100 Things

So, I decided to make one of those ‘100 Things To Do Before I Die’ lists.  I know, I have too much time on my hands.  But this was really fun!

As I made the list, I limited myself to things that can be crossed off.  This was hard, because there are plenty of things that I want to do in life that aren’t, as my consultant ex-coworkers would say, ‘definable, achievable goals.’  Such as:

1. Be kind
2. Embrace inner geekiness
3. Try to matter (Ok, I know it’s cheesy and dumb to take life lessons from Reese Witherspoon’s Best Actress acceptance speech – but.  I am.  Shut up.)
4. Be close to my family and be a good friend to my friends
5. Stay in good shape
6. Stand up for myself and don’t always put other people first
7. Be financially responsible

So I tried to make a list of stuff that can be checked off that ‘embodies’ the above stuff, hoping that ‘doing it’ would cause me to ‘be it’ (good God, I’m glad it’s Friday.  I apologize for that sentence, but it’s the best I can do right now).  For ‘embrace inner geekiness’, you see, I am going to a Star Trek convention.  (And I’m totally wearing Spock ears.  Aw yeah.)

So here is Marty’s list of things to do before kicking the bucket:

1. Drink beer at Oktoborfest in Munich
2. Drive up (or down, for that matter) the coast of California
3. Visit an active volcano – Done!
4. Buy myself a piece of expensive jewelry
5. Attain basic bartending skills, such as how to make a margarita
6. Work on a political campaign for a candidate that I believe in
7. Have a family
8. Own my home – Done!
9. Apply to be on crappy reality TV program, like Big Brother, or a decent one, like The Amazing Race
10. Knit a really nice gift for my mom
11. Have a garden and grow my own fruit, like my parents
12. Take a class I would normally consider moronic, just for the experience (i.e. Past Life Regression)
13. Participate in a food fight
14. Celebrate New Year’s in a blow-out, exotic location one year to make up for all the years sitting on the couch in pajamas getting drunk with Ryan Seacrest and/or Dick Clark
15. Explore Eastern Europe – Prague and Poland and Hungary
16. Walk on the Great Wall of China
17. Go someplace in Africa
18. Go to Alaska and see the northern lights
19. Take a cruise to Antartica
20. Volunteer at something consistently for a year
21. Spend an entire weekend by myself, in my pajamas, reading a novel, eating chocolate and drinking wine, and not feeling guilty about it
22. Insult someone who deserves it by saying snottily ‘Good day, sir!’ and stomping off
23. Participate in a demonstration
24. Learn how to sew
25. Get a graduate degree
26. Write a decent poem
27. Take a hot air balloon ride
28. Learn to yodel
29. Get LASIK surgery
30. Stand up to someone at work who says something inappropriate yet not sexual harassment worthy (for example, calls me ’sweetie’ or ‘darling’) in a firm, yet not bitchy manner – no idea how to do this but will try
31. Teach a class on something
32. Learn to speak another language
33. Have someone tell my fortune or give me a tarot card reading
34. Try cave diving
35. Try wreck diving
36. Try deep diving
37. Do the manta ray night dive in off of the big island in Hawaii – Done!
38. Go diving in the Galapagos Islands
39. Take three to six months off of work to travel
40. Go to India
41. Explore Scandinavia – especially Norway and Sweden
42. Go to Moscow and St. Petersburg
43. Take another family vacation with my parents and brother (and my own family, if they yet exist)
44. See a show on Broadway in New York – Done!
45. Drive through the South island of New Zealand – Done!
46. Go to Italy (including Venice, Florence, and Rome) and eat my way through the country
47. Take my kids on a cross-country road trip, Wally World-style
48. Buy myself an article of designer clothing (i.e. Prada or something, not Guess jeans)
49. Go to Israel and Egypt and see the pyramids
50. Go to Iceland and bathe in the Blue Lagoon
51. Go to Paris for the weekend
52. Go to Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard
53. Go to Australia again and see Ayers Rock
54. Ride the Trans-Siberian Express OR the Orient Express (choose your own adventure)
55. See the ruins of Pompeii
56. Go Christmas shopping in New York
57. Make a Bree Vanderkamp style dinner party (6 or more people) all by myself
58. Learn how to make pasta (like actually make the pasta, not just cook it and add sauce), thus redeeming myself from the Gnocchi Disaster of 2006
59. Be able to make all the Christmas cookies my mom makes, (almost) as good as she makes them – Done!
60. Learn to make my mom’s excellent birthday banana cake – Done!
61. Try brewing my own beer
62. Learn how to bake bread
63. Become reasonably proficient at making Indian food – learn to make naan, chana masala, curries, vegetable samosas, etc.
64. Become reasonably proficient at making Mediterranean food – learn to make Mediterranean pasta and seafood, falafel, baklava, etc.
65. Eat dinner at a 4 star restaurant in New York
66. Read all the books that I’ve bought and are sitting unread on my shelves (and if after 100 pages I can’t stand them, donate them), so that when people ask me if I’ve actually read all the books on my shelves, I can say yes – Done!
67. Read another book, play or whatever by the writers I read and loved in college (that I probably wouldn’t otherwise seek out and read), including: Doris Lessing, – Done!
68. Walker Percy,
69. Margaret Diehl,
70. Angela Carter,
71. Emile Zola,
72. Moliere, – Done!
73. Flannery O’Connor,
74. Leo Tolstoy (in addition to Anna Karenina, probably War and Peace),
75. Vladimir Nabokov,
76. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and – Done!
77. Virginia Woolf
78. Learn to cable and knit myself a cabled sweater
79. Take a drawing or painting class
80. Read the U.K. Observer’s 100 Greatest Novels of All Time
81. Save enough money to be able to retire at 55 if I want to
82. Ask for a raise/demand more money from an employer
83. Be someone’s manager and write their review
84. Come up with some sort of business idea and give it a shot, even if it’s just on a small scale
85. Write a novel (and try to get it published)
86. Call in sick once when I’m perfectly healthy and take a Ferris Bueller’s day off (I have never actually done this – there has always been some level of disease)
87. Get something published in a newspaper or magazine
88. Run a half-marathon – Done!
89. Run a marathon – Done!
90. Learn to juggle with 3 balls
91. Hike up a reasonably large mountain
92. Finish the inline skating marathon or half-marathon in Napa – Done!
93. Become competent at yoga – Done!
94. Take a ballet class
95. Take tennis lessons to get back to high school playing ability
96. Go on a skiing trip – Done!
97. Attend some kind of conference for book lovers (Hay-on-Wye?)
98. Go to a Star Trek convention
99. Write my will
100. Go bungee jumping or skydiving – Done!

(Notice how skydiving is number 100?  That’s in case I die doing it.)