It’s Furious Balancing

I like lists. I don’t self-identify as an obsessive list-maker, but I can say that, in general, I like lists. I like crossing things off my “Things to Do” list. I like adding things to my “Things to Do” list after I have already done them for the sheer pleasure of crossing them off. I like going over to listography and reading other peoples’ lists; it’s like eavesdropping, in a way.

I read Crazy Aunt Purl‘s blog¹ about her Big List of 100 Things to Do Before I Die. I’m not up to concocting my own list of 100 things – unless they could be along the lines of “Travel to 99 different locations” and “Re-read A la recherché de temps perdu.” I do feel, however, that I can name 12 things to do over the course of the next year. Twelve concrete, targeted, measurable things.² Believe me when I tell you that this will be far more entertaining than my coming up with any New Year’s Resolutions.³

12 Things to Do in 2008 (in no particular order)

1. Floss. Complete the paperwork for the University of Tennessee’s Department of Forensic Anthropology so I may rest at The Body Farm after my death. For the squeamish, let’s just say that I plan on donating my body to science. For people who may want a tad more information, check out this article from Wired.
2. Read Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative (three volumes, people!) and Winston Churchill’s The Second World War.⁴ Both of these have been on my to-be-read pile for far too long. I admit that my to-be-read pile is not so much a “pile” as a “bookcase.” See Item 7 below.
3. Keep a daily handwritten diary. I don’t mean a diary heavy on the emotional introspection, but rather one in which I keep daily observations, ideas to appear on this blog, quotes, resources, notes about patterns in my pain levels, u.s.w. I bought a Moleskine Pocket Weekly Planner for this particular purpose.
4. Box up the unwanted/unneeded household items and clothes in the basement and either (a) donate them to charity, or (b) have a garage sale. When The Husband and I moved in together, I put most of my kitchen stuff in the basement. I’ve dug out a cookie sheet or two; other than that, the kitchen stuff remains untouched. There are several other boxes down there that can be sorted and redirected. I’ve discovered that getting rid of “stuff” and “de-cluttering” is extremely liberating.
5. Finalize and sign my will. I have worked in an offshoot of the Death Care Industry as a probate and estate planning legal secretary for 15 years and I haven’t signed my will yet.⁵ This is embarrassing.
6. Pay down a minimum of $3,600 on my credit card debt. Paying $300.00 per month is more than do-able. I’ve been making monthly payments in the $400-$500 range for some time now, and I’ve stopped charging new purchases to the cards (unless I plan on paying the balance off in full each month). I’m going to get defensive here and loudly declare that I don’t have an unmanageable or onerous amount of personal debt – and I have a credit rating to die for – but I do want to get that debt paid down.
7. Complete my catalog of books on LibraryThing. To be honest, this catalog will never be complete in the true sense of the word. It will never be finished. I will never have every single one of my books entered and tagged. I am always smuggling new books into the house; some are cataloged right away, some go on the shelves right away, and some linger in ever-growing piles in my living room, bedroom, and study. I find these piles of book comforting, in some small way — but that’s another blog post.
8. Finish my Cats of Ulthar mod for Morrowind. I have three of the four cats finished, and I’ve been hung up on the last one because I can’t seem to come up with any ideas outside of a “retrieve an item from an NPC by combat” quest. Trite. Boring. An unfinished Morrowind mod isn’t much better, so I need must carry on.
9. Take a one-week vacation in a fabulous American city – one I haven’t been to before — and act like a complete and utter Tourist Dork.⁶ I keep telling myself that I need to get back to Paris, but I’ve been to Paris twice now. It’s time for something different. Right now, I’m thinking about Seattle or San Francisco.
10. Clean and remodel/redecorate one room in the house. We’ve been in our house for six or seven years now (tempus fugit), and while there are a lot of structural home improvements that need to be done,⁷ I would really like to do some painting and sprucing up. I don’t need my house to look like it came from the pages of Architectural Digest – I like the lived-in, shabby chic vibe – but I would like to have a house that doesn’t look like we moved in last week and haven’t had time to unpack. I need to have A Chat with The Husband about which room we’ll remodel, so that’s why it’s currently unspecified.
11. Knit Ice Queen. I have wanted to attempt lace knitting for some time, and this project might finally inspire me. It may be beyond my knitting skill level, but it’s just so stinkin’ gorgeous I have to give it the Old College Try. I have a few lacy scarfs on my Ravelry queue, but they can’t hold a candle to Ice Queen.⁸ I’ve never done lace and I have never knit with beads. This may just kill me, so I will need to complete Items 1 and 5 before this.
12. Watch three NetFlix movies a month – minimum. I pay for it every month, I may as well get my butt in gear and start watching the films and TV shows in my queue.

Whew! I think I’m done with my words — for the moment. Further bulletins as events warrant.

1. This was the first blog I began following regularly and the one that inspired me to begin blogging myself. [↩]
2. As opposed to vague statements such as “Exercise more” or “Consume less aerosol cheese.” What exactly is more or less, in these instances? Once a year? Less than 50 pounds? [↩]
3. Which would, of course, start off with “1. Floss.” [↩]
4. I’ll be reading the abridged version of Churchill’s memoirs. 99% of the time I pooh-pooh any abridgement of a work, but I will gladly make an exception when it comes to Churchill. [↩]
5. We signed our general and medical powers of attorney months ago, though. [↩]
6. Other requirements: It must be located in a Blue State and have an extraordinary amount of real coffee houses (i.e. Not Starbucks) and places to buy yarn and used books. Yes, I know Starbucks started in Seattle, but I’m confident that there are some cafes there that have not succumbed to the Wal-Martinization of caffeine. [↩]
7. We need new windows, a new driveway, and a new front porch. [↩]
8. For the record, I have no interest whatsoever in lace shawls; they’re not my thing. [↩]

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Blogging, Books, Gaming, Knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.