day four hundred and six

ohhhh my. i'm going to (mostly) ignore the fact that it's been nearly two months and just sort of dive right in here... because progress has indeed been made!

i bought apartment flowers (#44) for my fancy schmancy dinner party (#65) a.k.a. THANKSGIVING IN SEATTLE!!! this year marked the first time in our familial history that the elwarts did not celebrate turkey day in the greater chicago area, and it went off without a hitch! surrounded by loved ones who traveled from near and far to spend the holiday in my home, i truly felt blessed. and distracted enough by all the new recipes (#59) that i didn't take a ton of pictures, and certainly none that illustrated the massive, two-day undertaking that this really was. and no group shots (actually pretty bummed about that). but, here's what we got:

why yes, i arranged those myself.

and picked individual buds out for these little bottles that i've had for years but never used

oh, and we had turkey, dressing, potatoes (mashed AND sweet), green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, baked brie, salads (yea kelly!), homemade bread (thanks john!), pretzel/jell-o mold (whoo kyle!) two different kinds of pie (again, props to kyle on the pecan), and probably some other things i'm missing. it was seriously wonderful, i learned a lot, and i'm jealous of my three-weeks-ago-self.

totally busted being helpful in the kitchen. (mac + ipad + mixing bowls)

i'm really excited to be using my new mixer!

one of the dinner tables

and the other. hard to see, but those are last-minute place settings fashioned out of a cut-up envelope. martha stewart, SIT DOWN.

the elwarts have landed!

sister, sister, never knew how much i missed ya! (sigh... she's probably too young to get that)

haha his face isn't actually blurry there, but camera malfunction or not it's all i got!

guests of honor. all class.

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for part one of kyle's birthday gift we went to see passion pit at the moore theater (#35). of all the live shows that i actually counted towards this goal, this was hands down my favorite. i realized i hadn't paid more than a ten dollar door cover to see any band, let alone one whose songs i already knew, for over a year. so i was really looking forward to this.

we went out to a nice dinner beforehand, but i promptly felt sick afterward and we ALMOST DIDN'T MAKE IT. but i persevered. for passion pit. i took a timeout in the backseat of my car as kyle drove around the city looking for the perfect spot that would allow us to run right inside as soon as i was feeling better. he miraculously found a space right outside the theater, and although we missed the first song of their set as we were running up to the tippy-top of the balcony to snag some of the only seats left, once in place we danced it all away. and i even remembered to take some shots! they don't capture the band very well, but they do perfectly illustrate the second best part of their show - the lights display. oooooOOOOooohhhh.

green!

and blue!

omg and red!

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finally, i've been going over and over this list and have realized that i'm just not as into some of these goals as i was one year ago, and others of them just aren't as feasible anymore. on my next post i'll go through each one i'm eliminating (and why), and what it's being replaced with. right now it looks like i'll need to replace seven goals. i've got some great ideas, including tasks that didn't make the original cut last year, but i'm open to more suggestions so lay 'em on me!

day three hundred and forty-seven

the election is less than three weeks away, and i've been neglecting this blog, so quick and dirty update time. a while back kyle and i went to a super fun rockabilly show at the tractor tavern in ballard. we got semi-costumed for it, but the crowd was more country rockabilly than i expected. so were the bands. but in a good way! ruby d and the snakehandlers definitely stood out that night, so i bought one of their albums and play it regularly on work-mandated road trips to the peninsula. it hits the spot.

ruby d!

rockabilly get up

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last sunday i sensed that time was running low on opportunities to carve a pumpkin this year. the weather wasn't great and i wasn't crazy about driving forty+ minutes to squish through mud, so i just walked across the street to check out safeway's parking lot selection. it was crap. but hey, options were limited and i was driven to get this thing done right then and there. so i picked one out and used stu as my feline inspiration. i'm no artist, but i think it came out pretty good.


i drew this, taped it to the pumpkin and punched holes for a kind of connect-the-dots guidance. then i cut it out, which, plus cleaning it up to make it look pretty, took about twice as long as i thought it would...

... but it was worth it! scared kitty!

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day three hundred and nineteen

two quick updates today. last night i hauled up to northgate to see maddox's boyfriend's band, below blackstar, play. the first band, banzai surf, was superfun (their name sort of says it all - they closed with a "flight of the bumblebee"/"hava nagila" mash-up, surf style). the second act was just awful, really. but then finally below blackstar closed the night right. admittedly it's not my kind of music, but i appreciated what the crew poured into the performance nonetheless. i remembered last minute that i should probably get a picture to chronicle the list event, so maddox snapped this with her phone right quick:

her phone's flash was surprisingly bright, and i responded accordingly. that's christopher in the background.

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aaaaaand i'm replacing another unread book on my list. i'm starting to realize that perhaps there's a reason these books have been collecting dust on my shelves, permanently dog-eared somewhere around page twelve. the most recent elimination: spinning straw into gold: what fairy tales reveal about the transformations in a woman's life. now stick with me - i thought this could be really interesting. i'm always on the lookout for feminist-/anti-feministings, especially in well-established, seemingly familiar territory. and fairy tales, all full of damsels in distress and old crones tryin' to cramp their style, seem ripe with material; unfortunately, in this case, the author took that a little too far for me. my eyes were already tired from all the rolling long before i reached page thirty-four, but it's this line on that last page that elicited an actual "ughck" kind of noise from me (in a public place, no less):

"...[the Queen] returns to the dwarfs' cottage bearing a basketful of apples, holding a particularly pretty sample, with one cheek red as sexuality and the other white as barrenness, cradling the black seeds of fertility and death at its core."

so, yeah... ughck. in an attempt to preserve the feminist nature of the original text, i've chosen america and the pill: a history of promise, peril, and liberation to replace it. i decided to buy it after reading bitch's book review, where they recommended it "for anyone who's ever watched a yaz commercial and wondered, how did we get here?"

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day three hundred and nine

this is my left ear:

it has always made me happy. the piercings are neat-looking and there's a symmetrical, planned-ness to it all...

this was my right ear:

i hated it! both of these piercings were done on a whim (six and three years ago, respectively) when i had a free afternoon in madison with some extra cash lying around. it just all looks so random. i've always liked the placement, but not the jewelry, so i finally did something about it. thanks to a coupon from strangermart, and with the help of two incredibly friendly piercing artists at deep roots tattoo parlor, i love my right ear again! in addition to the jewelry upgrade i got a new piercing (#38) right alongside the top one (those are called forward helixes, apparently).

this my right ear, now:

the swelling will go down eventually and i plan on replacing the barbell on the new piercing with a smaller one to match the other, shorter one.

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earlier this week i took the long trip out to sequim for some work meetings. usually i leave early in the morning and get back in the evening, which means close to five hours in the car/on a boat. this time i decided to reserve a hotel room in advance and head out a day early, ideally making the trip more worth my while. but when i got there, i discovered what has to be one of the scarier motels that the olympic peninsula has to offer. i was already pretty bummed out and lonely for most of the day since i didn't talk to anyone except the guy who checked me in and the lady who served me coffee that morning. so i used this list as an excuse to get myself out of that horrible room for a bit and head to the theater solo (#32).

the port angeles theater didn't have a ton of options - i'd already seen inception, the other guys, and the expendables, and the last exorcism was surely too scary for me to watch then head back to the sundowner motel after dark, so i went with the american (george clooney). i was under the impression this would be a bourne-esque action thriller, but really, it's one of the saddest, quietest films i've seen... all. about. the loneliness of isolation. i think it was really well done, and a very pretty thing to watch, but due to my emotional state at the time i probably would've been better off with going the distance. bleck.

but something i learned, with the help of my good friend pam's insight, is that going to a movie alone allows you to have your own, personal experience of the film. she and i are alike in that much of our theater-going is shaped by what we think our companions are feeling as we watch the film together. if i laugh at something that my friend scoffs at, it can distract me and take me out of that moment. but when i'm alone i'm free to completely lose myself, and that's a new and really satisfying feeling for me.

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in literary news, i finished my booky wook. and i really liked it! russell brand is smart, funny, and tragic, but most importantly a brilliant entertainer who's done some livin'. i highly recommend it. and as far as this goal (#6) is concerned, i realized that when i said i'd read all the books i've bought, i meant "at this point, when i'm creating this list, right now... all the books i own need to have been read in the next three-ish years." at that point i had five unread books on me. i've purchased more since i started this project, but i think i'll leave those off the list and keep goal #6 narrow in scope.

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finally, even though i already counted #46 completed when i painted my kitchen chairs, i want to brag about how awesome the entire set looks now that i've gotten around to painting the table as well. it took an entire sunday, but it's so worth it. that color on top is brighter than this picture lets on, but check it:

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day two hundred and ninety-four

last week's primary election prevented some list progress, so i'm regrettably pretty light on the updates for now. but first, quickly, our book club finally finished GEB (#7)! it was a long but eye-opening journey to be sure, and i like to think we've all become better friends for it too. i counted this as one of my friends' favorite books because it was a long-time goal of kyle's to read it. success!

a group of us also went to the experience music project's exhibitchin' concert celebrating 60s soul and the museum's new supremes exhibit (#35). we dressed up and danced the night away (in go-go boots!) and wow, the skychurch was an awesome venue. i hope to make it back sometime.

i think this was the moonspinners (courtesy of the emp's flickr page)

i only had my phone to take pictures chronicling the evening, and we were in a pretty blurry state, so this is the best i got...

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movies were also seen (#33)! thanks to kyle and jake's awesome viewing room (complete with old-school projector and blackout curtains) i finally saw episodes four, five and six of star wars, the first two of which were oscar winners. done and done!

and another books update... included in #6 is catch 22. i have tried to read this book probably five or six times. i am giving up. after finishing ender's game a couple months ago i replaced its spot on my bedside table with catch 22 and have only made it twelve pages in. and come to think of it, i'm pretty sure the only reason i picked it up in the first place was when i started listening to the band catch 22 back in high school. i bought a sweatshirt of theirs that featured a quote from the novel on the back: "there was no telling what people might find out once they felt free to ask whatever questions they wanted to." it sounded interesting, and i thought it was my obligation to read the book if i'm gonna walk around wearing this sweatshirt all the time. but, i just can't do it. life's too short to try to unnecessarily trudge through something i find unenjoyable. so i'm replacing this listbook with the most ridiculous thing i can think of: russell brand's my booky wook (a memoir of sex, drugs and stand-up). this one's going much faster...


also... sigh. kyle and i attempted to cross off my drive-in movie goal, but failed most spectacularly as we realized, right when the first film of the double feature began, that i do not have a working AM radio. D'OH! we even got there super early, set ourselves up with pillows, blankets, and beer and subway for dinner, and everything...

see? super-coze! and yes i whited out my license plate with ms paint. internet is scary!

the screen we never got to watch :( it was really pretty depressing that we had to leave, but i saved the tickets and we'll do better next time.

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day two hundred and sixty-seven

you guys! i totally just completed a goal without even trying! #81 = done. i was so busy this week that i literally not once sat on my couch until just now, when i turned on the tv and realized how foreign it felt. sweet! i wonder if some time in the next two years facebooking will become just as easy to stop wasting time on. here's hoping!

in other news, a bit of advice to anyone who happens to be reading: don't set up subscriptions for three magazines in one day unless you seriously love junk mail. it's like i can't throw it out fast enough.

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i also finally caught up on my word-a-day calendar today by cruising through three months' worth of word origins. here are my favorite lessons:

subaru - japanese word for the constellation we call the pleiades, six of whose stars are visible to the naked eye. subaru was the name chosen when, in 1953, six japanese companies joined to manufacture the now popular line of automobiles.

gauche - i only started hearing this word recently, but i've gathered it means something like socially inept. apparently it's derived from the french word meaning "left," as in the left hand, to which many languages attribute bad things. ha!

the zip in zip code comes from the bureaucratic phrase "zoning improvement plan," coined in 1963.

the devil in deviled eggs refers to the red spice paprika. well, ok, duh...

bit (as in computers) - the condensed form of "binary digit." what!

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aaaaaand finally, turns out my good friend liz has plans to sell her london flat. that flat was the impetus for goal #68, but now it looks like she and her husband will be yacht-dwellers instead. i get pretty seasick pretty reliably, so it's time to come up with #68's replacement. i welcome suggestions, but am currently leaning towards getting my motorcycle endorsement. that's how awesome riding in kauai was.

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day two hundred and sixty-four

'twas a weekend of pro-sports, and i have another item crossed off (#36). kyle's brother kendal was in town, and in order to show him a good time we went to both the mariners game on friday and the sounders game on sunday. we lost the first and won the second. and both were super fun, minus the twenty minute journey to find our seats at qwest field, during which all three goals of the match were scored. it's not as bad as it sounds, since we caught a couple of those while circling the perimeter at near-field level. i have more pictures than i do things to say about the games, so here they are!

mandatory group shot under the cheesy mural

the bros

it was jon's first pro-baseball game everrrrrrr! wheeeeeeeeee!

ok, so this was our first attempt at this picture during the sounders game, and i swear a goal was about to be scored. kyle refused to take another after seeing the hilarious outcome. whatever, the guy in green behind us is with me...

me and the brothers k post-sounders

i've officially been to four sports games now since i started the list last fall, and it should be noted that when i wrote these goals i didn't intend to just, you know, stop doing certain things once i hit the mark. i'm sure i'll go to more games, just like i'm sure i'll see more than four more live shows in the next two years. those goals were really just a way to make sure i kept on doing fun stuff and wasted as little time sitting on the couch as possible. ... onward!

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day two hundred and forty-eight

i finished ender's game (#7) while waiting for my ferry to kingston the other day. since this one was recommended to me by quite a few friends i was really looking forward to it. and i did like it, but frankly not as much as i thought i would. maybe it had been built up too much and it couldn't have possibly met my expectations. or maybe it was too sci-fi for me. but the more i think about it, i think it's that my favorite books have always been relatable. maybe i would see something in one of the characters that made me reflect more deeply upon my own motivations. or the story would be built upon foundations i spend a lot of time thinking about already. ender's game was really neither of those for me, so i wasn't as excited to get through it as i have been with others, but the ending was beautiful. and there were a few good takeaways, the greatest of which concerned how we might learn to think of our enemies. perhaps my favorite line of the book:

"in the moment when i truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment i also love him. i think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves."

a book about war revealed itself to be, in fact, about love. so it won me over.

day two hundred and forty-four

woah, one whole month has gone by nearly! it's been brought to my attention that i'm "woefully behind." but i was only slacking on the blogging part, really. i'm still doin' stuff.

#58: my second mix cd was for kyle, and it celebrated the conclusion of his GIS class and thus the official start of full-time fun. all the tracks had "sun," "summer," or some other such happy word in the title. this in fact happened nearly a month ago, but still, yay!

#70: i spent the recent holiday weekend camping on orcas island with some of my favorite people (eleven of them!) kyle and jake had the foresight back in january to reserve two campsites in moran state park for four days and three nights o' fun. an hour and a half drive north from seattle, another hour-long ferry ride from anacortes to orcas, followed by about forty-five minutes of quiet, windy-road driving got my car-full of campers there just in time for s'mores on friday night. we hiked, we played card games, we ate (a lot), we drank (even more) and had an all-around awesomely laidback time.

awesome tree (with jake and emy in it) about a half mile from our campsite

further along the hike - he jumped off that bridge shortly after. chris took pictures of all the jumpers from below and hopefully i can toss a shot or two up here

what we spent most of our time doing - chillaxing by the fire


there was also a lot of this

spectacular view of the san juan islands from the top of mount constitution at sunset

looking west-ish from the top of the tower - about 2,400 feet up


looking out a tower window

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the end

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day two hundred and seventeen

number crunching time! as of today, june ninth, i have achieved twenty-nine goals, with fifteen in-process. some of those will be completed by nature of the 1001st day's arrival, but others require significant time expenditure on my part. anyway, this puts me at a 28.7% completion rate. meanwhile, two hundred and seventeen days have passed, or 21.2% of the total (i'm starting to wish i'd gone with "100 in 1000" for round numbers' sake). so, i'm ahead of the game! nevertheless i'm getting worried about completing some of these goals - particularly the more time intensive ones.

so i've come up with another accountability check (and a way to plug a cause i've recently become really interested in). for every goal that goes uncompleted after the 1001 days are up, i'm going to make a $25 kiva loan. i've been checking out the site for a while and have fallen more and more in love with what they're doing. they've been around for a long time, and were the first to offer internet microlending on a global level. they're also so transparent that you can choose which entrepreneur to loan to and for what purpose. plus you get paid back, leaving you with the option of essentially rolling one loan over and over again to help even more people. i just made my first, non-list-related loan to yolanda, a cacao grower in peru, so that she can purchase fertilizer to improve her production.

for each goal not completed by august 2nd, 2012, i will lend another $25 to a different entrepreneur. i don't want to beat myself up too much for not finishing the list, but i also don't want my potential failure to go completely unchecked, so at least this way someone will benefit from it!

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in other news: SUPERCOOL SPORTS UPDATE. griffey retired. that is not the update. the TOTALLY RAD news is that the game-winning hit we saw a couple weeks ago was his last at bat! we were witness to history. i wish i'd taken more pictures.

day two hundred and twelve

gaaah once again i have let this blog slip a bit. but 'tis ok because of all the updating that's about to go down. first, and this happened a while ago, i went to another pro sports game (#36). my boss is a huge mariners fan so he took us all out to the ballgame to drink, eat lots of stadium fare, and, you know, bond. it was awesome both to get half a day off and to get on the jumbo-tron - TWICE. true, the game was sparsely attended, but we still danced our butts off to earn a spot on that screen and we were proud nonetheless. plus, they finally brought griffey out in the bottom of the ninth to hit the game-winning drive down right field. exciting!

mariners win! that blue sleeve belongs to me. this picture belongs to mina's iphone.

like i said!

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now for the real hotness. kyle and i recently met some friends for one amazing week on hawaiian's northern-most island, kauai. when we first discovered the opportunity to go, we decided it would take the place of our seaplane trip, which would be put on hold. in the meantime, to make it up to both me and the list, kyle rented a harley and drove us all around the island for a day and a half (#12). i absolutely loved it - hands down my favorite list activity so far, and maybe the most exhilarating thing i've ever done. kyle's had his motorcycle license for a while, and now i'm totally inspired to at least look into getting mine.

our sweet ride

one of the first places we took the bike to - waimea canyon

and the very next stop

scenic point along the backroads of lihue

ahhhhhh so cool

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the cabana we stayed at also had four beach cruisers, which helped me take care of my bicycle riding goal (#76). we hopped on the two prettiest ones and took a little trip around princeville, mostly through the gorgeous golf course just across the way. i was a little rusty at first (turns out taking weekly spin classes doesn't really do anything for your actual bike skills), but i was cruising just fine when we got caught in a downpour that came on too fast to escape it. once it calmed down we hopped back on and took some pictures of our mean tricks.

sweet moves!

totally awesome!

until i sort of fell off of it

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finally, after conducting some research on things worth doing in kauai, we decided we could not leave without taking a ride with birds of paradise - on power hang gliders, that is. we got up super early to drive more than halfway around the island to meet our pilot for an early morning flight. after suiting up and getting a brief lesson in how the thing works, we were up! the views were stunning; seeing the shape of the island against the bright blue water from the air was breathtaking. plus i saw a freakin' rainbow while i was up there! it could not have been more worth it.

suited up and ready to fly


lining up on the runway

view of the kauai coffee fields - that's my plaid shoe

as soon as i landed, kyle was ready to go up for his own thirty minute session the pilot took tons of awesome shots from the air, which i had no qualms about dropping some extra cash to get burned onto a dvd. while taking a ride in a power hang glider is not on my list, taking a ride in a seaplane is, and these are similar enough (both in nature and in price) that i'm gonna go ahead and count that task as completed (#16). there's a good chance i'll still get into a sea plane before my 1001 days are up, but since the point of this exercise is to experience life more fully (not necessarily to stick so stringently to the rules i made for myself), this more than hits the mark.

the rainbow was even more vivid in person

another view of the rainbow - i still don't understand how those things work

i'm steering! and squinting! they recommended i take my shades off.

but he got to keep his somehow? whatever - look how high we got!

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