#43: Go on 5 vacations

Okay, so this goal was completed awhile ago, but I'm still going to write about it. In October Robert and I went to Toronto for just a couple days, to celebrate our 5th anniversary. We had good food, and saw lots of sights. We got a CityPass thing that got us into the Royal Ontario Museum (dinosaurs! It blew my mind more than I thought it would, realizing just how old those bones were!), Casa Loma (Robert is seen below peering out the window of the tower), the CN tower (we went at night! So cool!), Science Center (love love love) and the zoo. Coupled with other general explorations and wanderings, we had a great time.








(!!!!!!!!!. Spirit animal.)

#65: Have 10 event nights

So, I believe I mentioned that awhile ago that I was in derby boot camp for the Detroit Derby Girls. I have since finished boot camp, and passes skills test. In October us Fresh Meat were split into two teams for an exhibition scrimmage. I threw a little event night at my place to decorate/alter our jerseys for the scrimmage, and Melissa brought her donut-maker!





Sam assembled this, a display of all the factors of the evening...donuts, tea, her jersey (she put the silver polka dots on the letters, the book Melissa was reading from my shelf (she didn't have her jersey yet), and all the tools we used.

Here's my finished product--took the sides in, cut the sleeves off, and laced polka dot ribbon up the side (our colors were baby pink and polka dot--blame Lazer Beam! But I did end up liking it better than the neon and animal print that Team Sleeze wore).

The Fresh Meat Face-Off was a lot of fun. It was most of ours first time playing roller derby publicly. Robert and my mom came out to cheer me on--my mom even made a sign (cleverly making it black and white, so that when she found out what hometeam I'd been drafted to she could just add that team's colors to it!). I had a blast playing, and I even got to jam a couple times, and kicked some major ass! Okay, so I did go to the penalty box, but that just allowed me to get lead jammer two jams in a row! Hey-oh! Team Beav won, and I was having such a great time that after the game, I remembered we also got to find out what teams we got drafted to! I had forgotten in all the excitement--and then I was doubly excited!

The night before, Kraken Whips, one of the captains of the Detroit Pistoffs, was asking a couple of us what teams we wanted to be on, didn't want to be on, etc., since she knew where we had been drafted already. I told her I thought there was no way the Pistoffs would draft me. Well, the joke was on me, because I am now a Detroit Pistoff! When it was announced, Kraken hugged me and said, "I was laughing so hard in my head last night!"

I'm having so much fun as a Pistoff. My teammates are really fun and funny. Last week at practice we all sang the theme song to the Little Mermaid while stretching. I mean, c'mon, that's pretty awesome. Last weekend was our first game--the season opener and a re-match of last years championships where the Pistoffs beat the D-Funk Allstars. It was probably the most exciting game I've ever seen, and D-Funk ended up winning by one point in the last jam--a real nail biter! I was an alternate for that game and didn't skate in it, but I'm looking forward to the next one where hopefully I'll get to strut my stuff on the track.

#21: Leave 100 love notes in random places

I've only left one of these around so far, but I've started carrying them in my purse so they're handy.

#50: Go to 3 Tigers games

Completed 09.03.11

My mom bought Robert and I tickets to a Tigers game for his birthday. It was a crazy game! The seats were really good, but....well, this was the game time temperature:



It was pretty miserable...hot, humid, sticky. But, we were sweatin' through it and enjoying the game nonetheless. We were down 8 to 1 at one point, it was looking pretty bleak, but I didn't loose the faith because I assert that the Tigers have never lost a game that we attended. Robert says we went to one where they lost, but he can't remember any specifics, and I don't remember it (I have the better memory of the two of us...he barely has one at all), so I don't believe it happened. We started to make a comeback, 8-5, when all of a sudden, the skies filled with dark clouds, the air was completely still, and we were treated to aerial views of massive dances of lightning across the sky to the South of us. The crowd's loud cheers of "OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH" no longer coincided with plays in the game, but rather with the flashes of lightning. And then...well....


With the Tigers down by 4, and the sudden coldness of the air, our tummies rumblin' for dinner, and the prospect of waiting 40+ minutes before the game could start up again, we left. We drove to Pita Cafe (represent!) for dinner, with Robert following updates from the game all the way there on his phone. Tigers kept scoring and scoring, and just as we were about to the restaurant, Cabrera had a walk-off homerun, the Tigers won 9-8. Crazy, right?

Also, you will notice in the photo at the top, my favorite Tigers shirt to wear is a hand-me-down from my brother, from the last time the Tigers won the World Series, in 1984. Meaning, the have yet to win the world series while I've been alive! (Born 1985) Also meaning, the shirt is absolutely falling apart, with holes surrounding all of the lettering. You can see some in the photo. I wore a tank top underneath the shirt, but Robert still said I looked like a hobo, and I had to bring a shirt to change into for dinner. The joke was on him when I had a dry shirt to change into and he didn't! Anyways, he got me a new favorite Tigers shirt for my birthday...awwww. It's super comfy and cute and I'm sportin' it often now that the tigies are in the playoffs. In fact, I'm wearing it right now!!

HALFWAY DONE.

So, according to my page over at the official Day Zero Project website, I am 501 days into this project, meaning I have 500 days to go! I've made it to the halfway point! Now, according to that site, which only counts items which are complete, I am 33% done. According to my own calculations, taking into account how much I've done in the items which are in progress, and I am exactly 50% done! 50% down, 50% done. Works out perfectly.

Now I just gotta get crackin' on the stuff I've been slacking on, and hope that I have enough time to finish them up!

photo from here

#71: Walk on the beach, 20x

First, let me say that I am posting this from a fort! It's a pretty grey, sad looking day, so I built myself a fort, taking over a corner of the living room, and blocking off the bathroom from Robert (bwahahaha, there's no way his giant self can crawl through this fort!). It's complete with couch cushions to lay on, lots of pillows, and twinkle lights strung up to make it extra-cozy. I'm loving this thing.

In the past few weeks I have gone on two camping trips on Lake Huron. One with my friend Jess and her 2-year-old daughter, Lively to East Tawas ("The Cape Cod of the Great Lakes", apparently). We hung out on the beach, I flew a kite, and we went swimming in the lake, but didn't necessarily go for a walk on the beach.

The lake was beautiful there, we were sort of in a bay, and the water was so clear. We walked out probably about 1/4 mile and the water was barely up to our hips, and we could still clearly see our feet.



Then, the next week, I went camping with my mom in her RV, to Sleeper State Park, in the thumb, right outside of Caseville. (Okay, so, Michigan is shaped like a hand, right? I think everyone knows that. Us Michiganders use our hands as maps quite often, pointing to places on our palms and fingers. So, the area that is in what looks like the thumb, we literally refer to it as "The Thumb".) We went for a walk on the beach both nights that we were there.





That's Mom explaining to me the scientific theory of arches. She was such a scientist on these walks. On the other walk she explained to me that zebra muscles are bad because, "They eat something or do something." But seriously, Lake Huron, in most places, is pretty murky these days, and I'm pretty sure it's because of the invasion of the zebra muscles. Just another reason why Lake Superior is the best Great Lake, we didn't have zebra muscles, and our water was very clear!


That's Professor Debbie herself.

We also went to a farmer's market while we were in the thumb, thereby checking off another one from list item #60: go to 50 farmer's markets. (I really gotta pick up the pace on this one! I've only got 8 down)


I think we did it wrong. First of all, it was the weirdest farmer's market I've ever been too, because there were way more flea market/antiques/sunglasses/knock-off louis vitton handbag booths than there were actual produce booths. Plus, puppies for sale! We spent time wandering around all the booths, not looking at much, other than antiques and a book/cigar box booth that kept us occupied for awhile. By the time we got to the actual food booths, they sounded the horn that the vendors could start packing up. To top it off, we had brought a lot of produce with us on the trip, so we didn't need any more for our trip, and we couldn't remember what we had at home or what we'd need. So, by the time we left, I had bought a cigar box, and Mom had bought two cigar boxes, a few books as gifts (including one for me about airplanes in the '40s. Let me tell you, that is all sorts of right up my alley), a plate of brownies, and a cinnamon roll. Oh well.

Here's a couple more cute pictures from Mom and I's trip, mostly on a walk through the hiking trails in the park. (I went for a jog through them at dusk...I was doing my cooldown walk until I looked over and saw a deer staring at me...and promptly screamed and ran! I'm not interested in talking to any wildlife at nighttime! If there's a deer looking at me, there's probably also a bear or bigfoot with its eye on me.)

#31 & #32: Making and selling journals on etsy

31. Make 12 new book journals (2/12)
32. Get etsy shop back up and running and sell 12 journals (3/12)

So, I had gotten this up and running last year, and then I got busy and all of the listings lapsed, but I have recently started making new journals (I've only completed 2, but I have about 5 half-done) and listing everything again. I've also started making some felt kindle cases and have listed those in the shop as well. Go ahead and check out my esty shop, Literary Ruin.

I sold this journal and I've been featured in a few treasuries--here's the latest one, Upcycled Nerd.