A long while ago, I found a site that challenged readers to make a list of 101 things to accomplish in 1001 days, if you search for posts here with the 101 in 1001 tags or use your favorite search engine, you’ll find it. I jumped on board and am almost half way through my 1001 days. I have made some progress, which is exciting and had to remove some things from the list that are no longer relevant or impossible to complete at this point. While I am fairly certain that I will be fortunate to complete 60 or more of the 101 things, I have learned how to make a more feasible list in May of 2011 if I choose to try this again.

Art/Craft
12. Purchase or make a drop spindle (9/2008 made 2), spin at least 6 oz. of pre-dyed fiber & knit into socks
18. Finish R2D2 hat, write instructions (11/2008)
21. Frog Homespun blanket and reuse yarn to make hoodie (2009)
22. Stamp cards to use for special occasions: have 20 in reserve – 10/20 (11/2009)
26. Calculate yards or number of projects in stash, get to work (this is in constant progress which would be finished if I would stop adding to the list and stash)

Education/Self-Development
1. Play guitar on worship team (requires learning to play guitar) no longer on the worship team, need new task

Health
2. Lose enough weight to fall into healthy BMI and keep it off (I do have an exact number for a goal weight) (in process)
4. Kayak at least 15 times each year as often as possible

Literature
1. Read/listen to 15 Classics (1 every other month) – in progress
2. Re-read Wheel of Time, creating personal encyclopedia to track characters/plots – 5.5 of 11 reread
3. Read 10 biographies from individuals who dedicated their lives to societal change (1 every 3 months) – in progress
4. Join a book club: IRL or virtual (2/2009)
5. Write a review for each book read as a result of this 101 in 1001 list – in progress

Organization/De-Clutter
13. Basement organize boxes into smallest floor area possible, maximize work area: accomplished when there is room to host video game night with friends or craft session (summer/fall 2009)
15. Sort teaching boxes, condense by at least one box (summer/fall 2009)

Random
1. Rediscover natural hair color, no dyes until 100% natural again (fall 2009)
2. Go to the beach at least once a year: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011
3. Commit 9 random acts of kindness without receiving/accepting/admitting credit (in process 2 out of 9)

While at the time multiple copies of the same files didn’t bother me much and seemed like a good idea the time, I have reconsidered my stance on the subject. I must come up with a better backup/file transfer plan for various computers in my possession. Having four copies of an mp3 file is not really cool, well, if it were just one file it would be, but it’s not just one file there are probably at least 1500 duplicate files on the hard drive. Every now and again I sit down and hunt for multiple files, decide which to keep and delete the rest. I’m so far behind. On the brighter side my 750GB drive will be much less full when I am finished, some time in 2030.

I blog this random tidbit because it is part of my 101 things to accomplish in 1001 days. I’m not doing so great on that list. I’ve accomplished a few things, like the basement, that was huge. The basement is clean, well, cleaner and way more organized.

Page by Page Books – a site similar to Project Gutenberg

I’m currently reading a short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” I saw the movie, now I’m reading the story. I think I like the story better.

Catalog and track your cookbooks and recipes with Cookbooker. It’s in beta right now, I’m not sure that I’ll use it as much as I thought I would. It has some of the cookbooks I have but not all and I haven’t investigated enough to see where to put in new books.

by Peter David
You’ll have to write your own reading/discussion guide for this one.

a review
Rarely do I have to read a fiction book with a dictionary and I found it rather refreshing to expand my vocabulary while I read a reimagining of Peter Pan. Many of the potential new vocabulary words are explain either through context or by the narrator. I love the names of two of the pirates, “Caveat” and “Roomer,” they live up to their names. The only place Peter Pan is mentioned is in reviews on the covers of the book. After that we follow the story of “The Boy,” Gwenny, Paul Darling and a host of “Anyplace characters” The author wrote Tigerheart from the narrator’s point of view, but the narrator recorded the story in the first person. The narrator will occasionally become sidetracked explaining why something is the way it is or why he doesn’t know something he doesn’t know. I found myself giggling through the book often. I’m not sure this is a children’s book, but it could be read to a child with creative editing done by an adult. What I enjoyed most wasn’t the story line, who won the battle, what happened to the characters. I enjoyed trying to guess how the characters and plot twists related to the original story. Did this story occur before Wendy, John and Michael flew with Peter? Was “The Boy” Peter? Was Gwenny (Gwendolyn) Wendy? How does Paul relate to the Wendy, John and Michael?

I would like to read the Peter Pan stories and then Tigerheart again to compare the writing style and characters. To read the original Peter Pan and Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, please visit Project Gutenberg.

a summary
While villains and heroes come and go, one thing remains, there must be heroes and villains. Tigerheart is a story from “Anyplace” where in there are pirates and non-pirates, heroes and villains. Which are which are for you to decide. Paul Darling’s sister Bonnie disappeared, she didn’t want to be a baby, turned into a bird and flew away. This tale follows Paul’s adventure to and from “Anyplace” on the quest to bring a baby girl back to his mother to make her happy again.

by markus zusak
reading guide

a review/a summary
It’s not often I struggle to write about a book. What to say without giving too much away? A familiar topic fictionalized in an unique manner, “The Book Thief” will keep you turning the pages. The main character, Liesel, becomes a thief of books among other things. The narrator leads the reader through Nazi Germany in the late 1930s and early 1940s while following a child, her family, neighborhood and government. While technically a young adult book, I would highly recommend it for a wider audience including plain-old adults.

by Kathryn Stockett
reading guide

a review
As the title indicates, this is a book I read for book club. I wouldn’t have read it otherwise. I find it hard to believe that a white author can write an account of life for African-American housekeepers/maids in the south in the 1960s. Penguin books had a podcast episode with the author about why she felt she could write this book. I listened to part of it and was so bored I turned it off before finishing it. The stories from the housekeepers/maids in the book were interesting enough to hold my interest.

a summary
A fictional account of the life of African-American housekeepers/maids set in the 1960s in Jackson, Mississippi. The book is written by a white woman and is told from the point of view of a white woman just out of college and two housekeepers/maids. The white woman, Skeeter, wants to be a journalist and decides to interview at least 12 woman who spent their lives taking care of other people’s children and house. The story is full of racial tension as all of the women sneak behind the backs of their employers, friends, family, neighbors and high-society. The story was creative enough to hold my interest, but I have no idea as to the accuracy of such an account, fictional though it is.

by Janette Walls
reading guide

a review
A well written memoir of the author’s childhood with an alcoholic parent and an out-of-touch parent. I was genuinely surprised by the depth of caring toward her parents the author could express as she wrote her account. I had a difficult time finding any empathy for the parents, while Janette clearly found common ground on which to stand with her family. I found myself a hybrid between Janette and her youngest sister, who when the time came, ran from her family and hasn’t looked back yet.

a summary
Janette recounts her childhood and the chaos that one alcoholic parent and one free-spirit parent brought to her life and the lives of her siblings with love and respect for them. While her father was not violent, his drinking left the family with little to no money to provide for basic needs, including food, clothes, and shelters. Her parents pride wouldn’t allow them to accept handouts or help of any kind, rather the children went without meals, clothes, appropriate shelter and more. Her mother would work only when absolutely necessary and kept secrets of her own that may have saved the children a great deal of pain and anguish had she been a bit less selfish. This is a heart wrenching account of a child watching her parents spiral out of control of their lives and their failure to provide for the basic care of their children. The few things the parents did instill were pride in education and pride in self, that one could do just about anything one set about doing.

For several years I have used a Franklin-Covey planner with varying degrees of success. I have switched from daily classic size to weekly compact and various stages in between. At this point in my life, I still need a planner and don’t see that changing, but I need something bigger and not as big all at the same time. I can’t hold a year’s worth of weekly planning pages in the binder, so I try to squish things into the monthly view. All I end up doing is frustrating myself and writing across the whole silly calendar. Maybe a year or so ago, I visited a site with step-by-step instructions to turn a pocket-sized moleskine into planner of sorts with a system of tracking projects. It reminded me of the F-C system, but without the expense of pages and the binder and the overwhelming size. I found a second site that turned a pocket-sized moleskine into a project management system.

As I was looking at other planners today while I was out and about, I couldn’t find anything that was exactly what I desired, so I purchased a journal of sorts which closes tightly to protect the pages. To my utter shock and amazement, I was able to find both sites tonight without the aid of my bookmarks. Since I found the sites again, I am going make my own hybrid system for managing my calendar for the new year. Yes, I’m planning ahead. Actually, I have F-C pages up through the end of the year and even though I want to stop using it now, I can’t bring myself to waste 1/3 of the cost of the silly pages by not using it. Yes, I’m an illogical glutton for punishment. So I will start creating it and begin using it in January.

by Mitch Albom
reading guide

a review
A quick read wherein the author let’s you in on his secret a bit at time, though with enough information to figure out most of it before the last page. I’d read it again.

a summary
In the author’s typical style, the story looks at past choices and regrets, and then offers a way to rectify some. The premise of this work asks if you could have one more day with a loved one who had died, what would that day look like, what would you talk about, what would you do, etc. Charley, the main character, is allowed one more day with his long dead mother. He learns to look at himself and his family in a different light.

Subtitled “Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life”
written by Jenna Woginrich

a review
I can’t rate this high enough. A must read for anyone who would like to depend less on corporate America (or any other country), our Government and more on him/herself. In a humorous yet factual manner, the author shares her adventures of moving, raising small animals for food and fiber (to spin into yarn), crafting, thrifting for essentials that need not be brand new and other interesting discoveries along the way.

a summary
The author shares her experiences and knowledge of learning to live local. She shares chapters on raising a few chickens with limited acreage, gardening on a budget, learning to live without modern distractions, and shares a wealth of research at the end of the book.

favorite quote
“Vegetable gardening has been called ‘the peaceful sedition’ because at the most basic level, when a person can feed and shelter herself, she doesn’t require a government to provide for her.”