Anyone have suggestions for my next 101 things to do in 1001 days list?

I’ve been working on my next list of “101 things to do in 1001 days” and I currently have 62 items on my list. Anyone have suggestions on things I should add?

My previous lists are here.

101 in 1001 Days Recap (A Wee Bit Late)

So, I figured it was a good time to do a check in on my 101 things to do in 1001 days because that 1001 days is coming to an end very soon… or so I thought. I was sure that my list’s end date was in July, which meant I’d have about a month to try to knock a few more items off the list, but I just looked at it to see what specific date in July and found that it wasn’t any date in July – it ended on April 9! As in almost 2 months ago!! It started on July 12, 2014, which must be why I had July in my brain. I am an epic fail! So yes, let’s start with seeing how I did on my 101 list!

In total, I achieved 38/101 things. While that sounds pretty sad, it is better than I did on my second 101 list and one shy of the number that I achieved on my first 101 list. Let’s look at the breakdown:

Completed Items – A. Stuff I Did That I Figured I’d Be Likely To Do

7. Be written about in the New Westminster Record
13. Install screen doors on my balcony doors
16. Get a jewelry armoire
18. Get a strong structure on which to place my frog tank
20. Clean my new BBQ
21. Get rid of the fake trees my condo’s previous owner left on my balcony
22. Put felt pads on the bottom of all my furniture to protect my floors
23. Replace my mishmash of old dishes with a nice set of dishes
26. Unpack everything from my recent move
27. Update my address on every account I have by the time my mail forwarding ends
28. Update my budget to reflect my new financial situation
29. Get rack and pannier for my bike
32. See a show at Bard on the Beach
38. Write a will¹
56. Visit Bowen Island
57. Participate in political campaign
58. Ski at Whistler
64. Go on a Paddle Wheeler cruise down the Fraser River
66. Take the Peak to Peak gondola in Whistler
69. Create a balcony herb garden
80. Have a picnic
83. Make a Christmas wreath to hang on my door
86. Decorate a cake in a creative and awesome way
89. Increase the amount of money I loan out via Kiva by 100%
91. Pain something worth hanging on my wall
92. Get a journal article published
99. Don’t get any university degrees (unless they are honorary degrees) during this 1001 day period

B. Stuff I Did That I Was Surprised I Managed To Accomplish

4. Create a computer simulation model
35. Go for a ride in a float plane
37. Present at a conference at an international location (not including the US)
43. Go to NYC
44. Go to Chicago
46. Go to Nova Scotia
47. Go to Newfoundland
78. Get a promotion or a new job
93. Get a book chapter published
95. Publish something with my sister
100. Fall in love

I listed all the travel-related ones as “surprising” because my travel locations tend to relate to opportunities that present themselves rather than my picking them.  Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and presenting at an international conference (Australia) were all places I went to because there happened to be conferences there and I went to Chicago on the way to a conference in Kansas City. I did pick NYC, but it was actually my sister’s idea of a place to take our Mom for her birthday.

C. Stuff That I Partially Accomplished

19. Hang all my diplomas and artwork in my new place – All my diplomas are hung in my office at the hospital and almost all of my artwork is hung (I just need to hand a photo of a cool iceberg that I got in Newfoundland, a painting of flowers that I got in Nice (which I did *finally* get framed), and the two paintings that I painted at Paint Night.

60. Participate in 10 research studies (as a research “subject”) – I participated in 5 studies. And I actually emailed two or three other studies that advertised they were looking for research participants but didn’t get a response back from them.

Incomplete Items

A. Abject Failures

These are all things that I totally could have done but just didn’t.

1. Fix my ruby ring (from which I lost a ruby!)
2. Stay in the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel
3. Stay in the Chateau Lake Louise
14. Paint a room
15. Get a linen tower for the bathroom
17. Get a litter box hiding piece of furniture
24. Mend all the clothes in my “to fix” box
31. Read “Lord of the Flies”
33. Watch salmon spawning
39.Buy a red suit
40. Run a triathlon
41. Go zipling
42. Go skydiving
61. Make homemade marshmallows
62. Go on a relaxing vacation in a tropical location²
63. Donate blood (despite my needle phobia!)
65. Go to the free Friday night dance class at Hyack Square³
68. Go horseback riding
70. Go to a New Westminster Salmon Bellies lacrosse game
71. Complete the 100 pushups challenge
72. Write a short story
74. Make a list of 100 things for which I’m grateful!⁴
75. Go waterskiing
76. Go scuba diving
79. Hike up a glacier
81. Make a key lime pie
82. Send out Christmas cards to all my friends and family
85. Make Eggs Benedict
87. Make homemade spruce beer
88. Go to Science World After Dark
90. Lose the weight I gained during my MBA program
94. Publish something with Dr. Dan⁵
96. Invent a cupcake recipe
97. Invent 5 new drinks
98. See a Cirque du Soleil show

B. Stuff I Thought Was a Long Shot Anyways

5. Use the computer simulation model that I created to run a sensitivity analysis.
6. See Celtic Thunder live
8. Cage dive with sharks
9. Ride an elephant
10. Ride a camel
11. Ride a zamboni
12. Go whitewater rafting
25. Make a quilt from all my old t-shirts from different events
34. Go for a ride in a helicopter
36. Climb an active volcano
45. Go to Paris
48. Go to the Yukon
49. Go to Nunavit
50. Go to Iceland
51. Go to Italy
52. Go to Hawaii⁶
53. Go to Japan
54. Go to the Galapagos
55. Go somewhere in South America
59. Skate on the Rideau Canal
67. Visit Alcatraz
73. Do an amateur stand up comedy night
77. Go for a ride in a hot air balloon
101. Publish 751 blog postings during these 1001 days⁷

C. Stuff I no longer even care about/couldn’t do because of outside forces.

30. Bike to work at least 10 times – Once I got my new job, biking to work became off the table as it would probably take me 2 hours each way (at least at the speed I bike). And you can’t take a bike on the Skytrain during rush hour, so it’s not like I can Skytrain part of the way and bike the rest of the way.

84. Decorate my balcony with Christmas lights – I decided I don’t really care about this one anymore, as my balcony faces the back of the building, so who is even really going to see them?

I feel like the stuff that I accomplished was most boring tasks – though I suppose that a fair number of task-y type things ended up on the list because I’d just moved into my new condo when I wrote that list. I did manage to get some cool travelling accomplished and I published two journal articles and a book chapter, so that’s something. But I really haven’t done anything epic like I did during my previous 1001 days (much of which wasn’t even in my list at the time!).

I guess it’s time to put together a new 101 list – my fourth one! I have a few items on my list already and I think I’ll import a few of my as-of-yet not done ones from this list. And then I need to think of some truly epic things to do (I do have one extremely epic thing I’m working on, so that’s going on the list!). If anyone has suggestions on what I should put on my next list, I’m all ears!

1. Loophole on this one – I’ve written it, but not yet signed it, as you need two witnesses to sign it at the same time and I rarely have more than one person at my place unless I’m having a party and I feel like “who wants to witness the signing of my will is like the worst party game ever. At any rate, I’ve written my will and that’s all this item said, so I’m counting it! [↩]
2. I can’t believe I didn’t go on a relaxing tropical vacation in 1001 days!! [↩]
3. I don’t think they even have those classes anymore! [↩]
4. I really should have done this. This is going on my next 101 list for sure! [↩]
5. Definitely going on my next 101 list. We even having something that we are just starting to write up! [↩]
6. I did have a plan for this one, but my stupid hip injury thwarted my plans! [↩]
7. For the record, I only wrote 289 blog postings in this 1001 days. Yikes! [↩]

101 in 1001 mid-2015 check in

So I’m 372 days into the 1001 days of my latest “101 things to do in 1001 days” list (a.k.a., one year and one week or 37% of the way through) and at my latest count, I’ve achieved 25 of the 101 items (i.e., 24.75%). So while I’m a little bit behind, I have been making decent progress. I set a goal of knocking 15 items off of my list in 2015 and so far have done 11. Those 11 are:

58. Ski at Whistler
66. Take the Peak to Peak gondola in Whistler

Daniel got me lift tickets for Whistler for my Christmas present, which allowed me to knock the two aforementioned items off my list. We had a fantastic time!

Daniel and I on the Peak-to-Peak Gondola going from Blackcomb to Whistler – thereby achieving two things from my 101 list that day!

27. Update my address on every account I have by the time my mail forwarding ends
28. Update my budget to reflect my new financial situation

A couple of boring ones, but important!

64. Go on a Paddlewheeler cruise down the Fraser River

The Paddlewheeler is a paddle wheel-powered boat that travels up the Fraser River doubling as a pub on the weekends. There was a Groupon deal for tickets, so Daniel and I did this back in April and it was pretty fun!

89. Increase the amount of money I loan out via Kiva by 100%

Kiva is a microfinance organization where you can loan money to people in need, primarily in developing countries. It’s a fantastic way to support people who can’t get access to traditional financing to build their businesses, get an education, and build their communities. Typically the loans are about $25 per loaner, with a group of people loaning the total amount the loan recipient needs. I was originally introduced to Kiva by my friends Sarah and Dave, who gave me a gift card of money to loan through Kiva. As the loan recipients pay back their loan, I then loan that money out to other people. Every once  I add more money to the pot – usually when someone is offering to match any new funds that are loaned during a given period of time, and I decided that in my 1001 days I wanted to double the amount I was loaning out, from $76 to $151. I’m currently at $200 being loaned out, so I’ve more than met this goal.

93. Get a book chapter published

This one I added to the list knowing that I’d have a very good chance of achieving it because I was already working on the chapter! If memory serves, we didn’t have a publisher secured at that time, but the book editors were working on it and they had experience publishing several academic books like this one, so I was confident that we’d get the book published. It doesn’t appear that I’ve blogged about the book – oops! Anyway, it’s called Transforming Addiction: Gender, Trauma, Transdisciplinarity and I co-wrote chapter 2 “Fostering transdisciplinarity in addiction research training” based on my experiences as the Program Director of a transdisciplinary addictions research training program, which was my first job post-PhD. You can buy the book on Amazon or Chapters if you are so inclined.

46. Go to Nova Scotia

I’m in Halifax and have now been to 9 out of 10 Canadian provinces (and 10 out of 14 provinces + territories)

Nova Scotia was one of the two remaining provinces that I needed to go to in order to have been to all 10 provinces. The last one is Newfoundland and I’m hoping to go there for a conference that I really want to go to next year. Then I have to conquer the remaining territories – I’ve been to the Northwest Territories, but I have yet to get to Yukon or Nunavut.

56. Go to Bowen Island

Waiting for the ferry to return home from Bowen Island

This one is a little closer to home than Nova Scotia, but for some reason, I haven’t been to any of the islands around here, other than Vancouver Island. Bowen is a small and easy-to-get to island and I’d heard that it was quaint, so I put it on my list of 101 things to do. I ended up going there when my mom and sister were visiting. I’d been told there were cute little shops and restaurants there and that was true, though there were far fewer of them than I’d expected. But we did some shopping and had a delicious lunch and I got to knock this item off my list!

69. Create a balcony herb garden

This is another one that I achieved while my mom and sister were visiting. We went to Granville Island and I found a lovely herb garden in a box that contains parsley, sage, chives, marjoram, and peppermint and it only cost $13. So I bought it and put it on my balcony and now I have a balcony herb garden!

86 Decorate a cake in a creative and awesome way

A logic model cake

I had a colleague who has been working with me since last August and we have spent several months building logic models. Logic models, for the uninitiated, is a tool that is commonly used in program evaluation and it depicts the relationships between inputs, activities, outputs and outcomes (basically, it shows the “if.. then” logic where “if you have input w, then you can do activity x and if you do activity x, then you will get output y, and if you get output y, then you will get outcome z.” These logic models typically are represented by a bunch of boxes linked by arrows. Anyway, this colleague finished up on our project recently as she is moving and at her last team meeting with us, I made her a logic model-themed cake.

I’m pretty happy with having achieved 11 out of my goal of 15 things, and I’m hopeful that I’ll achieve another two very soon:

92. Get a journal article published. I’ve had a journal article accepted and am just waiting to find out what issue it is going to be published in!

91. Paint something worth hanging on my wall. My friend Cath and I are going to a Paint Nite event, where you go to a bar or restaurant and an artist teaches you how to paint something. So I will paint something tomorrow but whether or not it meets the criterion of “worth hanging on my wall” remains to be seen!