Escapades

The ultimate ‘Things to Do’ list

I started keeping this list on Thursday, February 5, 2004. I nicked the idea from Mopie, who nicked it from somebody else. What follows is a list of things I want to do during my lifetime. In no particular order:

1. See the Pyramids.


2. Go to Taos, New Mexico, and see if I can hear the buzzing.


3. Learn Scottish Gaelic (i.e., Gàidhlig). [Working on it!]


4. Learn another language, something more common than Gàidhlig.


5. Participate in a protest or demonstration about something I feel strongly about.


6. Go to a rock concert. [DONE July 8, 2005. My mother, for some strange reason, bought me and Amanda tickets to a Herman's Hermits concert for Amanda's birthday, which is July 5^th. Yes, all right, Herman's Hermits are not exactly ‘rock’, but it was the first real concert concert I've ever been to, and we had a great time and laughed pretty much nonstop for several hours.]


7. Visit a real honest-to-god art museum, a big one, like the Getty Museum or the Louvre or the Met.


8. Learn to sew.


9. Visit England.


10. Live in England.


11. Sing in and/or play in a real band. [Technically, I did this in May of 1999, when a friend & I played the opening of a restaurant/bar, but that doesn't really count, for many reasons.]


12. Learn to swim. Actually swim.


13. Go on a road trip, the kind Amanda & I have been planning since I was fourteen. Be all Cameron Tuttle about it.


14. Walk a labyrinth.


15. Go to a movie by myself.


16. Learn to drive.


17. Take some sort of a dancing class—maybe bellydancing or swing dance. Maybe ballroom. And definitely learn English and Scottish country dancing (the stuff you see people doing in Jane Austen movies). [I did take four years of ballet and tap when I was little, but I'm not counting that.]


18. Attend a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Go in costume. Do the AP.


19. Take a completely spontaneous trip, i.e., one where I just throw clothes in a bag and go, out of the blue, with no advance planning or notice.


20. Get a tattoo. [DONE July 8, 2002. Two, actually.]


21. See an actual production of a Shakespeare play. [DONE twice. God bless the Oregon Shakespeare Company and the Ashland Shakespeare Festival. Saw The Winter's Tale in 1996 and Julius Caesar in 2002, both at the Shakespeare Festival.]


22. Plant a garden. [This is another one of those ‘I sort of did it a long time ago’ things. I did have a garden in a corner of our back yard when I was in high school, but it died. My goal this time is to plant a really nice, special garden and not kill it right away because instead of a Green Thumb I have a Black Thumb, the Thumb of Death.]
    
    
    • UPDATE Summer 2006: I have accrued two flowerbeds. They are not exactly what I meant by ‘garden’, but at least I am on the right path.
    
    
    • UPDATE Spring/Summer 2009: Snollygoster Farms is in the process of beginning its first year of business. This isn't exactly what I had in mind, either, but it certainly counts as planting a garden. I also have a houseplant, a Lucky Bamboo, which is a big step up for me because though I can keep outdoor plants doing reasonably well, I usually kill anything in a container, particularly houseplants.


23. Visit Strawberry Fields (the ‘Imagine’ memorial to John Lennon) in Central Park.


24. Go to the Algonquin and, while there, amuse myself by imagining that I am Edna Ferber, Dorothy Parker, or other member of the Algonquin Round Table.


25. See The Vagina Monologues performed.


26. Dance around a maypole.


27. Go on a trip by myself.


28. Go to another country.


29. Visit Samuel Pepys's monument.


30. Go on a road trip by myself, or just me and my dogs.


31. Learn to use chopsticks.


32. Read everything listed in the ‘Readings of Interest to Diarists’ section of The New Diary. [Working on it—slowly but surely.]


33. See the aurora borealis. (Or, for that matter, australis. An aurora, anyway.)


34. See the Shins in concert.


35. Participate in community theatre or something similar.


36. Learn at least the basics of archery.


37. Learn to juggle at least three objects successfully.


38. Learn to care successfully for my curly hair (I'm looking at you, Lorraine Massey). [Working on it.]


39. Donate to the Tomato Nation Fall Contest. (Awesome!)


40. Trade an ATC.


41. Make art every day for a year (and, preferably, continue doing so after the year is up).


42. Learn to play (adequately, if not well) at least one of the following instruments: banjo (tenor or plectrum, probably), bagpipes, guitar, harmonica.


43. Learn to make rhubarb pie. Or tarts. Because after all, eternal happiness is rhubarb tart.


44. Learn to tie all the knots on AnimatedKnots.com. [On it! There are a LOT of knots; it'll be a while.]


45. Learn the lyrics to ‘Wakko's America’. [DONE February 2009. And yes, I know it's Jefferson CITY, Missouri, and that Montpelier, etc., are mispronounced. I KNOW. I bet Jess Hartnell does too, now, for his sins. Chalk it up to poetic license, people.]


46. Oh, what the hell. Learn the lyrics to ‘Yakko's World’ as well. [DONE March 2009. I know the faults of this one as well, but it certainly is fun to sing!]


47. (And maybe the rather brilliant ‘Yakko's New World’ too, for that matter.)


48. Participate in NaNoWriMo.


49. Win NaNoWriMo.