101 in 1001 for my 1000th post

So, for my 1000^th blog posting I wanted to do something special. And I decided that the something special would be a “101 things to do in 1001 days” list.  The first time I saw one of these was on Dave’s blog and I may or may not have soon after written a parody version called “102 things to do in 1,000,001 days” on a satire blog that may or may not have been removed from the Internet for possible libel issues. Anyway.

The idea behind this list is to come up with 101 things you want to do – things you’ve always meant to do but haven’t gotten around to,  things you want to challenge yourself to accomplish and, let’s be honest, a few things that sound good but you are pretty sure you’ll do so that you can gain the satisfaction of checking at least a few things off your list.  As well, it’s important that the goals are clearly defined/measurable (or, as we say in the Research Methods world – you need an “operational definition” of each) so that you know whether or not you’ve done it.  Props for this idea go to triplux, who appears to be the creator of this idea (or, at least, is the first Google hit for “101 in 1001”).

So, after much thinking and pondering and reflecting and considering and deliberating and contemplating and ruminating and reading the thesaurus, I have come up with the following 101 items that I intend to do in the next 1001 days:

1. go to New York City
2. leave the continent
3. live above ground
4. run another half marathon¹
5. run the full marathon in Sacramento (i.e., the net downhill one!)
6. assemble my last 7 years worth of photos into scrapbooks²
7. give something a cool name (i.e., not just adding the letter “y” to the end of what the thing is a la “froggy” or “puppy”)
8. get my blog onto WordPress.org
9. participate in a political campaign
10. attend Women’s Campaign School
11. conduct some kind of  education research project
12. conduct another systematic review for the Cochrane Collaoration
13. publish a paper in a scholarly journal on the training program that I run
14. write something creative (e.g., a story, a script or a poem)
15. change a life
16. write a book
17. teach a course at a college
18. ski at Whistler ³
19. ski at Big White
20. ski on Grouse Mountain
21. learn to snowboard (or at least try it)
22. go surfing & actually stay up on the board
23. skate at GM Place
24. coach a hockey team
25. hike Black Task
26. hike the West Coast Trail
27. write a computer program
28. start a business
29. learn French (at least a little bit. Like more than just what’s on the cereal box)
30. write a blog entry entitled Word to Your Moms, I Came to Drop Bombs⁴
31. read something by Salman Rushdie⁵
32. visit Macchu Picchu⁶
33. for one week, go to bed at 9 and read non-work related books⁷
34. read The Last Spike by Pierre Berton⁸
35. take pole dancing lessons. Like, a whole set of them, not just the intro class.
36. beat my current record of 10 points in a hockey season (which I achieved on the Blazing Blades team in both the Winter 2007/08 and the Spring 2008 seasons)
37. teach the same course at UBC twice⁹
38. participate in the “365 Day Challenge”. This involves taking a self-portrait every day for 365 days and posting it to the 365 Day Flickr group.
39. make a list of 100 things that make me happy
40. buy a Smart Car
41. buy an iPhone
42. skate on the Rideau Canal
43. take Tod to a Vancouver Canucks game [Accomplished: 13 January 2009, Canucks vs. NJ Devils. Next time I should try to take him to a game when the Canucks win!]
44. take Tod to a Vancouver Giants game
45. go to a BC Lions game
46. go to a Vancouver Canadians game
47. see a Vancouver White Caps game
48. start composting
49. keep a plant alive for a whole month
50. write in my journal every day for a month
51. go kayaking
52. camp at Joffre Lake
53. visit Galiano Island
54. visit Salt Spring Island
55. visit Bowen Island
56. save $500 in coins¹⁰
57. deposit that $500 worth of coins into my 40th birthday savings account
58. write 10 friends real letters, on paper, with a pen and snail mail them
59. follow Canada’s Food Guide to Healthy Eating every day for 1 month¹¹
60. go to a Bikram yoga class
61. go to a spa for a facial
62. visit 5 new American states¹²
63. visit Newfoundland
64. visit Nova Scotia
65. visit New Brunswick
66. visit the Yukon
67. visit Nunavit
68. do a 24 hr blogathon
69. do 15 minutes of yoga every morning for a month
70. sort through my many boxes of papers (most of which contain papers from my thesis), recycling the papers I don’t need and filing the ones I do need
71. find out my credit rating
72. determine my net worth
73. buy a bike
74. bike to work every day for two months
75. record a cooking show (at least 5 episodes)
76. publish said cooking show online
77. participate in five research projects (as a subject/participant, not as a researcher)
78. sell counter top dishwasher on Craig’s List¹³
79. see at least one Bard on the Beach performance¹⁴
80. put up a Christmas tree and decorate it with chili peppers¹⁵
81. live blog something
82. go to bed every night for a week with all the dishes cleaned
83. achieve inbox zero and maintain for one full week (where “maintain” = by the time I go to bed each night)
84. up my blog readership to an average of 200 readers a day¹⁶
85. break my current record of 460 blog views in a day¹⁷
86. write a blog posting about the Car Co-op¹⁸
87. go sky diving
88. resurrect my teaching blog
89. see the Dresdan Dolls in concert
90. see Groove Coverage in concert
91. see a show at Richard’s on Richards before it closes down
    
92. devise some sort of proper back up system for my computer files
93. get my ring from my great Auntie Bernice re-sized to actually fit my finger
94. buy a pair of brown dress pants¹⁹
95. bake at least one thing per month for 12 months in a row, without baking the same thing two months in a row²⁰
96. go zip cording
97. make homemade vegetarian marshmallows
98. go on a polar bear swim
99. recycle my old Sony Vaio desktop and my old Palm Pilot that are now just taking up space in my apartment!
100. scan all the photos from my pre-digital camera days
101. publish a blog posting for each of the next 1001 days!

So, there you have it.  I expect I’ll be posting updates when I get stuff on the list accomplished and possibly some excuses about my abject failures.

End Date: Monday, October 10, 2011 (thank you dateandtime.com!)

Footnotes

¹Ya, this one is totally cheating, since I’m already training for another half. But it’s hard to think of 101 things!

²Um, ya.  I have seven years worth of photos in boxes, waiting for scrapbooking.

³Can you believe that, having lived in Vancouver for more than eight years, I’ve not yet skied Whistler?

⁴This one is stolen from an homage to Dave’s 101 things in 1001 days list. He didn’t actually manage to do it, but I think I can. I think I can.

⁵Also stolen from Dave’s list. I’ve been wanting to read something by Rushdie, so here’s an extra push

⁶This is the last one I’m stealing from Dave’s list. Promise.  Also, Dan said I should go there.

⁷Stolen from Triplux.

⁸Which Sarah’s been telling me to read since forever. And which she just gave me for Christmas, so if I fail to accomplish this one, well, that would just be sad.

⁹I always seem to get a course for one term only.  I taught Nutritional Assessment last year as a sessional, but the department hired a new prof and he chose that as one of his courses to teach, so I don’t get to teach it this year. And then, this past term I taught another course as a sessional because the usual sessional needed a break from it for one term only, so I probably won’t get to teach it next year. Now I want some consistency!

¹⁰Just because it would be difficult.

¹¹i.e., meet the recommended number of servings for each food group every day and consume no more than one unhealthy “other” food per week.

¹²i.e., ones that I haven’t been to before. Or ones where I’ve only been to their airport/airport hotel (I’m looking at you Texas, Oregon and Arizona), if I actually go to somewhere other than the airport/airport hotel.

¹³since it doesn’t fit in my kitchen. =(

¹⁴I can’t believe I’ve lived in Vancouver for 8+ years and not once have I been to see Bard on the Beach. I like Shakespeare (I even have a minor in Drama that included a whole course in “Acting Shakespeare”). And I like beaches!

¹⁵Inspired by the tree at the Mexican resort I stayed at this Christmas.

¹⁶My 2008 average was 93 readers per day.

¹⁷Which occurred on Friday, September 26, 2008 as a direct result of my list of the hottest players in the NHL

¹⁸Which I have partly written and can’t seem to get around to finishing.

¹⁹I’ve been trying to find a good pair of brown dress pants since forever! Hopefully I’ll find them in the next 1001 days.

²⁰Because I really enjoy baking and I never seem to do it anymore.

1999 was a good year for movies and I need more adventure in my life

Yesterday, Airdrie posted her answers to interview questions given to her by Keira-Anne, who had posted her answers to interview questions given to her… well, you get the idea.  Anyhoo, I took Airdrie up on her offer to interview people.  Here are her questions and my answers:

1.  What are five of your favourite movies?

Fight Club definitely ranks up there with one of my fav movies, as does the Matrix.  I saw both of those when they first came out before there was a huge amount of hype about them (especially Fight Club, I don’t think I’d even heard of Fight Club and we just ended up seeing it because we wanted to see a movie and nothing else playing that day looked any good).  Fight Club was so well written, well acted, well directed and it was unlike any other movie I’d seen.  Similarly, the Matrix was unlike anything I’d ever seen before – the special effects, which were created because they were actually needed for the plot and not just because they looked cool, totally blew me away.  But the thing that really clinches it for me with both those movies is that not only were they very entertaining in their own right, they both had really insightful social commentaries to make.

American Beauty is another one of my favourites – like Fight Club & the Matrix, it had a compelling story, amazing direction and thoughtful social commentary to make.

I don’t think I ever laughed as hard at a movie as I did when I saw South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut in the theatre, so that has to be on the list.  I remember sitting in the theatre watching the South Park kids sitting in the theatre watching Terrance and Phillip sing, “Shut Your Fucking Face, Uncle Fucker.” We all sat their in our seats in the theatre, stunned, thinking, “Oh my god, did they really just *say* that?” while, on the screen, the South Park kids sat in their seats in the theatre saying, “Oh my god, did they really just *say* that?”  I heart self reflexivity.

Interestingly, all four of those movies were released in 1999. Best year for movies EVAR!

For my fifth movie, I’m going with Zoolander.  As evidenced by the inclusion of the South Park movie on my list, I like stupid humour.  Usually stupid humour is only funny the first time around, but Zoolander, for some reason, stays funny no matter how many times you watch it.  And I’ve watched Zoolander many, many times and it’s just as funny the 20th time as it was the first time.  Or maybe I like it because I’m really, really, ridiculously good looking.

2.  You are mailed a box with $10K cash inside, and a note that says “Pay It Forward!”  What do you do?

I would use it to pay off some of my friend Z’s student loan.  Z did her Ph.D. along with me and, like me, accumulated a significant student debt. Unlike me, she did her Ph.D. while raising two kids on her own.  She’s very bright and very dedicated and she’s one of the hardest workers I know.  Even though she now has a great job that she loves, one doesn’t go into academics for the money and I’m sure that $10K coming off her student loan debt would be a welcome relief.

Damn, now I wish I actually had $10K to pay forward!

3. What was the hardest thing about your teenage years? The best thing?

Me, all dressed up for the high school semi-formal dance.

I think the hardest thing about my teenage years was the crappy jobs I worked.  I knew that university was going to be expensive, so I had one (sometimes two) jobs throughout my teen years (actually, starting with my paper route at about age 8, I’ve always had at least one job!).  The worst of the worst was working in the brake part factory where my dad worked the summer that I was 19.  I worked midnights (which sucked) on a 400 degree oven that cooks the brake parts in the heat and humidity of a southern Ontario summer (which really, really sucked).  Oh yeah, and the material used to make the brake parts contained absestos.

The best part… hmm… I guess the best part was hanging out with my friends.

From a high school performance of "The Mousetrap." From left to right: Erin, me (dressed for my role as Miss Casewell), Sarah (dressed for her role as Mollie Ralston), Darren.

Despite having jobs and a volunteer position, I didn’t spend very much time during my teenage years doing homework, so had a fair bit of time to hang out with friends.  Mostly at Tim Horton’s (there really wasn’t a lot to do in the town I grew up in).  The semester I had all the same classes as my friend Sarah – that was good times.  Or when Sarah & I used to sign ourselves out of class, claiming we were working on the “gifted” program conference (in later years, we’d sign out younger students too). Or the time I packed the entire cast of our high school version of “The Mousetrap” into my parents’ Jeep to go watch a performance of “The Mousetrap” in Toronto.  Or the time I packed about a dozen people into my parent’s Jeep in front of my friend’s dad, who was a *cop*, to go to McDonald’s.  Yeah, so I guess the best thing in my teenage years was packing way too many people into my parents’ Jeep.

4.  What makes you sad?

Lots of things make me sad:  My Granny passing away.  Seeing how sad my niece was when my family dropped me off at the airport at the end of my recent trip to visit them (I miss her a lot!).  Seeing my friends or family in pain.  The song “Hate Me” by Blue October.  The thought that I may never pay off my enormous student loans.

Fortunately, many things make me happy too!

5.  Tell us about the last time you had an adventure.

Hmmm, define adventure. 

Getting home from Mexico was a bit of an adventure.  The 12 Bars of Christmas is always an adventure.  Surfing in Tofino in Januar was definitely an adventure, but that was almost two years ago now!

Damn, I really need more adventure in my life!

And now it’s time to meme:

Want to get in on the fun? You can be a part of it by following a few simple steps…
Send me an e-mail with the subject line “Interview Me”
I’ll respond within 24-ish hours with 5 questions directed to you (I promise to try and be unique)
Answer the questions on your blog (or Facebook or MySpace) and link back to this original post
Invite others to participate by re-posting these steps

Also, email me if you any good ideas for an adventure!

Image credits:

• Clapboard -posted by Ciak on Stock.xchng, used under this license
• Money – posted by Dawn M. Armfield on Flickr under a Creative Commons license
• Me in high school – well, those are my pics.
• Tear – posted by honikum on Flick under a Creative Commons license
• Adventure posted by Steve Garfield on Flickr under a Creative Commons license

“Thus, the crux of such models is the attempt to refute or falsify their predictions.”

Because apparently my blog is now just a vehicle for memes…

Today’s blog posting is the 56/5 meme. It works like this:

• Grab the closest book to you. Now.
• Go to page 56.
• Find the 5th sentence.
• Write that sentence as your status.
• Copy these instructions as a comment on your status.
• Don’t go looking for your favourite book, or the coolest one you have – just grab the closest one.

So, yeah, the sentence I got was:

“Thus, the crux of such models is the attempt to refute or falsify their predictions.”

You know you wish you read the books I read.  Seriously.

Six Things Meme

Apparently it’s meme week here on NTBTWK.  First Raul tagged me with a photo meme, and now Rebecca hit me with the six things meme.

First, da rules of da game:

1. Link to the person who tagged me. (That would be Rebecca)
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write six random things about yourself.
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they’ve been tagged and leave a comment on their blog. (Actually, if they’re regular readers of your blog, then #4 should do the trick.)
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

OK, now I have to write six random things.  Crap.   Hmmm… what can I tell you that I haven’t told y’all before?

1. I was born with a dislocated hip (a.ka. congenital hip dysplasia).  As a baby I underwent surgery, was in traction and then had to be in a half-body cast.  My maternal grandmother had the same thing, but they didn’t know how to fix it when she was a baby, she always walked with a limp.  Thanks to modern medicine, I’m 100% fine in the hip department.
2. Tonight for dinner I made a recipe that I got from a virtual stranger on Twitter.  I call it my Twitterecipe.
3. I would love love love to have my own cooking show.
4. I’m currently obsessed with the goings on in the federal government and the possibility of a Liberal-NDP coalition government.  I’m checking the CBC and CTV news websites even more than usual, have been watching CSPAN and am delighted that so many Canadians (myself included) are learning about how the Parliament works (No folks, you don’t elect a Prime Minister in Canada – you elect 308 members of the House of Commons and they get to decide who will be the P.M.!)
5. It looks like I get to teach a course at Simon Fraser University¹ next term!  I’m still waiting for my contract, but I’ve been offered an SFU course to teach.  I’ve never taught at SFU before, but I’ve only heard wonderful things about the place from everyone I’ve me that has gone there, so I’m pretty happy about that.

Now I have to tag six people, eh?  Well, I’ll go with the same five people who I tagged for the Five Things Meme², plus Tod (who is totally dying to be memed).

• Tod
• Stacia
• Almost Dr. Jacks
• Dave
• Jorge
• John McCain (I mean, what else does he have to do with his time, what with not being the President-elect and all)

¹Well, technically it’s not at SFU as it is a distance ed course, so I’ll be teaching it from my living room rather than up on Burnaby Mountain. But it’s an SFU course nonetheless.
²Because I can just copy and paste those and I really am that lazy.

Photo Meme

Raul tagged me with a meme and this gives me an easy out for today’s post (thanks Raul!). For this, I have to post the 6th photo on page 6 of my Flickr photostream.  Unfortunately, this picture is BO-RING!

It’s a picture of my shoe.

Now I’m supposed to tag 6 people. But… meh.  Feel free to do the meme if you want.  I leave it up to you, yo.

The Five Things Meme

After a crazy 9 hour workday where I had way too much actual thinking work to do and not nearly enough time in which to do it, which occurred after staying out until 2:30 a.m. at Shower Power at the Odyssey last night (which is always a good thing to do before a day when you have a tonne of things to get done right?), I came home to discover that Rebecca had tagged me with this meme.  And I’m like “Score! Me no need think for blog tonight! Blog idea be hand-delivered!”  Because apparently grammar goes right out the window when my brain is mush.

So. I’m now supposed to fill in the answers to the headings in this meme:

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago¹:

• Completing the last year of my Honours Biochemistry degree, with a minor in Drama, at McMaster University.
• Rehearsing my role as Desdemona in a scene from Shakespeare’s Othello in the park with my friend Jen (she was playing Othello)  (see “minor in Drama” above).  And saying “We are practicing Shakespeare in the paaaaark.”
• Applying to med school and thinking about applying to grad school (see “Honours Biochemistry” major above).
• Driving my beloved little white 1989 Honda Civic.
• Watching WWF (the wrestling, not the Wildlife Fund) at Copps Coliseum. No, really.

5 Things on my to-do list today²:

• Attend a workshop at UBC.
• Participate in a WebEx meeting with a group of people with whom I am writing a paper.
• Phone meeting with one of my trainees.
• Work on my grant application.
• Cook myself a proper meal.

5 snacks I like:

• Dark chocolate (the darker, the better).
• Potato chips.
• Slices of apple with peanut butter. But not Kraft PB.  The just-squished-up-peanuts kind of PB.
• Egg McMaster.
• Go to Hell Stephen Harper Apple Crisp.

5 Things I would do it I was³ were a millionaire⁴:

• Pay off my student loans.
• Put a down payment on a house in Vancouver.
• Travel somewhere outside of North America (which I’ve never done!  Isn’t that pathetic?).  Maybe Ireland?  Somewhere in South America?
• Buy tickets to the 2010 Olympic hockey gold medal game.
• Invest. ‘cuz the stock market is always a sure bet, right? 😉

5 Places I’ve Lived in (for various lengths of time)⁵:

• My parents’ home in Milton, Ontario (18 years).
• Moulton Hall Residence at McMaster University. In the Penthouse. (8 months).
• Apartment⁶ on Main Street in Hamilton, Ontario (~2 years).
• Apartment in Burnaby, BC (when I first moved to BC, lived there for about 6 months).
• Point Grey area of Vancouver, BC (in one basement suite for ~5 years, and now in a different basement suite for the last 2+ years).

5 Jobs I have had:

• Sessional Faculty, University of British Columbia.
• Research Assistant, at both McMaster University & UBC.
• Factory worker, Brake Parts Inc. (I worked on a line with asbestos-filled brake pads that were being cooked in an insanely hot oven.  Graveyard shift.  That was a tough job!⁷)
• Telephone operator, Halton Answering Service.  (That was a fun job!)
• Donut store employees⁸, Baker’s Dozen Donuts⁸. (Baking was fun. Servings customers, not so much.)

5 People I tag:

• Stacia – because she’s pregnant and due any time now, so I’m sure she has nothing better to do than this meme.
• Almost Dr. Jacks – because she always complains that it’s hard to come up with things to blog about. And it’s not like she has a dissertation to write, post doc apps to compose and job talks to give.
• Dave – because he doesn’t blog nearly enough and I miss his writing. And it’s not like he needs to fix up his blog template, which he managed to royally fack up.
• Jorge – because he also doesn’t blog enough and I miss his writing. And it’s not like he has an adorable little daughter that he’d rather spend his time with, like, rather than doing this meme.
• John McCain. What? He has a blog. I don’t read it, but I’m willing to bet he hasn’t done this meme yet.

¹I have to admit, I had to look in my photo album to remember what the heck I was doing 10 years ago. Because I’m old and my memory, she’s not so good.
²These are 5 things that were on my to-do list, that I actually did, since I’m writing this at night.
³Yes, I really am that much of an uppity grammar snob. It’s a problem.
⁴I’m taking “millioniare” literally here. Meaning that I only have $1 million dollars. But I’m also assuming that that is after tax.
⁵Now I feel like I have to list the one other place I’ve lived, since I’ve only lived in 6 places and this list just feels so incomplete without it! Apartment on Ontario St. in Milton, Ontario (~2 years).
⁶Wow, I was just proof-reading this posting and I’d written “apparently” instead of “apartment.” That is, I wrote “Apparently on Main St. in Hamilton, ON.” Because I guess I couldn’t remember those two years?
⁷On the plus side, I got to work two weeks on day shift and the lunch truck that shows up on day shift rocked. And one time I got to spend my shift painting a picnic table with a hot boy.
⁸My friend Jody would affectionately refer to me as “the Donut Hut Slut.” Has a nice ring to it, eh?