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  • AG 9:51 pm on February 2, 2012 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , 4/52,   

    CHB: Culture, Hair, and Body 

    Going with the theme of being a tourist in my own city I went to the Chinese New Year parade in Chicago’s Chinatown last weekend. I decided to bring my sister and niece in an effort to expose my niece to a little culture. The dragons scared her a little bit, but all in all it was a nice free event and fun way to kick off the Lunar New Year. I can’t wait to get back there for some good food!

    I ended up having a total of five adventures in the month of January. The next two were unplanned. Not that adventures need to be planned or anything. I find that most of the time I realize I was adventuring in hindsight. Anyway, I decided to change my ‘do and go for the “ombre” look: dark roots faded to lighter bottoms. It did NOT work for me. I went from a reddish brown to orange to yellow to dark brown…in the course of two weeks. Not good. As a result of my whimsical behavior I did a little damage to my hair by processing it so much. But now I know. I should not be blond.

    And lastly, to round out January I started the Body Rock TV 30 day challenge (there’s a website for those of you who are curious). I’m currently on day 3, and I can say that it is not easy. It is definitely not easy. I have been practicing yoga for almost two years, and I love it. I haven’t found a form of exercise that I can stick to religiously other than yoga. However, I need to lose weight. While yoga has definitely made me stronger and toned me up a bit, I’m looking to slim down. And the only way that can be done is crazy cardio. Body Rock is pretty crazy to say the least. Hopefully I will come to love it as much as yoga, and mostly I’m aiming for more physical results. I’ll update when it comes to day 30.

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  • skywatcher 6:52 pm on May 17, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 4/52, dog adoption, puppy   

    Canine Commitment #4/52 

    Okay, so this adventure wasn’t on the partial list that I made public in my first post, but it’s something I’d been thinking about for quite a while.  The time was right, opportunity presented itself, and…yes, I adopted a puppy from the SPCA!

    Our nine-week-old addition is slowly but surely becoming acclimated, and I’m becoming used to having a “baby” in the house again – although I could do without these midnight trips to the backyard :-\  Lots of plans for my future hiking/camping buddy!

     

    • faolan01 4:41 pm on May 18, 2010 Permalink

      SO cute! Good luck with your new adventure buddy!

    • yearof52adventures 11:17 pm on May 18, 2010 Permalink

      What an adventure! He is adorable! Thank you for going to the SPCA, too!

    • Holly 11:25 am on June 4, 2010 Permalink

      Puppies are fun and the waking up doesn’t last forever. I’ve been fostering two puppies for a local shelter the last three weeks and I don’t know if I’ll be able to give them up. The reason I took them is after finding this website and realized that life is too short. Sometimes you have to be spontaneous and just do it. And it doesn’t matter what that is. I think we all really do regret the things we haven’t done.

    • blueskiesinva 1:53 pm on June 13, 2010 Permalink

      Update on my “little girl”: she’s an early waker (sigh) but she keeps her crate dry. A very sweet girl, and she went for her first swim yesterday – jumped in the lake and loved it! That’s my little retriever : )

  • inkstainedangel 8:16 pm on May 12, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , 4/52   

    Adventures 1,2, 3, and 4 Oh my! 

    Not one, not two, but four adventures in one blog post!? Well, this is ground breaking! You’re just going to have to read more and enjoy. 🙂

    Adventure #1- The Garden

    This is my on-going adventure, and lately adventure is an understatement. The weather up here has gotten freakishly chilly, and most of the viney-plants that I planted earlier last month have all died. I have about two sugar pumpkins, a squash, and a cantaloupe left of six jack-o-lanterns, three sugar-pumpkins, three squash, three watermelon, and three cantaloupe. I have enough seeds, and enough time to re-plant, but right now its a mess. And because of the weather, all the seedlings I have inside perished from lack of sunlight. All there is left to do is persevere and try again! (And I have to tell my mom to stop buying new seeds, because I have no place to put them yet o.o)

    Adventure #2- Cooking Dinner for 8

    Holy crap! Eight people, and my mom tells me to cook?! I can hardly make Mac&Cheese from the box without help from my younger sisters!

    I wake up in the morning as my mom is getting ready to go to work and getting dinner started. She looks at me as she’s putting a couple of frozen lamb-shanks into a large black casserole tin. I look at the daunting mess of dirty dishes in the sink as I remember that I forgot to take care of them last night. But before I could open the dishwasher to clean up the disaster looming over my kitchen counter, my mom says,

    “We’re having shepherd’s pie tonight, and I need you to make it,”

    In my head I’m screaming my head off. Outside, my sleepy and groggy body manages to let out a “what?”

    “Can you cook tonight?” she asks. I look back at the dishes, and back to her and shrug. (More …)

     

    • yearof52adventures 7:46 am on May 17, 2010 Permalink

      Way to go lady! YOU are on a roll!

    • faolan01 4:49 pm on May 24, 2010 Permalink

      4 great adventures you have there! congrats on making the big family dinner!

    • Malerie 2:01 pm on May 3, 2011 Permalink

      Fell out of bed feeling down. This has brihtgeend my day!

    • Staysha 2:23 pm on May 4, 2011 Permalink

      Hey, good to find soomene who agrees with me. GMTA.

  • faolan01 11:44 pm on May 11, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 4/52   

    Adventure #4 – Enabling Another Adventurer 

    I took last Friday off to adventure, and ended up going on a completely different adventure than I had planned. I had planned on spending that beautiful, sunny day out on my own kicking off a summer long adventure I have planned. I was all geared up, helmet in hand and walking to the door when I received a text text that changed my plans for the day. Taking someone out for an adventure of their own? Of course I was up for it!

    A friend had posted her list of adventures she wants to have this summer and I had offered to help with a couple, particularly helping her learn to ride her scooter and taking her on her first trip to a firing range. Friday was her only day off for the weekend so I got changed, grabbed my range bag and headed out to pick her up. When we got to the range I gave her a basic firearms safety overview, showed her how to load and aim a pistol and how the safety on it worked, and set her up with her first target. At first hitting the target at all was more a matter of luck than anything (as is the case for most people who have never fired a gun before), but with a bit of coaching and practice she improved a lot. By the end of the day she was consistently hitting the inner rings of the target and hit her first center-dot bulls-eye!

    We both had a lot of fun, and we each got to check an adventure off of our lists. I also sent her the link to The Year of 52 Adventures and encouraged her to check it out. She looked at my list and told me she wants to try dancing lessons as well, so it looks like I’m going to have a partner in crime for at least one more of the adventures on my list.

     

    • yearof52adventures 9:59 am on May 12, 2010 Permalink

      FANTASTIC! Adventures are so much better shared, aren’t they?
      Way to be an adventure liasion!

  • Stephanie 8:19 am on March 22, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 4/52, Quebec   

    Adventure #4 – Montreal, Quebec 

    January 13-14

    In 2009, the company I work for aquired a biotech company in Montreal.  The scientists were developing drugs that were complimentary to some of the drugs in our pipeline.  As part of the integration process, my manager and I were sent to the site to present Orientation and Ethics and Code of Conduct training to the new employees.

    We were only there for one night, and had only a few short hours for sightseeing.  The temperature was in the single digits, so walking around outside was uncomfortable for any length of time.  I was briefly able to explore Old Montreal and the Old Port.

    My favorite part was the Basilique de Notre Dame in Old Montreal.  I loved the gothic style church.  It reminded me of the Cathedral de Notre Dame in Paris.

    The architectural influence in Montreal is clearly French, but it’s a more modern city than Paris.  Montreal reminds me of Boston in the way that the old is mixed with the new.  I’d love to get back during warmer weather to have more time to explore.

     

  • wip78 11:04 pm on February 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 4/52,   

    Adventures 4 and 5: The planned…. 

    There are adventures you plan for, and then there are adventures that find you.  Some are great, some are inspiring, some are permanent, some are tasty, and some you just learn from.  The past couple of weeks have been simple, fun, and interesting to say the least…

    For adventure #4, I got inked:)  Tattoos say a lot about a person.  Each tattoo usually has a story attached to it.  Was it to rebel when you were 16?  Did you get it during a drunken debauchery?  Does it stand for something meaningful?  Spiritual? Or does it symbolize a moment in your life? My first tat was about 4 years ago.  I waited so long to get one for fear of the wrath I would receive from my parents.  I was considered a good boy who obeyed his parents….catholic guilt goes a loooong way.  When I finally grew some cahones, I said screw it.  Over the last two months, I have gotten 3 more, with the latter one being the focus of the fourth adventure.  All my tattoos are personal.  They are an extension of me…  This last tattoo is an adinkra symbol that comes from the Asante tribe found in the western African country Ghana.  This symbol is known as “the wisdom knot” that stands for wisdom, ingenuity, intelligence and patience.   This symbol represents the wisdom I give my students and in turn what they teach me on a daily basis, a reminder of the patience and understanding they deserve, and the intelligence and ingenuity that we all possess.  This tattoo ties in with the one on  my wrist that stands for the life-long quest for knowledge…to always remember that there is something to be learned on a daily basis. (More …)

     

    • yearof52adventures 6:17 pm on February 24, 2010 Permalink

      I’m going to go ahead and nominate this for adventure MVP for week 4 🙂

  • kimkin85 11:02 am on February 10, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , 4/52,   

    Adventures Begin! (Recap) 

    Greetings, fellow adventurers!  As I have been negligent in posting my adventures thus far, I thought I would start with a quick roundup of what my first few adventures have been.  (Don’t worry, in future posts the storyteller in me will really come out as I share my experiences in exquisite detail.)

    Adventure 1: Worked for a week at the elementary school where my mother teaches art.  Keeping track of six classrooms each of Kindergartners and third graders is a crazy fun time, but it reminded my why I decided not to be a teacher.

    Adventure 2:  Had my very first phone interview–with a woman in Austria!  It’s now official and I’ll be starting my three month internship at the library of the Salzburg Global Seminar in September.

    Adventure 3:  I had the unintended adventure of finding a local doctor who would believe me that I do indeed know when I have a sinus infection and would give me a prescription.  That part was a success, unfortunately, I did not recover fast enough for my scheduled oral surgery and had to put that off for a few weeks.

    Adventure 4:  Getting back into swimming.  Awkward hours at the campus gym is a terrible excuse, so this week I set a schedule and stuck to it.  Few things are as energizing as being in the water, although it would be nice if it were the Caribbean instead of a pool in Boston in the winter…

    Adventure 5:  Last week’s adventure was a visit to the MFA to see the famous mummy head.  It was fascinatingly disturbing.

    This week’s adventure will probably be to think of something that actually sounds adventurous when I write it down.  Wish me luck!

    -Kim

     

  • heididino 2:49 pm on February 9, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 4/52   

    4/52 WHO DAT 

    Greetings adventurers!
    i come to you as i settle back into my work week after having had a whirlwind 2 weeks of travel. The first trip was to New Orleans to attend an interpreting conferece. Greeted by palm trees was a definite welcome from the bitter snow covered Chicago of which my interpreter cohart and I live. We wre there to attend a series of workshops but as it turns out we skipped the 1st day and last day of the conference, opting to be tourists instead.

    Oh New Orleans-we started off on a bad foot. We scoured and scoured the city for vegetarian fare, to no avail. We were schocked at the misogynistic revelry that is Bourbon Street. What had we gotten ourselves into?

    (More …)

     

  • jscribe 5:43 pm on February 6, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: 4/52   

    4/52- A Serious Commitment to Science 

    I don’t ever remember thinking that boys were better at science and math, I just knew that I wasn’t very good at either of them. Math and I never really got along, but as a nature-loving kid, science intrigued me.  It was hard for me though, and I readily backed away from the subject. Reading and writing came easily, and I was praised from a young age for having skill in both arenas. As is the lazy way of living life, I threw myself into a world of words and allowed a passion for English to justify an avoidance of science. A pretty successful run in Physical Science and Biology could not suppress my growing fear that I would fail out of Chemistry in my Junior year. I convinced my guidance counselor that I didn’t need to take it, and enrolled in the “easier” Ecology class, primarily occupied by academically low seniors seeking an easy A (or, maybe, a good effort B).

    (More …)

     

    • Rhea 9:30 pm on February 6, 2010 Permalink

      It looks awesome! I love how it has that dictionary-esque syllabled style. Go JScribe!

    • jeindeer 12:35 pm on February 8, 2010 Permalink

      Oh, lovely! I’ve always wondered what tattoo I’d get were I to get one, it’s great to see how someone else reasoned out their own. Such a beautiful choice, too.

  • screeech 11:36 am on February 5, 2010 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: , , , 4/52, , Ramen   

    1月のAdventures 

    Brian here with a month of adventures.  4 weeks, 4 adventures.  The task (adventure?) of learning how to write a decent post is still unattained.  Awesome. I write more over at my regular blog, http://www.gaijinbash.com, click the links if you want to read more about each adventure.

    1. Shinnenkai with my Motorcycle Riding Club

    20100110-DSC_7314

    Shinnenkai is another excuse for people to drink in Japan. It roughly translates to let’s drink for the first time in the new year party. Hopped on the bike and headed down to the Izu peninsula. This is the one place near Tokyo where palm trees line the road and the beach, ocean, and sky aren’t all shades of grey. You can read more here.

    2. Visit to an Abandoned Dinosaur Exhibition

    20100124-DSC_7912

    Haikyo is the word for modern ruins in Japan. Mostly just hotels built during the bubble economy, these are the decaying reminders of overspending in a capitalist society. And they are totally rad! I have a fleeting interest in them, and make it out once in a blue moon. This time, I went to a dinosaur exhibition at a snake center. Read more about the dinosaurs here. And the freaky second part at the snake center here.  Be warned, photos of hella dead snakes.

    (More …)

     

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