Saturday, November 7, 2009

27 Things to Do Before I Turn 27: Recap

I made this list last year, and I've decided to do it again this year. It was fun to set challenges for myself, and on weekends when Penn and I were trying to think of things to do I'd sometimes look at my list and go, "Oh, I've been wanting to do such-and-such." Instant plans! It kept us from falling into that, "What do you want to do?" "I don't know, what do you want to do?" rut.
Before I post my new list, I wanted to recap all of the things I managed to do from last year's list. So here are the tasks I completed:
1. Get another stamp on my passport. That one was kind of a gimme, since I already knew when I made my list last year that I'd be going to Russia. Still, I did it!
2. Cross at least one more state off my list (only 18 more to go!). I managed that when I went to Seattle, since I'd never been to Washington before.
3. Bake a cake that doesn't come from a box. I made Penn's birthday cake. It was really good, actually. I may even try it again this year.
4. Host a get-together of some sort at my place (although I'm not allowed to call it a "dinner party" since Penn thinks dinner parties are for old people). I hosted people twice this year. We had a small labor day cookout on our balcony, and I had a football party a few weeks ago to celebrate our HUGE new TV and the fact that the Meatball can now deliver beer with his Budweiser tailgate companion vest. The football party had more than a dozen people crammed into my small apartment, but it was really fun.
6. Attend an event celebrating Edgar Allen Poe's 200th birthday. Penn and I went to a reenactment of his funeral last month, and we went to the art museum to see an exhibit on illustrations and paintings based on his work.
7. Eat here, here, and here. Done, done, and done. All three restaurants were delicious. We've actually been back to the burger place twice because it was so good, and I am still thinking about the meal I had at the Cuban restaurant, so even though we're always on a mission to try new things I think we'll be making a repeat visit there soon, too.
8. Teach the Meatball to retrieve beer from the fridge. Okay, so we kind of cheated on this one because he can only deliver beer when he wears his beer caddy vest. Still, I can load him up with beer and he comes when he's called, so I say mission accomplished (plus we realized that it would probably be a very bad idea to teach the hound to open the refrigerator).
1o. Really master standard driving so I feel equally comfortable driving my car or Penn's. Well, this one happened out of necessity when my car died and had to be sold a couple of months ago. I can honestly say that I'm now as comfortable driving Penn's truck as I was driving my own car. I even took it on a road trip to a conference by myself a couple of weeks ago. The only thing I can't do is parallel park it or get it into tight parking spaces, but I was never that great at doing those things in my own car anyway.
11. Attend at least five live productions, not counting contemporary music concerts (it is shameful how rarely I make time to take advantage of all the opportunities to see theatre/opera/dance on campus and in the nearby cities). This was a really fun goal to complete. I saw The Country Wife in City B, Winter's Tale, The Illusion, and the opera Eugene Onegin (all on campus), Beethoven's Concerto No. 4 and Bruckner's Third Symphony (at the symphony hall down the street; Penn surprised me with that outing for our anniversary), Dr. Faustus (a friend's company performed this one on campus), Psycho (we watched the movie while the local symphony orchestra played the soundtrack; it was so fun), and Henry IV Part 1 (at the recreation of Shakespeare's Blackfriars Theatre). Non-locally, I also saw Wagner's Ring Cycle in Seattle (definitely my best theatre experience this year) and Koppelia by the Bolshoi Ballet, Don Quixote by the ballet company at the Mariinsky Theatre, and the opera Prince Igor, all in Russia (and also an amazing experience).
13. Take a beach vacation somewhere that is not New Jersey. Penn and I went to Florida with my family. That was great!
14. Visit a boardwalk on the Delaware or Jersey shore when it's actually summertime. I managed this a few times this summer, actually. That's how my salt water taffy addiction started!
15. Take Penn to my home state. Done! He still hasn't visited my hometown, but he will for Christmas this year.
17. Try at least three types of cuisine that I have never/rarely tried. Russian (the Russian obsession with potato salad was bizarre, but I loved pelminis and am bummed that there's not really any place to get them here), Honduran (there are Honduran taco trucks that park in the lot of the thrift store near our apartment; Honduran food is very similar to Mexican food, which means I love it), and Lebanese (which turned out to be pretty much like Greek food)
18. Read at least two books that made me think, "Oh, that's a classic, I should probably read that," as I was entering Penn's books into our GoodReads library. I read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which maybe isn't a "classic", per se, but it's something I felt like everyone in the world but me had read so I had to try it. It was a very fun book, although sci-fi isn't usually my thing. I also finally read 1984 since I had somehow managed to get through a 20 year education without ever having been assigned it.
19. Take a group dance or exercise class. I took a free belly dancing class on campus one weekend.
23. Go here. Well, it decided to pour rain on us the day we went, but it was still a fun day.
24. Go here. This is probably my favorite local discovery. So few tourists visit it, and I think it's one of the best places I've been in the city. I plan to take all guests here from now on.
25. Visit some churches in our neighborhood and try to find one we'd like to attend on a regular basis. Penn and I sort of tried this for awhile at the beginning of the year, but then we lost our momentum. I think there are two issues at work here: it's hard to force ourselves to get up early on Sunday mornings, and we have no idea what type of church I would like to belong to. I was raised Lutheran so we tried that, and we tried a Methodist church. I'm increasingly beginning to believe that the Unitarian church is most compatible with my belief system, but Penn doesn't believe that Unitarianism is a "real" religion (he wasn't raised Baptist but nowadays his immediate family is fundamentalist Baptist, which I think has influenced his views. And yes...that's good for them but is NOT going to work for me and he doesn't want that for us and our family either). Although I do have to admit that Unitarianism seems so liberal and believe-what-you-want that part of me wonders if I should pick a church that would challenge my current belief system. I mean, I don't need a church to be a Unitarian. I can just keep doing what I'm already doing at home! But I'm too rational and logical and I know too much about how histories are written to buy into many of the teachings of the Christian church as God-given fact, and it seems disingenuous to go somewhere every Sunday and go through the motions when I don't truly believe half of what the church teaches and probably never will...To be honest, though, the main reason I'd like a church is for the sense of community. It's sort of forced community, I realize, but it would be nice to have a support network in place for emergencies or celebrations, and I like the idea of having a church community where I can help others. And I think I could find a liberal Protestant church where I could accept enough of the teachings to feel comfortable and not hypocritical being there, and where I could be allowed to question the things I don't believe without being ignored or told something that boils down to, "That's just how it is because God says so." Well, that aside got out of hand! Anyway, suffice it to say that this is sort of on the back burner for now, but since I'd like to be married in a church I imagine we'll have to pick the search back up eventually (see what I mean about believing half of it? I believe in God so I believe it's important to go through the marriage ritual in a church, or at least with a church officiant, so that we will be bound civilly and also in God's eyes).
26. Go to a hockey game. Got this one in right under the wire, but I did it!
27. Make the list of 28 Things to Do Before I Turn 28. Done!

Not bad! I managed to do a lot this year! Especially since I didn't make this list until well after my birthday last year. Some of the things I didn't accomplish I moved to this year's list (which I'll post next) and a couple of them I decided weren't so important after all, so I'm okay that I skipped them. It was a good year.

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