Bucket list, round four. (Fin.) *UPDATED 03/16/09*

Round one.
Round two.
Round three.

100 Things Before I Kick the Bucket, 76-100:

76) Kick some Tae-Bo ass. Sort of, anyway. I got pretty good at the beginner/intermediary stuff, and still do it semi-regularly.
77) Buy and (regularly) use a French press.
78) Start biking again.
79) Find a job I like and will stick with. ChaCha! The new pay system royally blows, but I still like and am sticking with the job.
80) Undertake and complete an ambitious craft project.
81) Spend some serious time in the water, via a summer-long swimfest or months-long water aerobics class or… something.
82) Calculate pi to, say, 1000 digits. (I know it’s been done. I just want to do it myself.)
83) Play around in a Foley studio.
84) Get my hands on a copy of Dance Dance Revolution and play it until my heart explodes or I master every round, whichever comes first.
85) … While continuing to shun Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Yep, still shunning.
86) Participate in the creation of performance art that makes sense and is aesthetically appealing.
87) Submit a compilation of the lists I scatter around to poetry journals; see how long it takes to receive an acceptance letter.
88) Learn every word in the dictionary. (Hey, dream big, right?)
89) Make pumpkin ravioli and autumn pork roast and sit down for a big Halloween/Samhain feast. The pumpkin ravioli became squash ravioli, but otherwise: Win.
90) Grow my own perslane and lemon grass for year-round nibbling.
91) Spend two or three days at a big amusement park with Connor and Michael. We will be doing this next year, for Connor’s 5th birthday.
92) Finish this damn list. Obviously.
93) Dye my hair a funky color. (Again.) I dyed it blue a few weeks ago. Results were kind of lame, but I did it.
94) Use my new vacuum thoroughly, enthusiastically, and often. Many times per week! Sometimes even daily!
95) Spend Connor’s first day of school getting a manicure, a pedicure, a haircut, and slightly drunk.
96) Continue to expand my shoe collection; embrace the abrupt change from “that girl who always wears the same pair of flip-flops” to “that girl who often wears heels and owns cute ballet flats.” You betcha. I even paid more than $40 for a gorgeous pair of brown-and-gold Mary Jane heels!
97) Burn candles more often. Thank you, ridiculously expensive Febreze candles.
99) Rebuild my wizard figurine collection.
100) Get braces; have gap- and crossbite-free teeth; smile widely and regularly.

I can’t believe none of you are participating. See if I ever offer to share my thousands hundreds dozens tens of readers with you again. (But if you participate late, I could probably scrape up some love.)

Bucket list, round three. *UPDATED 03/16/09*

Alternate title: It’s Saturday In My Head.

Round one.
Round two.

100 Things Before I Kick the Bucket, 51-75:

51) Get completely out of debt.
52) Wear a big, statement-making hat somewhere very cool.
53) Get the rest of my tattoos .
54) Build and enjoy a real home theater — big-ass TV, super awesome surround sound, etc.
55) Take a photography class; have some idea what I’m doing with a camera.
56) Learn to tango.
57) Make bouillabaisse.
58) Visit at least four areas of each continent. (I almost said “countries,” but… Antarctica.)
59) Enter a sandcastle competition.
60) Take Connor to visit my great-grandmother & grandmother. My great-grandmother has since passed away, but we had a nice visit with my grandmother a few weeks ago.
61) Make my own candles.
62) Start collecting Superman comics on a reasonable scale.
63) Have an art room where one wall is a photo collage, one is butcher paper for murals, one is a chalkboard, etc.
64) Watch Julian Beever do his thing.
65) Learn to hybridize plants; grow a peach/apple tree (or similar).
66) Attend Connor’s highschool and (I hope) college graduations.
67) Spend five years tithing all my income to various worthy causes.
68) Build a retreat for troubled and/or homeless teens and young adults.
69) Win a contest that doesn’t involve skill. I totally won a paper shredder on the radio. Go me.
70) Start and run a school for small children modeled after old Dutch folk schools and Quaker schools.
71) Compile a cookbook filled with nothing but recipes for grilled cheese sandwiches and fancy breads.
72) “Run” a mountain marathon.
73) Become more active in politics (as opposed to just reading and voting).
74) Convince my local deli that yes, “cheddar” is really spelled with an A and that there is, in fact, no such word as “chedder.” Total, unqualified success. When I was under consideration for a deli job, I mentioned the misspelling — and they actually changed it.
75) Convince the entire world that quote marks are not called “quotation marks” and are not to be used for emphasis.

As always, let me know if you’re participating and I’ll gratify you with a link.

Bucket list, round two.

Round one is here.

100 Things Before I Kick the Bucket, 26-50:

26) Answer an odd question a day for a year. (Provenance and/or etymology of vernacular axioms, for example, or where the idea of ectoplasmic production came from.)
27) Quit smoking.
28) Participate in NaNoWriMo and/or NaBloPoMo; hopefully derive some sort of writing discipline.
29) See, up close and in reality, at least ten of the world’s mysteries — the Shroud of Turin, the Pyramids at Giza, etc.
30) Recreate my highschool science fair project (holograms produced by etching glass panes).
31) Compete in a national spelling bee.
32) Go down in a shark box; interact with some sharks.
33) Build up a collection of my favorite childhood movies and books (the Broadway version of Peter Pan starring Mary Martin, J.M. Barrie’s original Peter Pan, The Phantom Tollbooth, those books that were about “Little Miss Bossypants” or “Little Mister Know-it-All,” The Secret Garden, ad infinitum). Share with self, Connor, world (in that order).
34) Recklessly blow an entire paycheck on lottery tickets, stupidity tax be damned.
35) Learn to speak Gaelic, à la the Cumann na mBan & Maude Gonne’s Daughters of Erin; immerse in the language and compare it (possibly by way of an enormous research paper) to the Gael’s French spoken in Brittany.
36) … And spend a year or two living in a cottage in Ireland.
37) Perfect one delicious scone recipe; incorporate it into a lazy Sunday tradition. (But making scones is anthetical to the concept of laziness, you say. Said the maiden as she kissed the cow, I reply.)
38) Spend a significant amount of time (a day or two at least) petting/caring for/riding/sleeping with (the snoring kind, people) a tiger.
39) Obtain an ecosphere, some triops, and Sea Monkeys. Obsess over the weirdness on my desk.
40) Write an advice/trivia column.
41) Build a treehouse mansion “for Connor.” (Ahem — by which I mean “for me,” but Connor can play there too.)
42) Design and build my dream bookcase; fill it slowly with perfect books.
43) Obtain education that is useful in the real world — a Master’s degree, certification in something interesting, etc. Or…
44) … Actually get hired as a journalist, justifying $20,000 spent on this fancy-ass book learnin’.
45) Go out dancing in a mod-print minidress and go-go boots.
46) Pull a crazy-ass long-term experiment, in the manner of Morgan Spurlock or A.J. Jacobs.
47) Get a Brazilian to see what the hubbub (bub) is all about.
48) Define, to my satisfaction, What It’s All About. (Life, not bikini waxing.)
49) Take boxing classes.
50) Recreate old Odyssey of the Mind projects. (Weight-bearing structures of balsa wood, tin-can propulsion vehicles, stuff like that.)

If you’re participating, let me know — there’s a link in it for you.

The bucket list.

Maggie of Mighty Girl posted a to-do list of 100 things to achieve before she dies. I don’t know if imitation is sincere or flattering, but I do know that this is a pretty cool idea, so for the next four weeks I’ll be posting my own list in 25-item installments every Saturday. (We need more weekend blogging. Yes, yes we do.) Here’s the first bit.

100 Things Before I Kick the Bucket, 1-25:

1) Go on a shopping spree at Sephora.
2) Make money as a writer.
3) See the Hagia Sophia and the Taj Mahal.
4) Teach Connor to read.
5) Buy & remodel a home.
6) Grow a really luscious garden.
7) Cook a truly gourmet meal.
8) Spelunk.
9) Participate in an open-mic night.
10) Own a hybrid vehicle.
11) Paint a crazy mural.
12) Finish my damn book; see if publisher is still interested.
13) Grow my hair to my waist.
14) Meet & obtain autographs from famous people I love.
15) Spend some time in New York City.
16) Get my webdesign skills back up to par.
17) Explore a coral reef.
18) Patent something. (Perhaps this should be, “Have patentworthy idea.”)
19) Celebrate my 50th wedding anniversary.
20) Teach Connor the Electric Slide; request a performance at in-laws’ Christmas get-together.
21) Picnic every meal for an entire summer.
22) Master every exercise in my Pilates book.
23) Take a Spinning class.
24) Flex my muscles intimidatingly at barflies.
25) Play Robert Muczynski’s Flute Sonata flawlessly.

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Happy Saturday, kids.