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From Matthew Jarpe via Mary Robinette Kowal, 100 things you’ve done/won’t ever do [everything involving heights and climbing is automatically out due to acrophobia and bad knees]:

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland [world, that is]
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumping
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort [man, have I  ever. I'll have to scan the picture sometime]
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkelling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theatre
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favourite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Read an entire book in one day

I think that’s 44 48 49! I keep finding more.  I don’t know where Matthew got the list, which has at least one dependent element – do 49, get 81 for free.

Like Matthew, I’m taking credit for 94 when all of the hard work was done by someone else.

Seeing 100 not bolded on someone’s list would make me very sad.

Let’s see – things I’ve done that are least likely to appear on someone else’s list:

101. Read War and Peace in one day.  The Sunday after the first US war in Iraq started, I woke with the idea and carried it out.  Third time I read W&P.

101a.  Read more than one entire book in a day.

101b.  Read four books in one day.  Pride and Prejudice, The Naive and Sentimental Lover (LeCarre), A Mask for the General (Lisa Goldstein), Taming a Seahorse (Robert B. Parker).

[I'm just plain obsessive at times.  In one 24-hour period this weekend, I read Roberto Bolano's 2666.  In the next 24-hour period, I reread Memory, Komarr, and A Civil Campaign, by Lois McMaster Bujold.  And I was social enough through all this that no one killed me.]

[Not my copy]

102. Attended college as a fifteen year old.  For three weeks, then I turned sixteen.

103. Been frisked by soldiers of a national army and a revolutionary army in the same day.  Night, actually, in Colombia.

104. Climbed around in the stacks of the Library of Congress.  As a kid.

105.  Had more than fifty books in my car at once.

106.  Written a PDF reader – in Java 1.1.  Ooh, you madman.

107.  Ridden the cable car into the mountains outside Zagreb.

108.  Squared timber with an axe.

109.  Conversed for hours with someone I didn’t share a language with.

110.  Been to a wedding in Venice.

The Music Category on this blog sits lonely, an orphan, unaccompanied by a single post.  If you only know me by this blog, you would never guess time and money I spend on music.  I listen almost exclusively to indie rock at the wordier end of the spectrum, but what I look for most of all in music is that it changes the way I hear.  Most of my favorite songs didn’t even strike my ear as music the first time I heard them. 

I can’t remember a better year for music in my life.  In 2008 the following bands and albums all changed the way I hear:

Aesop Rock

Bang on a Can All-Stars Meets Kyaw Kyaw Naing

Battles

The Blow

Cocorosie

Emily Haines and the Soft Skeleton

Girl Talk

Iron & Wine

Joanna Newsom

Los Campesinos

The Mountain Goats

Of Montreal

Oscar Peterson

Pas/Cal

Prototypes

Tinariwen

Why?

Yeasayer

Not all of these bands had new releases in 2008, but all of them were new to me this year.

Right now Department of Eagles is completely blowing my mind.

May not stay long. I like the look and the two right-hand columns, but I could only get one of my custom widgets to work.

Note that you can click on the top nav-bar to get a list of the other pages and a search feature for the site.

There’s now a page that will carry links to all of the Selachiad stories – the ones about the Human-Shark Hybrid.

Much better.

Here’s why…

Too bad about the ordering. “Fucking dick-bomb” would be a great addition to the vocabulary of invective.

What if I say dick cheney? Does that up my dick count, as well?

I’d better say fucking again, or it won’t come first any more. As it were.

UPDATED:

“dick cheney” doesn’t alter the count! You could presumably all day about what a dick Cheney is and still have a G rating. Hmm.

On the other hand, two more fuckings and two more dicks turn the bomb into a gun.

Betcha never expected to read that sentence.

And me, beyond a doubt the most foul-mouthed person I know.

Wait a minute, how did it miss this? It must look only at the current page.