Hi Everybody!

I’m ready for an adventureful 2010. So… I only listed 36 adventures. Generally, my eyes are bigger than my stomach when it comes to adventuring, so I tried to walk the line between audacity and reasonableness. I’m planning on filling in the remaining 16 adventures ad hoc, with adventuresome spontaneity. Here they are. I’ve already crossed one off the list by recording an interview with my lovely wife on January 1.

1. Run the Chicago Marathon.
2. Spend a week on the beach with Myndi.
3. Read Ulysses, once and for all, all the way to the end.
4. Make 50 meals from scratch.
5. Travel to Ethiopia.
6. Paint portraits from memory of 10 people I know.
7. Write letters for birthdays, and whenever else the time seems right. On the typewriter.
8. Learn a Thelonious Monk song on the organ.
9. Go to a Bulls game.
10. Wake up at 5 a.m. every day for a week. Go to the lake to watch the sunrise.
11. Do the big shoulders 5K swim in Lake Michigan.
12. Camp through 2 national parks.
13. Interview Myndi. Make it a tradition
14. Draw every place I have ever lived, from memory.
15. Go to a bourbon distillery in Kentucky.
16. Take one picture per day for a month.
17. Go to a Blackhawks game.
18. Write a children’s book, with illustrations, with Myn.
19. Curate a 5-night living room film festival of my favorite movies.
20. Go to the horse races.
21. Kayak in the Chicago river.
22. Run the entire lake front path, in segments.
23. Carve something out of wood.
24. Learn something that’s traditionally taught in calculus class.
25. Attend a religious service in a language other than English.
26. Plant seeds of a resilient plant in a public place.
27. Ice skate.
28. Win a mustache competition.
29. Record sounds of my neighborhood. Edit together into a song.
30. Build something that requires at least 4 tools. And is useful. And doesn’t immediately get wobbly and fall apart.
31. Pick fruit. Make something tasty with it.
32. Go a month without drinking alcohol.
33. Ride the el from my apartment out to the end of the line and back. Write what happens.
34. Take 4 “progress” photo sets, taken from the same spot showing the life of something.
35. Get dressed up. Take my lady to the symphony. Drink coffee with pinkies extended.
36. Write a good short story.