to actively participate in the proceedings, but, aside from the daily slew of drug cases, it was fairly interesting to hear everything. And there were moments when I really wanted to speak up, because there was something I thought the grand jurors were misunderstanding, but I wasn't allowed. That's probably why I want to do it so badly. Anyway, I don't think I'll say this for any other goal, but if I haven't completed it and I end up leaving the country to work in an Embassy (or for some other yet unforeseen reason), I will use an as-yet-undisclosed backup goal instead. I'm fairly certain it's illegal to serve on a grand jury in a country of which you are not a citizen.

47, 48, and 49. Daylight Fasts - 3, 5, and 7 days.

Before I added the word "daylight" to this goal (the actual writing of it, not the spirit - that was always intentional), everyone told me this was a very bad idea and some, I think, were concerned that I was trying to sneak in some sort of anorexia into my Mission 101. Let me be clear: that is not the case. Plus, many of you have eaten meals with me; you know that I eat. Quite healthily. Well, a decent amount, anyway, and there are sometimes vegetables involved.

Anyway. Sometimes I do think I eat too much, in that way that I think everyone in America can eat too much, and there is something to be said for the willpower it takes to not consume anything during the daylight hours. This is not a religious project, although I am hoping to sneak some meditation into these fasts, but I basically want to prove that I can. I will probably not eat anything for breakfast, drink water during the day, and eat a very light dinner of rice or peanut butter and crackers (alternating days, perhaps) after dark before bed. Each length of fast is a separate goal because these will be very, very difficult. I'm fasting from the internet and the computer during this mission. I should probably do a fast from something that reminds me what it's like to not have your basic needs met, too. Posts about all three goals will also be tagged with "Physical Health."

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Reading Goals

19. Read at least 3 articles in each of these weekly: The Economist, New Scientist, and the New Yorker. Bonus points for taking out a subscription.
54. Finish the Discworld series.
55. (re)Read the complete works of Tennessee Williams.
56. Read 25 "Classics."
57. Read 3 "Russian Classics."
58. Read the complete works of Salman Rushdie.
59. Read every book on the shelf that has not yet been so.
85. Read ten books that are recommended to me.

Details

Each of these goals has its own tag (although 57 will assume the tag of 56, "Classics") and I will post a short summary/review/announcement within two days of finishing any book or article.

19. Read at least 3 articles in each of these weekly: The Economist, New Scientist, and the New Yorker. Bonus points for taking out a subscription.

I really love these magazines but I sometimes... forget about them. Especially with The Economist, I find it a lot easier to read the articles in the physical magazines (well, hell, I usually read them cover to cover if I have an actual copy) than reading on the internet. I also felt this goal would be good because, now that I'm not in college, I've found myself doing a much poorer job of keeping up with the goings-on in the world, and I'm upset about that. With this goal as an active reminder, I won't be able to slack off anymore and let the days pile on into weeks without reading a single article.

54. Finish the Discworld series.

At the end of my freshman writing class at Vassar, a course in the Cog Sci department called "The Science and Fiction of the Mind" (yes, Vassar is awesome like that), my professor gave each of us a sci-fi or fantasy novel that he thought would inspire us to continue writing. Shamefully, I did not pick up the book he gave to me, The Color of Magic, the first in the Discworld series, until the day after graduation. I immediately purchased the second book, and placed a hold at the library on the third, which turned into holds on the fourth, fifth, and sixth - well, by the time I left Portland, I had about 100 pages left in Sourcery, the fifth book (in order of publication, not by story line).

I don't consider it cheating to have a goal to finish a series of which I have already read five books, because THERE ARE 36 OF THEM AND COUNTING, in addition to short stories, graphic novels, and official reference volumes. According to that first link, two more are scheduled for release this year and next. This is a project, but a fun, minimal effort sort of project that I am glad to take on. And though I doubt he'll ever see this, I owe an enormous debt of repentant gratitude to Professor Livingston for introducing me to this wonderful alternate universe.

Books read: 5

55. (re)Read the complete works of Tennessee Williams.

I don't think this goal needs any justification at all, but here it is: Tennessee Williams is the man, and his plays are the bomb-diggity, and if you disagree, you should try reading something other than The Glass Menagerie.

Plays read: 0.66

56. Read 25 "Classics."

Sort of in line with my need to see 25 new great and classic movies, I need to read 25 new great and classic books. I tried a few times to read Jane Austen, and in school, we only read abridged versions of Dickens. My brother sent me Atlas Shrugged for Christmas last year because I never thought it would be my kind of book and he insisted that I had to read it anyway. I havne't yet. Like the movies list, the 50 or so books that make it onto this list will be posted in a separate entry which I will update whenever I complete one of the books on it.

57. Read 3 "Russian Classics."

These are long and epic and have funny-sounding names, so they get their own post. Tentatively, I'm putting War and Peace, The Idiot, and either The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Anna Karenina, The Master and Margarita, or the Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol on this list. The Master and Margarita is (relatively) short, so it might sneak up onto the regular classics list to make space for something else.

58. Read the complete works of Salman Rushdie.

Midnight's Children was one of my very favorite books I got to read for class last year. It was my very first experience reading Rushdie, although I was aware of the controversy with The Satanic Verses and everything, I was unaware that he is actually a genius with the English language. Although I will read them loosely in order of publication, the first one up (ie the one that I already own) is East, West, almost the exact median publication. Let the Rushdie love commence!

Rushdies read: 1

59. Read every book on the shelf that has not yet been so.

The is more a target than a definite goal. I'm one of those people who buys books because I like to have them around me, not necessarily because I'm looking for something new to read at the moment. More precisely, I almost never buy just one book. There is, then, quite the backlog on my shelves of books I meant to read but never got around to because of classes, or other books, or whatever. Some of then will fall under the "Classics" reading goal; others I will just read whenever I get need a break from the structured, specific reading goals. Obviously, because I do not intend to stop buying books in the next 2.75 years, this will be a fluid goal, and new books will be incorporated into it.

Backlog finished: 3

85. Read ten books that are recommended to me.

As if I needed more reading on my plate, this is an open call for recommendations for books that I absolutely need to read, right now. Every suggestion, no matter how ridiculous, will be considered. And hey - if only ten books are recommended, the ridiculous one is a shoe-in!

Recommended reading completed: 2

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Top 50 Movies of All Time Ever

(that I've never before seen.)

Here's the list of Great, Classic Movies I came up with based on the IMDB, Rotten Tomatoes, and the AFI 100 Years/100 Movies lists. If you would like to argue that something should not be on this list, feel free to! If you think I've made an egregious error leaving something out, you should also feel free to recommend a film, with the caveat that it may have been left off because I've seen it already. As I watch these movies, I will make posts about them, but I will come back to this post and create links on the list to those posts, turning them blue a la goal completion on The Master List.

1. Godfather
2. Citizen Cain
3. Casablanca
4. Raging Bull
5. Singin’ in the Rain
6. Gone with the Wind
7. Lawrence of Arabia
8. Schindler’s List
9. The Wizard of Oz
10. City Lights
11. 2001: A Space Odyssey
12. All About Eve
13. Seven Samurai
14. The Graduate
15. On the Waterfront
16. Chinatown
17. Grapes of Wrath
18. High Noon
19. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
20. Apocalypse Now
21. The Maltese Falcon
22. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
23. Annie Hall
24. The Best Years of Our Lives
25. Dr. Strangelove
26. King Kong
27. Bonnie and Clyde
28. The Philadelphia Story
29. A Streetcar Named Desire
30. North by Northwest
31. Rocky
32. Taxi Driver
33. Schindler’s List
34. The African Queen
35. All the President’s Men
36. The Terminator
37. Fargo
38. Rosemary’s Baby
39. The Wages of Fear
40. Fanny and Alexander
41. Sunday’s Children
42. Yojimbo
43. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
44. The Usual Suspects
45. Forrest Gump
46. Pan’s Labyrinth
47. Hotel Rwanda
48. Requiem for a Dream
49/50. Alien(s)
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Start Date: 8.28.09

The first day of my Mission 101 has officially ended, and here's what I've accomplished so far:

• Sleeping until 11:37am. To be fair, I also was up until nearly 4 because I was not only on west coast time, but also slept about four hours on the plane, and I only had about three hours of sleep the night before, what with all the packing.



• "First day" of work. Considering I arrived at the office at 1:30, and didn't do a whole lot but fill out my W-4 and label a few folders before leaving for a bank deposit run at 4, I don't really think it counts.



• Grocery shopping. Time: 1.15 hours. Stores visited: 2. Money spent: $140. Number of boxes of artichoke and mozzarella ravioli purchased: 0. PUBLIX FAIL. Now I have to learn how to make it myself. Ohhhhhhhhh well.



• Unpacking. This is an extraordinarily daunting task, mostly because in the last four years, I have accumulated a LOT of stuff. Boxed up, it is more than can reasonably fit in my room, so I have absolutely no idea how I'll fit it all in here out of the boxes. I probably won't even try to.



• Shuttle launch. At 11:59pm, the shuttle Discovery lifted off to deliver supplies, a new scientist, and the Colbert exercise(?) module to the space station. I was at the beach (along with a hundred other people and my family) watching. It was a very fitting way to, erm, celebrate being back in Florida.

So... those aren't at all things that count as progress towards my goals. Oh well. Here's what I do have:

• The list of Top 50 Greatest Movies of All Time Ever. It will be in its own post, momentarily. Apocalypse Now is on TMC on demand right now, though, so I'll probably be watching it in the next week. Progress yay!



• The novel that I'm going to adapt into my screenplay. I will begin reading it with a hefty stack of post-its in hand tomorrow or Sunday, depending on scheduling.



• Ten dollars worth of stock. It turns out that buying stock is more complicated than I thought, and that broker's commission is generally ten dollars, so I'm sort of informally purchasing 8.5 shares of stock in my uncle's new company, Hyperdynamics Corporation, from my dad. It will be slightly more difficult to uphold the "not looking at it" portion of this goal for the duration of my employment in Florida, but that's (hopefully) only going to last six months, tops. This goal is now currently "In Progress!"



• Books. Books books books books books. I have a lot of them. I have to sort them, and I have to make lists of them, but I hope to read Streetcar and East, West to begin my Tennessee Williams and Salman Rushdie oeuvre goals in the next two weeks as well as getting started on the screenplay novel.

So that's where I am right now. Like I said, I'll post the list of movies to watch in its own post in a second. You may have also noticed that the detail posts for my Reading Goals and Sundry Goals have not yet been posted; I will have those done by Sunday night.

I'm just beginning to get a feel for the magnitude of this project. It's alternately very scary, very exciting, and very ridiculous. I'll say more on this in my next weekly update, after I've been at it a little longer.

One final note - a few people have mentioned that they weren't sure if they could comment without a blogger/google account, or that they tried to but the site ate their comment without posting it. To the first group, yes, I have enabled anonymous posting, though it would be nice if you wanted to sign your name and let me know who you are, if I know you. To the second group, I was unable to reproduce this error in three independent tests, so I can't test for myself if the solution I am trying has worked. I did change the comments to being on a completely separate page from the post instead of being embedded in it, so hopefully that will help. Thanks for reading, regardless!
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Music Goals

4. Discover AND LIKE 101 new bands or solo artists.
28. Find out with certainty why "A Save Situation" is named after a baseball thing.
29. Visit an old house on the Danforth.
34. Clean out itunes ratings; begin anew with Standards. Have more than half the library genuinely rated by the end of the 1001.
51. Make a real green dress.
62. Stand on a cliff and throw little things off.
75. Begin and maintain a mixtape-exchange between friends for one year.
76. Listen to "Goodbye Sky Harbor" as I'm leaving Sky Harbor.
77. Follow at least 10 pieces of advice from Everybody's Free.
92. Stand on a frozen lake.
99. Drink a Soco Amaretto Lime.
100. Remember a pretty good year.

Details

A lot of these goals might appear to be miscategorized. They are not. I promise.

4. Discover AND LIKE 101 new bands, solo artists, or albums.

Straightforward enough for a normal person, but I specifically added "albums" to this goal because I have a terrible problem where I grow accustomed to hearing a particular singer's voice singing the songs I have by them, and then have an extraordinarily difficult time with anything they put out after that point. I know, it's really weird and strange and probably annoying as well, but that's just the way I am. It doesn't matter whether the next album I hear is an artist's second or twelfth, if it's new, I probably won't like it. So I'm going to accumulate new music on a fairly regular basis (feel free to recommend something on this or any "Music"-tagged post!), listen to it a few times through , and begin to integrate it into my library, if I like one or two songs. Most updates to this tally will simply occur in the weekly round-up post, but I am sure that if I find something particularly awesome that I can't wait to share about, it will get its own post.


New artists approved of: 7

28. Find out with certainty why "A Save Situation" is named after a baseball thing.

Feels like I've been asleep for days...

29. Visit an old house on the Danforth.

She loves me and her body keeps me warm...

34. Clean out itunes ratings; begin anew with Standards. Have more than half the library genuinely rated by the end of the 1001.

I have about 6000 songs in my itunes library. I listen, on a regular basis, to about 1600 of them. This is mostly a product of the ratings system, which I started when I got my first ipod in high school. While these ratings have obviously not been completely static, I... well, basically, I got into a rut and stopped listening (mostly) to anything not rated four or five stars. It's time to start over and it's time to give all my music an equal opportunity to make it into what will (I'm sure) be the new rut.

51. Make a real green dress.

Maybe a nice chesterfield or an ottoman...

62. Stand on a cliff and throw little things off.

I go through all this before you wake up...

75. Begin and maintain a mixtape-exchange between friends for one year.

Everybody likes mixtapes. Everybody likes to talk about sending mixtapes to each other. I will be an organizer and, like, secret-santa-y, or something, and everyone will make and send mixtapes and be happy! This "one year" thing is totally arbitrary and will be open to changing based on interest. Everyone will make and send at least one mixtape and receive at least one in return. Sign up on this post if you're interested!

76. Listen to "Goodbye Sky Harbor" as I'm leaving Sky Harbor.

He said, "I am but one small instrument."

77. Follow at least 10 pieces of advice from Everybody's Free.

List of which ten will be posted at a later date.

92. Stand on a frozen lake.

Let's get together and talk about the modern age...

99. Drink a Soco Amaretto Lime.

Everybody wake up (wake up!) everybody wake up it's time to get down...

100. Remember a pretty good year.

They say you were something, in those formative years...

Actually, this one gets a real description of what it means. On one (or all) of the December 31sts that occur during the next 1001 days (ie, 2009, 2010, and 2011), while everyone else is setting down their New Year's resolutions, I'll be writing down everything I remember happening to me in the prior year - all the good things. For a fleeting moment, I had an idea about making separate lists for good and bad things and, as an act of catharsis, burning the "bad" list. Then I remembered that I'm not fifteen. So instead, I'll just make a list of all the good things and squirrel it away somewhere to find the next time I go through all my things.

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Travel Goals

5. Go to the Continent.
6. Go to Alaska.
7. Go to Indonesia.
23. Visit at least 25 cathedrals.
24. Swing on 101 unique swing sets.
26. Spend at least 24 consecutive hours on an Amtrak train.
27. Go to Antigua.
30. Go to Islands of Adventure.
32. Go to Big Sur.
60. Stand at the foot of a mountain. Possibly climb up it a little bit.

Details

Posts detailing my progress on any goal in this category will receive the "Travel" tag. Only goals 23 and 24, cathedrals and swingsets, will have their own additional tags.

5. Go to the Continent.

Aside from the Caribbean and the Gulf coast of Mexico, the only place outside the US that I've been to is London. Seriously, not even anywhere else in England. I first spent three weeks on vacation there during the (epic heat wave) summer of 2006, and later returned to study for the fall semester of 2007 at Queen Mary University in the East End. While most of my fellow students were flying off on Ryanair every weekend to spend 36 hours in some other European city, I decided that I was in London to be in London. While I don't regret that decision at all, I do still want to get to continental Europe sometime in the next two-point-seven-five years. This goal will be fulfilled if I am able to spend at least 72 consecutive hours somewhere between Portugal and the Ukraine, though preferably I would like to do this for longer, or more than once.

6. Go to Alaska.

My idea of a dream vacation is a week-long stay in any city with a history that reaches back to ancient times. If that includes a daytrip out to the surrounding countryside, awesome, but if not (as happened in London), no biggie. I'll entertain myself either way. Alaska is on my list because I want to make nature the primary destination of my trip. Whether I fulfill this goal by taking a cruise, flying directly there to visit extended family, or get kidnapped by Todd Palin and a band of Alaskan Independence Party freedom fighter/snowmobilers, as long as I spend at least 72 hours there and am able to see a glacier, it's all good.

7. Go to Indonesia.

Not only is Indonesia probably the diametric opposite of both Alaska and Rome, it is also not a destination that was on my radar a year or two ago. After reading Cradle of Flavor, a combination cookbook and travelogue about Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia, I've been completely fascinated by the fusion of cultures there. Yes, I would like to visit India, China, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka... all of those places are on my lifelong travel wishlist. But right now, Indonesia is the most compelling nation on my list.

23. Visit at least 25 cathedrals.

When I took Art History in my freshman year of college, 90% of the reason why was because I wanted to take the 200 level course on the history of architecture which required it as a prerequisite. I didn't end up taking the class, due to scheduling issues sophomore year, but about one fifth of the introductory class was devoted to the great works of architecture in the ancient, medieval, Renaissance, and modern eras. It made me happy. Instead of just vaguely enjoying or disapproving of a building that I see now, I take notice of the form and structure of it, and consciously note the way the component parts fit together to make an elegant or awkward building.

In particular, I love to be inside of cathedrals. I think they're wonderful. I fell in love with Vassar because its library reminded me of a cathedral. I've been inside the National Cathedral in Washington, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's, and Southwark Cathedral in London, and I yearn to see more. While 25 is a tall order, especially because there are very few cathedrals of note in the United States, I hope that if I can spend at least a week in Europe, I will be able to almost fulfill this goal. I will also count trips to mosques, synagogues, and Asian temples of any sort to this goal because discrimination is bad for your health, and also, I love mosaic tiles, menorahs, and bells.

Cathedrals admired: 1

24. Swing on 101 unique swing sets.

I'm not a religious person. My undying love for cathedrals is purely architectural. The closest I ever come to what might be described as a "spiritual experience" happens when I'm on the swings. Ridiculous though that may sound, it's true. Point is, I want to seek out 101 new "spiritual experiences" and swing on 101 unique swingsets anywhere in the world. I'll post pictures and a short blurb about the location of each venture under the "Swingsets" tag.

Swingsets swung: 8

26. Spend at least 24 consecutive hours on an Amtrak train.

Manifest destiny.

27. Go to Antigua.

Perhaps it's just the postcolonial scholar in me, but I really want to visit Antigua. I've been to the Bahamas, and I want to go to Martinique, eventually, but since reading two of Jamaica Kindcaid's books, I have felt drawn to explore the streets of St. Johns and the beaches and just. Be there. As with Alaska, I will consider a cruise stop on Antigua fulfillment of this goal, but I would prefer to fly and stay a few nights, something I think will be much easier to do in the next six months as I'll already be in Florida.

30. Go to Islands of Adventure.

Again, something to do while I'm in Florida. I grew up an hour from the Orlando theme parks, and three hours from Busch Gardens in Tampa. I have been to Disney World more times than I can count, and for two years my family had season passes to Sea World and Busch Gardens. I have never been to Universal Studios, nor to its sister park, Islands of Adventure. I'm not entirely sure why, but since they have a fine array of roller coasters and other Fun Things To Do, I'm sure it won't be that hard to make it over.

32. Go to Big Sur.

A Confederate General from Big Sur. Read it; love it.

60. Stand at the foot of a mountain. Possibly climb up it a little bit.

I think there is something uniquely powerful about standing at the bottom of a mountain and looking up, rather than the other way around. I'm sure it feels perfectly wonderful to feel as though you've conquered the entire world, but I'm being realistic here. I don't think I have the constitution for mountain climbing, and I think that's okay. I still want to visit a mountain (with a prominence of at least 2000 meters) and stand next to it and feel very small and human.

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Charity Goals

16. Donate at least $500.50 on Donors Choose.
17. Volunteer in a battered woman's shelter.
38. Volunteer with Habitat for Humanity for at least 101 hours.
44. Raise $500.50 by doing Walks for the Cure. As many as it takes to reach this goal.
65. Volunteer in a public library (or more than one) for at least 101 hours.
68. Loan $101 on Kiva; recycle all repayments.
69. Perform community awareness to raise an additional $500.50 for Kiva loan seekers.
70. Achieve 500,000 grains of rice on Free Rice for Spanish vocabulary.
71. Achieve 500,000 grains of rice in all other subjects.
94. Donate at least two articles of clothing at the end of every season.

Details

Giving back has always come slightly less than naturally to me. I like to help others, but I don't always know the best way to do it, and I've never really made a concerted effort at community service. I have participated in Feed the Children's back-to-school backpack donation drive for the past three years, which is why continuing to do so isn't on the list - this is about doing new things to connect me to our planet and the people on it. I tried to strike what I feel is an achievable balance between donating time and money, and if anyone has any suggestions on how best to achieve the volunteering goals, I would be eternally grateful for them.

16. Donate at least $500.50 on Donors Choose.

Some of you may be aware that I once thought I could hack it in a classroom, and tried to join up with Teach for America. Luckily, although I was "qualified" on paper, they could tell during the phone interview that I probably don't have the right disposition to handle a classroom of thirty inner-city kids. While I was researching TFA, though, I discovered their unofficial official blog site, where corps members are encouraged to write what's really going on in their heads through this experience, and not just the glowing, this-is-so-fulfilling! posts hosted on their actual website.

In any case, it was while reading one such Real Blog that I encountered a link to Donors Choose, where teachers write their own mini-grant requests for classroom materials that they need, and donors choose (har) to give part or all of the money needed for the project of their choice in order to help kids (presumably those attending lower-income schools that have far fewer resources readily available). I think it's an excellent idea, and so I hope to contribute at least $500.50 to the education of the next generation in the next 1001 days. Although this goal will (probably) not have its own tag, any time I donate to a project, I will post a link and description in this blog to track my total.

Current total: $100.00

17. Volunteer in a battered woman's shelter.

Let me begin by explaining why this goal, among every other goal on the list, is the most indefinite. Simply put, I'm not sure I'm strong enough to handle it. I will complete whatever the minimum number of shifts/hours/whatever the shelter I volunteer at requires, because I'm not a quitter, but I really don't want to commit myself to something that is going to wear me down too much, too fast, and ultimately be counterproductive to the people I mean to be assisting.

That said, this issue is very important to me because so many American women continue to be abused and disempowered by the men in their lives. It happens in secret, but it also happens with the knowledge of the neighbors, other family members, and sometimes even the police. I have a very nice theoretical knowledge of the problem of domestic violence because of my very nice liberal arts education. I want to change that theory into practice, and I want to learn from women who have removed themselves from bad situations and help find ways to end physical and psychological abuse.

38. Volunteer with Habitat for Humanity for at least 101 hours.

I have always respected the work of Habitat for Humanity, and have always wanted to try it out. I am pretty good with a hammer and certain power tools (thank you, high school drama club!), and I like to paint, so I won't be a completely unskilled worker. Assuming I work eight-hour Saturdays (a big assumption, I admit), this goal will be complete after 12.65 shifts. It may take a while, or no time at all, to get started on this goal, considering I have no idea how the recession (and, duh, the housing/construction bust) is affecting Habitat's agenda. We'll see; each day that I volunteer, I will post at least one picture of me on a jobsite and update a running log of my hours with the additional "Habitat" tag.

Hours completed: 4

44. Raise $500.50 by doing Walks for the Cure. As many as it takes to reach this goal.

I've never done a Walk for the Cure before, but I assume the way it works is that you get people to sponsor you for each mile you walk/run/crawl across the finish line. This is a great goal for me, because it allows me to donate my time and other people's money, both of which, as a recent college graduate, there is plenty.

Current total: $23

65. Volunteer in a public library (or more than one) for at least 101 hours.

I love libraries. I love the idea of them, I love going into them and browsing, I love that the internet has simplified interlibrary loans and I can now get pretty much any book I'd ever want to read, even through the Volusia County Library system. I remember going to the library every other week or so during the summer as a kid to get fresh reading material, and I regularly checked out extra books from the library at Vassar just because there were SO MANY there, it seemed like it would be a giant waste to only read books I needed for class. As if I needed more of a reason to have this goal, my grandmother was a professional librarian for about thirty years. We go way back, libraries and me.

68. Loan $101 on Kiva; recycle all repayments.

Kiva is something I either originally heard about in the New York Times, on a Hulu ad, or in the blog from which I discovered Mission 101. Like Donors Choose, it is a website that allows you to join others in donating small (or large) amounts of money to small business entrepreneurs in developing countries, most of whom are women who find it more difficult to get loans from banks or their governments than do men. For a very informative article about why microloaning is such a super idea for foreign aid, I direct you to this article in the NYT.

The idea on Kiva, specifically, is that you loan out however much money, and, after a time, your loanee begins to pay you back out of their newfound profits. I intend to recycle all the repayments I receive back into Kiva, that is, to continually be lending my initial $101. Recycled repayments received before I've loaned $101 will not count towards that total; as with Donors Choose, I will make a post each time I extend a loan. Because I anticipate that there will be many more such posts than with Donors Choose, this goal will have its own tag, "Kiva."

Loaned out: $25

69. Perform community awareness to raise an additional $500.50 for Kiva loan seekers.

Obviously, I think Kiva is a good idea. I want other people to think so, too, and to that end, I hope to do whatever it takes - meeting up with local business people, canvassing my neighborhood door to door, or setting up a table at a farmer's market or outside Wal-Mart - to get people to pledge $500.50 for Kiva loans. After I have done it myself a few times, I will know better how to achieve this goal, I think. Updates will also be under the "Kiva" tag.

70. Achieve 500,000 grains of rice on Free Rice for Spanish vocabulary.

If you don't have a Facebook account, you may have missed the 2007 launch of Free Rice - a website that gives you a vocabulary word and four choices of its definition. For each correct definition, Free Rice pledges to donate ten grains of rice to the UN World Food Program, and when you get one wrong, it tells you the correct answer and then repeats the word a bit later. In the last two years, they've expanded beyond English vocab to include foreign languages and other subjects, such as geography and chemistry symbols. Because I want to keep practicing Spanish as much as possible, even when I'm not doing Rosetta Stone, I want to get half of my goal of a million grains of rice doing solely Spanish vocab. Other charities allow you to donate your time and money; free rice allows you to donate your daily farting-around-on-the-internet time, too. I will post my weekly tally of grains donated in my weekly roundup posts.

Current total: 2500

71. Achieve 500,000 grains of rice in all other subjects.

English vocab, famous paintings, hell - I'll even take a crack at the German vocab - to get the second half of my million-grain goal.

Current total: 14790

94. Donate at least two articles of clothing at the end of every season.

If you've ever met me in real life, you probably are aware that I don't own very many clothes. I wear pretty much the same ten outfits every ten days... not on a fixed schedule or anything; that's just how it works out. I really only like that many clothes at a time. Fully one third of my wardrobe (that is, one dress, two shirts, and a few bras) are clothes I purchased in high school. Clothes have never been hugely important to me. However, I have, on occasion, tried to alter my fashion sense and purchased clothes that, although perfectly fine for some people, did not ever quite make it into regular rotation. And it's probably time to admit that I'm never going to be on What Not to Wear, so it's up to me to realize I'm a grownup and that some of my clothes are getting old, and that I need to start dressing a little better. As such, I plan on donating at least two articles of clothing four times a year. Any more than that actually seems really excessive to me, considering the small pool I have to pull from already, but obviously, I am never limited to just two. When these donations occur, you'll find out about it in its appropriate weekly update.

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