Not To Be Trusted With Knives

Yesterday, Alicia & Paul took Tod and I to a Vancouver Whitecaps game¹  They have seasons tickets and Alicia knew that I really wanted to check out a game, as I’ve never been to a soccer game before.

Truth be told, I don’t know much about soccer, other than that you are trying to kick the ball into the giant net.  Which looks like it should be easy, as the net is huge, but seems to be damn near impossible as the Whitecaps and the Carolina Railhawks played 90+ minutes and no one scored a goal. The Whitecaps nearly did a few tiems, but a combination of the Railhawks goalie kicking some serious ass and the Whitecaps having a penchant for kicking the ball in such a way as to always hit the post kept the game scoreless.

Whitecaps (in white) vs. Railhawks (in orange)

At half time, they had a few little kids games.  This is something they do at Canucks games and I absolutely love it! It must be the most exciting thing ever for a little kid to get a chance to play in front of a stadium full of people!

Little goalie, watching as all the kids surround the soccer ball at the other end of the field. Playing positions? What’s a position?

Things I Learned At The Whitecaps Soccer Game:

• the clock counts time up, not down²
• there’s no line on the field for offside – offside is being behind the furthest defender
• you are supposed to similatenously watch the ball and all the players and the referrees. At the same time.  Because the ref might put up a yellow card and you needed to have seen both the ref with his yellow card and the play that was being yellow carded and you have to see it in real time because the stadium has no JumboTron

Things I Didn’t Learn At The Whitecaps Soccer Game:

• what the hell a “railhawk” is

All in all, it was a fun time. And I knocked #47 off of my 101things to do in 1001 days list!  Thanks again, Alicia & Paul!

1. although I think they should be called the Burnaby Whitecaps, as Swanguard stadium is on the eastside of Boundary Rd. [↩]
2. I, of course, compare everything to hockey and in hockey, the clock counts down, so you can easily see how much time is remaining. Which makes way more sense, if you ask me [↩]

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 [accomplished: 3 May 2009]
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”)[accomplished: by naming my car Zaphod Beeblebrox the Car. Also: named my new MacBookPro Chloe. I think I'm on a roll with this one. The secret - steal names from books & TV.
8. get my blog onto WordPress.org [accomplished: 25 Jan2009]
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 Collaboration
13. publish a paper in a scholarly journal on the training program that I run [In Progress. I have a paper on the transdisciplinary nature of that program, based on my conference presentation, that is currently under review.]
14. write something creative (e.g., a story, a script or a poem)
15. change a life [accomplished: Jan-Apr 2009, I taught a Research Methods course in which I required students to write a research proposal. One student did her proposal on a topic related to the place she volunteered at and after the final exam she told me that because she learned so much doing that project, she had become the expert at the place she volunteered at on that topic and they hired her for a summer job!]
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[Accomplished: 8 February 2009 - Thanks for raising more than $150 for the Skate for A Cureskate at GM Place! fundraiser, I got to 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[Accomplished: 26 July 2009 - Done]
31. read something by Salman Rushdie⁵[Note: I have acquired The Satanic Verses. One step closer to actualizing this item! w00t!]
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)[Note: I have 6 points so far this season.]
37. teach the same course at UBC twice⁹ [Accomplished Sept-Dec 2009: taught the same course in the Winter '09 term as I did in the Winter '08 term]
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[Note: I've started this one, but I want to make a really genuine list, so I'm taking my time to come up with things that really, truly make me happy. So far I have 10 items on the list.]
40. buy a Smart Car[accomplished:15 May 2009. I honestly thought this one was going to be a long shot!]
41. buy an iPhone[Accomplished: 6 November 2009!]
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[Accomplished 15 August 2009 - Alicia & Paul took Tod and I to a game!]
48. start composting
49. keep a plant alive for a whole month[Accomplished: June 2009]
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 [In Progress: I have a lot of change in a jar. Not sure how much, but it's got to be on its way to $500!]
57. deposit that $500 worth of coins into my 40th birthday savings account [Note: this will be more difficult now that I will needs coins for the laundry mat]
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 [note: I went to a "hot yoga" class on 22 May 2009, but I don't think it was officially "Bikram." Plus, the place wasn't really hot enough, imho. So, yeah, I haven't done this one yet, but I've come close!] Went to TWO Moksha Yoga classes (or “practices” as they call them) in January 2010 (it was the place that wasn’t hot enough the first time I went, but was plenty hot enough these times!]
61. go to a spa for a facial [Accomplished: 14 April 2009 at Heavenly Soul in Kerrisdale. I give it a resounding "meh." Didn't help that the stuff they used smelled very perfumey. I hate perfumey.]
62. visit 5 new American states¹²
63. visit Newfoundland
64. visit Nova Scotia
65. visit New Brunswick [accomplished:17 June 2009]
66. visit the Yukon
67. visit Nunavit
68. do a 24 hr blogathon[Accomplished on: 26 July 2009]
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. <strike>determine my net worth [In Progress: Sarah has given me a handy-dandy Excel spreadsheet to calculate this, but I need to figure out how I determine how much my car is "worth," as well as how much money is in my pension in order to get a "net worth" value].</strike><b>[Accomplished - 2 January 2010.  I actually accomplished this a little while ago, but forgot to write it down here and don't recall the actual date. I've been tracking it monthly and this is the month where I went from a negative net worth to a positive one. w00t!]</b>
73. buy a bike
74. bike to work every day for two months [Note: now that I work in Surrey, this is very, very unlikely to happen!] [Note 2: now that I'm moving to Surrey, this is again a possibility!]
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) [1 - Jan 23, 2009 - completed a study on sex & cognition that had something to do with dopamine (I think). I had to spit in a tube and play computer games; 2 - enrolled in a Pap smear study. TMI?]
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 [Note: I did put up a Christmas tree for 2009, but totally forgot about the chili peppers!]
81. live blog something
82. go to bed every night for a week with all the dishes cleaned [Note: I've managed to string 3 or 4 nights of this in a row, but still haven't managed 7!]
83. achieve inbox zero and maintain for one full week (where “maintain” = by the time I go to bed each night) [I haven't actually done this yet, but I have a plan for it.  This plan, in fact] [Another update: I'm following the plan and go to bed most nights with my inbox at zero, but I haven't actually counted them, so I'm not going to check this one of the list until I count them to make sure].
84. up my blog readership to an average of 200 readers a day¹⁶ [In Progress: I'm up to an average of 116 readers a day for 2009 (as of 24 June). I haven't actually done anything to try to get more readers.  They just kinda showed up].
85. break my current record of 460 blog views in a day¹⁷ [accomplished: 678 blog views on 26 Feb 2009]
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 – Update: FAIL! Dick’s on Dicks closed. I attended nothing there.
92. devise some sort of proper back up system for my computer files[accomplished: Signed up for Back Blaze on 15 July 2009. So not so much "accomplished" as "agreed to pay $5 per month for"]
93. get my ring from my great Auntie Bernice re-sized to actually fit my finger
94. buy a pair of brown dress pants¹⁹ [accomplished:11 Feb 2009. Bought a pair from my friend, Jen, who had a pair she didn't want anymore. Of course, I wanted to buy a pair to wear with my brown heels, which I now seem to have lost!]
95. bake at least one thing per month for 12 months in a row, without baking the same thing two months in a row²⁰[Dec 2009 - tonnes o' Christmas baking; Jan 2010 - baked some Lava cakes (sure it was from a box, but it still counts!]
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! [Note: this one is now impossible, given that I have missed some days of blogging, but I'm going to try to see if I can at least get 1001 blog postings in during this 1001 period, as some days I post more than one posting.]