A meme that's actually productive

My to-do list for August 8, 2004 to May 6, 2007. (Calculation by timeanddate.com). A work in progress, so check back occasionally if you're intrigued.

Last updated: December 31, 2006; 45 completed. The red items are completed; the green ones are in progress. I'm not gonna make it, due to going back to school full-time while continuing to work, but maybe I'll tack that extra year onto my deadline here.

SoCal tourism
1. Jurassic Museum of Technology (link) -- COMPETED, 8/8/04. Fun, but incomprehensible. We decided they should rename it The Museum of Weird Shit.
2. Museum of Natural History during LA: Light, Motion, Dreams exhibit (link) -- COMPLETED, 1/2/05. Good to see the whole museum with Rick and not a bunch of 10-year-olds, though the more time you take to stroll the exhibits, the more you realize they haven't been updated since the 70s. The Light/Motion/Whatever exhibit had some good moments, such as the audio presentations on how Southlanders have fucked up the natural environment of the area, but was overall a bit too vague and "Hollywood" for me with all the pretty flashing images that meant nothing.
3. The Getty (link)
4. California Science Center (link) -- COMPLETED, 1/something/05 and 3/4/05 for Bodyworlds I and II, displays of, well, corpses. The museum itself is interesting enough but could use some updating. One of these days, I'll ride the high-wire bike and try not to wet myself.
5. LACMA (link)
6. La Brea Tar Pits (link)
7. Spend a day walking and taking photos downtown
8. Spend a day walking and taking pictures in Venice
9. Universal Studios (link) with Rick
10. San Diego Zoo (link)
11. Attend a Dia de los Muertos event (something like this one?)
12. Attend a Doo Dah Parade (link)-- COMPLETED, November 21, 2004
13. Drive to San Juan Capistrano with a salmon under the hood of the car (idea from Lonely Planet newsletter)
14. See cigars get rolled at LA's cigar factory (link)
15. Flugtag (link)

Nature
16. Death Valley (link) -- COMPLETED, March 2005. Awesome, if over-touristed.
17. Visit some hot springs
18. See the Joshua Tree (link) cactus garden -- COMPLETED, March 2006
19. Go camping by myself

Travel
20. Mexico
21. Arizona -- COMPLETED (but I need to go back), 11/14/04. I didn't stay overnight, but did check out a national park and ate dinner at a hole-in-the-wall, so I'm counting it.
22. Vancouver
23. Asia (likely won't happen, but you never know...specifically I'd like to see Eric & Bella & baby Emily in Taiwan, and Catherine at her new home in Hong Kong Catherine now lives in Saudi Arabia, but I have in-laws in Japan all of a sudden!)
24. Poor Man's Vegas (the idea here is to mostly ignore the strip and stay at decrepit old-skool casinos downtown and play penny video poker with the locals. The buffets are cheaper downtown, too.) -- COMPLETED 12/06, damn Vegas is a pain in the ass during off-season! And downtown is ever so slowly becoming middle-class.
25. Bay to Breakers (link)

Food
26. Try El Pollo Loco (link; I have no idea why I want to do this, except that the name "Crazy Chicken" is awesome, but at least it'll be cheap) -- COMPLETED, 10/16/04. The chicken pretty good, the mac and cheese was nigh-delicious, but the mashed potatoes were lumpy in the bad way. They also gave me tortillas for no reason I can see, though I suppose I could have pulled my chicken pieces apart to make a burrito. As a bonus, this food was free, a perk of taking East LA 8th graders to Cal State LA to take the PSAT, which sadly does not count for #63 on this list as I wasn't able to prep them much.
27. Find out if Popeye's (link) is any good when you're not under the influence -- COMPETED, 8/10/04. It's not. It's pretty good for fast food, but not *that* good.
28. Have Thanksgiving dinner on some random day of the year
29. Have hungover breakfast at the Pantry (link) -- COMPLETED, 5/29/05. I was not hungover, but I was none the better for the wear of being up until 3am, so good enough. The Pantry is an awesome old-school diner that is good not just by half-assed California diner standards, but by my more picky northeast ones. Good sourdough toast.
30. Raise herbs (other than catnip. Basil?) on the patio -- COMPLETED, 8/05. Fresh basil is yummy, and all I had to do was get off my ass and buy a plant from Trader Joe's.
31. Try a bahn mi Vietnamese sandwich (link) -- COMPLETED, 12/10/04. Yummy sub sandwich for $2! Bite me, Subway!
32. Go to Bakersfield for Basque food and Picon (link)
33. Try all of Robert's recipes (Robert is our gourmet cookin' friend who gave us a a collection of favorite recipes as a going-away present from Boston. The ones I've tried have been excellent.)
34. Have Chinese food in Monterey Park -- COMPLETED sometime in 2006
35. Have Mexican food in East LA -- COMPLETED, kind of, 9/17/04. I work in East LA now, so I'm sure I'll have plenty of chances to try more interesting offerings, but the first place I went out of sheer convenience was a fast food joint I've never heard of before, Juan Pollo. Holy crap, that was a lot of food for $3.19, in the form of 3 tacos. Not little $1 tacos like I'm used to, but huge-ass ones. Whew. Two will be fine next time. Update: I did the real deal on 10/12/04, in a hole in the wall where I had to climb over cases of soda to read the menu and the guy behind the counter didn't speak any English. We communicated mostly in mime, which reminded me of Germany. Then Jose Carlos at work drilled me on how to say "Yo queiro un burrito de carnitas" like less of a gringa. UPDATE 2006: I do this all the time now. Yum.
36. Try the Oaxacan restaurant at Palms & Sepulveda (link) -- COMPLETED 12/23/06. Mmm, grasshoppers and mole!
37. Gilroy Garlic Festival (link) -- COMPLETED, 7/05. Garlic frog legs, mmm mmm!

Shopping
38. Make or buy a good lightweight (i.e. year-round) knit hat
39. [TMI about women's underwear]
40. Buy combat boots (I miss having some) -- COMPLETED 2006, $4 at Goodwill, they are not true combat boots because they have heels, but they are bad-ass shitkickers so mission accomplished in the spirit of the law
41. [TMI in general]

Social events, hedonism, and general trouble
42. Drink a cold alcoholic beverage in a pool or hot tub (this is LA, after all) -- COMPLETED, 5/21/05. Beer in a hot tub, yum yum! (Sing to the tune of "Shave and a haircut, two bits.")
43. Hold a Games Night like Corey and Andrea used to in Boston
44. Organize a Sunset Strip happy hour pub crawl
45. Go skinny dipping (uh, preferably in the dark...)
46. Have a "wear the outfit you never get to wear" party like Kirsten did in Boston
47. Organize an MTA-enabled pub crawl
48. Have people over to play Asshole (I've only played once, and it was a hoot)
49. Have a cookies 'n' gluewein party (this was fun in Hamburg) -- COMPLETED, 12/20/04. This could have gone a lot better: attendance was for shit due to many of our friends still being at the age when they have "home" (where they live) and "home home" (where they are whenever class is not in session). Blah.
50. Go to a bar in LA with no TVs (I'll have to find one first) -- COMPLETED, 10/29/04. Turns out I'd already been to a bar with no TV, but only put in a quick appearance for a friend's birthday and hadn't stayed long enough to notice. Upon my return, I noticed and rejoiced. The bar is Sapphire, in the Valley. It's a trendy, cruisy lounge kind of place and is therefore annoying in other ways, despite its lack of boob tube. For instance, it's too dark and the music is too loud. But still. No TV.
51. Ride a mechanical bull
52. [TMI on my degeneracy] -- COMPLETED, 8/22/04

Physical
53. Do the marathon in under 6 hours -- holy shit, COMPLETED, 3/6/05. The sub-six hours is true if you go by my "chip time" (the time from when I crossed the star line to when I crossed the finish line) and not the less precise "clock time" (from when the elites crossed the start line and I was blocks away, to when I crossed the finish line). Close enough.
54. Go to Venice Beach. Start walking north. See how far you get.
55. Go to Venice beach El Segundo. Start walking south. See how far you get.
56. Get to the top of the Haiku Stairs (link; might be difficult because the wankers are now posting a GUARD at the bottom of the stairs. Crap.)
57. Get comfortable riding a bike at the beach
58. Try snorkeling - COMPLETED, 12/something/04
59. Try bodyboarding
60. Be able to do 100 situps, leg lifts, jumping jacks, windmills, and cherry pickers
61. Wear the crazy pants Rick bought in Amsterdam in public (filed here because I'd have to lose some weight for this.)

Karma
62. Send a cool postcard to that guy in Encinitas with the rock 'n' roll house (link) -- COMPLETED, 9/05. I sent him a Sardinia postcard, though I didn't mail it until I got back. Still, it's random enough.
63. Teach/tutor P/SAT to at least one one working class kid for free or cheap -- COMPLETED spring 2005, through my usual rich-kid SAT company, ironically. This was actually fairly disappointing, mostly due to attendance issues, but it really helped out a few of the kids. Summer '05, tutored one of the CITs at camp. Taught another class in '06.

Music
64. Go to hip-hop club night at Johnny Foxx's, my neighborhood dive/sports/music bar (link) -- NEEDS REVISION as Johnny Foxx's is no more.
65. Go to a goth club night in LA and see how it compares to Man Ray in Boston
66. Go to an alternative/new wave club night, and be unabashed about it.
67. Sing solo karaoke, preferably a crowd-pleasing song, but not Baby Got Back like all the other white girls, even though I *do* have a bigger butt than they do -- COMPLETED, 8/25/05 at Johnny Foxx's, singing "In Heaven There Is No Beer," which counts as a crowd-pleaser because by the end, people I didn't know were clapping and singing along. Sadly, this version featured a long musical break instead of the vaunted verse "In heaven there is no smoke/And so, let's have another toke/'Cause someday when we croak/All our friends will be smoking all our smoke." UPDATE: It turns out singing solo karaoke for the first time is like taking off your training wheels, and it's fine after that. Also, you'll start to suspect that your friends had only been singing with you to be nice, sort of how like your dad didn't really want to run behind you holding the back of the bike, but it was his duty.
68. Try Babe's and Ricky's Inn (link) every night of the week it's open -- two down, three to go, and they're starting to recognize us! Sweet!
69. Purchase a guitar and learn at least one song
70. See Mutaytor again -- Field trip to the fire-spinning, drum-dancing, aeriel-spinning, scantily clad freaks COMPLETED, 8/14/04. we even Mutayted two new people, though I'm not sure they liked it.

Reading

70. Subscribe to the LA Times (and read it) -- COMPLETED, 9/18/04. That is, I've subscribed, and am reading it so far. I'm pretty determined to keep it up. As a side note, I'm glad I didn't say "cover to cover," because I'd forgotten how much irrelevant bougeois crap crowds major metro newspapers, especially the Sunday edition. Update: point proved, I've gone over to Sunday-only as of 11/05.
71. Read 3 graphic novels -- COMPLETED, 12/04 "Ghost World" by Daniel Clowes (more of a comics compilation than "graphic novel" but good enough); "David Boring," also by Daniel Clowes; "Persepolis" by Marjane Satrapi, and I'll be going back for more and more because now I'm hooked.
72. Read all unread Chuck Palahniuk books -- COMPLETED
73. Read five (preferably non-fiction) books about LA -- 4/5 completed: "Always Running" by Luis Rodriguez; "Escalante: The Best Teacher in America," by Jay Matthews; "And Still We Rise: The Trials and Triumphs of Twelve Gifted Inner-City High School Students," by Miles Corwin; "A Year In Van Nuys" by Sandra Tsing Loh; "Inside the Crips" by some dude whose name I don't recall, plus as a bonus I'm reading "The Great Black Way" about South Central in the 40s.
74. Read 3 books about New Jersey -- 1/3 completed. "But Enough About Me" by Jancee Dunn, only partially about New Jersey but good enough, plus it let me understand a bit more about how the "popular" girls thought back then
75. Read 5 books on urban planning
76. Read 5 mystery/detective novels - COMPLETED. "Motherless Brooklyn" by Jonathan Lethem, which I enjoyed, though admittedly more for the depiction of Tourette's than for the actual detective plot; "Zen and the Art of Murder," in which the body is discovered at one of the better beer bars in LA; "Devil in a Blue Dress" by Walter Mosely, cool 50s South Central setting; "Fletch" by Gregory MacDonald, much darker than the movie; "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time" by Mark Haddon, why does every detective have a disorder of some sort?
77. Try one western novel (any suggestions?) -- COMPLETED, 9-10/05 with the long-ass "Lonesome Dove."
78. Read (and finish) any book by James Joyce
79. Make a collection of favorite poetry (and donate/sell books made obsolete by this project)
80. Read War & Peace
81. Buy a K Chronicles book (link) -- COMPLETED, 5/05. All hail the one-man business: I paid by sending money to Keith Knight's PayPal account, and it arrived Media Mail with my name and address in the familiar handwriting. And he drew me a little sheep inside the book.

Couch potato
82. Watch old episodes of Degrassi Junior High -- out now on DVD, yes!
83. See a midnight movie -- COMPLETED, 6/05, Donnie Darko directors' cut at the Nuart, awesome.
84. Get Netflix squeue below 101 discs (by watching discs, not deleting them from the queue) -- I've determined that this may never happen.
85. Buy Tivo and a lifetime subscription (lifetime subsription no longer exists but otherwise COMPLETED 12/06

Mundane maintenance
86. On weekdays I work for less than 4 hours: clean surfaces, vacuum, mop. - I've determined that this may never happen. I am a slob at heart, no matter how much time I have on my hands.
87. Get rug shampooed or do it myself [it turns out Rick has done this of his own accord since I made the list, but I should still do it myself at some point]
88. Get the living will stuff notarized -- COMPLETED 2006, we had two friends witness it.
89. Pay off German tax bill -- COMPLETED, 7/05.
90. Touch up and undent car -- CLOSE ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT WORK, 7/05. The big hood dent has been hammered out, the broken headlight replaced, and the worst of the scrapes magically removed by some mystical body shop goo in a bottle.
91. Make the shower WHITE (damn mildew) -- COMPLETED, 9/something/04. The answer was bleach all along.
92. Get eyes examined -- GROSS, COMPLETED 12/12/06, but now I have to go back :(
93. Get fountain pen fixed (may simply require pliers to get the stuck ink cartridge out) -- COMPLETED, 8/30/04. I don't know what sort of crack I was smoking when I said "pliers," as I was thinking "tweezers." Even tweezers were too big. What finally did the trick was the nail file attachment on a Leatherman. My ink cartridges still work, so now I can once again engage in ridiculous ironic activities such as endorsing my food service paychecks with a Mont Blanc. (Why do I have such an item? It was a going-away present from the lovely Becky Tan of the American Women's Club in Hamburg. Monogrammed and everything. Class-ay.)
94. Earn $[ahem] or more per year in any calendar year -- working towards this with this stupid teaching credential!
95. Sew all the missing buttons on all my clothes -- COMPLETED, 12/12/04. I had no idea why this took me over a year. Now it's like having new shirts!
96. Make a scrapbook of time in Europe
97. Sell, donate, or throw away 101 items - COMPLETED '06

Miscellaneous personal development
98. Learn enough Spanish to communicate, however clumsily, with people who don't know English -- took a class, now continuing with books and CDs. I get to practice a little at work.
99. Edit nanowrimo novel
100. [personal]
101. Meditate for 1/2 hour without my mind wandering (figured I'd end with a nice impossible one)