Updates from March, 2010 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

  • Unknown's avatar

    eatveggiesdrinkwine 1:40 pm on March 14, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , Colorado, , vacation   

    7/52: Freeloading and skiing in Colorado 

    This is a 2-for-1 adventure (but I’m counting it as No. 7 only): Adventure 7a was acting upon my sister-in-law’s invitation to stay at her sister’s house in Colorado. For a non-assertive person like myself, following up on an invitation like that is pretty out-of-character adventurous. I tend to convince myself that when people offer things or invite me places, they don’t really mean it and secretly hope I’ll forget as soon as the words pop out of their mouths. I decided to take her invitation at face value and asked if it was possible to stay there for a few days during DP’s spring break. So glad I did – the house, the scenery and the company (8 other family members joined us!) was just the R&R I needed after a stressful few months at work.

    Adventure 7b was attempting to downhill ski again. I love all kinds of outdoor activities, but downhill skiing is far from my favorite. (Maybe it has something to do with the time I plowed straight down the middle of a hill at lightening speed and gave my ski a kiss at the bottom. Hello, fat lip!) Watching the winter Olympics and relentless hounding by skiing family members finally convinced me to join them for one day.

    After a disappointing lesson in which I think became a worse skier for its two-hour duration, I hit the bunny hill hardcore with my nephew, a first-timer. By the end of the day, we were ready to hit a green trail with the other skiers. DP was kind and slowed down to my pace, and the scenery was gorgeous. But after making it to the bottom sans dramatic crash, I was ready to take off my skis and have a spiked hot chocolate. And I happily opted for a hike when others went skiing the next day. I’m glad I tried to ski again, but I now know, without any doubt, that my heart is in the ocean waves rather than on the slopes. I’m still dreaming about my next surfing adventure…


    This picture was taken seconds after I fell, face-first,
    into a thigh-high snow bank
    after saying to my snow-shoe companions,
    “Let’s see if these snow shoes really work.”

    Answer: No.

    So, I turned over and made a snow angel.

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    screeech 3:32 am on March 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    2月のAdventures 

    February left me with little in the way of adventures.  You see, when it gets cold, I hibernate.  Sitting at home, watching movies and drinking.  Many a February are defined by that lifestyle.  I guess my adventure, though, was finding things that will facilitate future adventures.

    These things include, but are not limited to, a basement bottle shop with over 300 imported beers and a guide to local sex museums across Japan.

    #5 – Watch the first 8 hours of the new season of 24

    snapshot20100220175509

    Jack, my friend, a lot of beer, and I.  For 8 hours.

    I can’t think of anything witty to say along with this, except that everytime Jack swears, it’s translated as “Koosoh!”  It means “shit”.  You can make a drinking game out of it.

    Expect March to fully make up for a lack of an interesting February.  Trust me!

     
  • Unknown's avatar

    jeindeer 10:53 am on March 7, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , books, code, codex seraphinianus, library   

    #8: Find the Codex Seraphinianus 

    My favorite book in the world is an encyclopedia of things which don’t exist.  The Codex Seriphinianus creates the trappings of a reference text in stunning detail—charts, graphs, categories, chapters, page numbers—but describes strange, bewildering and beautiful phenomenon not native to our world.  It is written in a curvilinear script with no known translation; the language may or not be meaningful, but researchers recently cracked its base-21 numbering system.

    A picture of the Codex in my lap on the library floor

    I first encountered the Codex during a college visit to an art library.  We were told to browse and report on random selections.  I received the Codex, and in some ways I’ve never put it down again, but I haven’t held a copy in years.  For my eighth adventure, I found it in the Boston Public Library.

    (More …)

     
    • Judith's avatar

      Judith 2:38 am on March 9, 2010 Permalink

      Wow. yearof52adventures.com deserves an oscar.

    • Lee Anne's avatar

      Lee Anne 11:25 am on April 19, 2010 Permalink

      I must read (or rather, ponder) this book! Amazon only has copies at $400, neither of the public library systems I have access to have it, but I have access to academic libraries. . .heehee.
      Thanks for sharing about this. I’m intrigued.

  • Unknown's avatar

    kimkin85 11:02 am on March 5, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , racquetball   

    Week 9 – Racquetball 

    I never thought of racquetball as inherently dangerous, and I never intended it to be my adventure for the week. But as things turned out, it was certainly the most exciting part of my week. I haven’t been exercising since my oral surgery because I was told not to. It was easy to tell why, since even after I stepped down off the heavy pain meds and could walk without feeling dizzy the surgery site would throb at the slightest increase in my heart rate. But a friend wanted to learn how to play, so another friend and I agreed to show him how. I figured that as long as I didn’t push myself too hard I would be alright–after all, my mouth was feeling much better and I was able to take the stairs again without my mouth hurting, which is a definite step in the right direction! So four of us headed to the court Wednesday night to play. I took a conservative approach to the game and didn’t run around as much as I usually would and thought I was doing a pretty good job of protecting myself from myself when I was quite suddenly reminded of the true dangers of the game. As I turned to watch my friend return my serve, the ball was coming at my face too quickly for me to even duck. Miraculously, it hit me in the safest place possible–the middle of my forehead. Considering I had glasses perched on my nose and stitches in my mouth, pretty much any other point of impact would have spelled disaster, so my first response was to laugh with relief, which unfortunately for my friends probably looked like crying since the impact had made my eyes water. They offered to let me quit, but I’m too stubborn for that. We played another 15 minutes, until Christina, the one who had hit me, had to go to a meeting. I fully intend to play again next week in spite of this tendency of mine to be a magnet for sports balls of all kinds (the last serious incident was a volleyball in the back of the head back in high school gym class). I won’t let a little thing like fear of bodily harm keep me from having fun, though I’ll probably want to work on honing my reflexes so I can continue to protect my mouth while the surgical site heals.

    Oh, and sorry about the improper numbering on my last post. I think I’ve got it straightened out now, and we should be good to go for the rest of the year!

     
    • Affinity's avatar

      Affinity 9:12 pm on May 2, 2011 Permalink

      Thanks for sharing. Alayws good to find a real expert.

  • Unknown's avatar

    Berton 2:19 am on March 5, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags:   

    Week 9 – Adventure Fail 

    Well, this week I did have a pretty exciting evening out with some friends.  We went to this AWESOME restaurant called Chino Latino for a friend’s birthday.  About 20 people or so there, and the main course was a roasted pig.  As in, they roasted the ENTIRE pig.  I tried some pig cheek, skin, lots of weird parts.  It was very delicious.

    But that isn’t what I consider my adventure for the week to be.  Nope, my adventure this week was all about failing.

    For the past nearly three years, I have been a teacher without a license.  I have taught English as a second language in Japan for a year, and for close to two years I have been a preschool teacher for 3 and 4 year olds.  But my desire has been to go back to school (or alternate license program) and get my teaching license in elementary education.  This year, I applied to a variety of graduate programs, Teach for America, and St. Paul Teaching Fellows, all with the desire being to further my career in one of my dream jobs.  And it just so happened that this week, I would hear back from every program I applied to.

    I didn’t get accepted into a single one.

    School always came easy to me.  Theater was something I excelled at and that drove me.  I love playing board games, video games, etc.  And I am damn good at those things too.  So failure is a hard thing for me to swallow.  Not really at sports (since I suck at them in general, I accept losing in that regard).  Maybe it is because I have two older brothers who always won when I was younger.  Maybe it is my stubborn nature.  But success has usually a part of my life.  I am not trying to talk myself up or anything.  There are many areas of life where I suck (again, look at sports).  But in the aspects of life where I tried to achieve success, I usually did.  So to have a multitude of programs all tell me that I am not good enough at the moment to move forward with this dream of mine, that fucking kills.

    But after talking about these events with my fiance, and thinking about it, I can’t change their minds.  At least, not at this moment.  All I can do is keep moving forward.  One step at a time.  Maybe take a few more classes in college to bulk up my educational experience.  Volunteer at an elementary school, or try to get into substitute teaching.  Maybe next year, apply to twice as many programs.  All I know is that I can’t give up on my dream.  I need to keep reaching.  One day, I WILL be an elementary school teacher.  And the moment I walk into my classroom for the first time, that feeling of euphoria for me will make all of this hardship worth it.

    Now, just cause I have a positive outlook doesn’t mean I am ok with their decisions, haha.  I am pretty pissed off at the world right now.  But that is what friends (and beer) are for.  And Spider-man…and my fiance Becky.  And a few more things…like snow boarding, heavy metal music, the Nintendo Wii…man, there are lots of things at my fingertips that can cheer me up.  I think I will go do some of those things.

     
    • Kimberly Hula's avatar

      yearof52adventures 3:15 am on March 5, 2010 Permalink

      I don’t want to call this an adventure in failing. Instead, let’s think of it as a foray into new possibilities. I don’t always subscribe to the adage that things happen for a reason, but knowing you I know good-great-best things are forthcoming. And I’d like to celebrate that.

  • Unknown's avatar

    Kimberly Hula 7:50 am on March 2, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

    See what our friends at Surprise Industries are saying about The Year of 52 Adventures!
    http://www.surpriseindustries.com/kindred-spirits.html

     

Newer posts →

c
Compose new post
j
Next post/Next comment
k
Previous post/Previous comment
r
Reply
e
Edit
o
Show/Hide comments
t
Go to top
l
Go to login
h
Show/Hide help
shift + esc
Cancel