Archive | December, 2009

Thing to Do #100: Reach 100 Years of Age-My 20s

Age 22 (Do I look much different?)

One thing I’ve always liked about my birth year is that it synchs up nicely with the decades.  I turned 20 in the year 2000.  Therefore, bidding good-bye to the aughts also means saying adios to my 20s.  In the book, it suggests that I make a timeline, recording all the major events in my life leading up to my 100th birthday, so I decided to do a little recap.  Looking back, I’m pretty proud of what I’ve accomplished in my 20s; all of the major life goals I set for myself, I had accomplished by 2006-which mostly just illustrates that I did not have very lofty goals. 

In re-examining my life thus far, the only major change I would like to make is to actually endeavor to make money.  Although it seems to be a high priority for most, it’s just never occurred to me, but I’m beginning more and more to see the benefit.  Going into my 30s, I’ve finally decided that I’m tired of working harder than everyone else.  I’m very good at what I do and people with far less ability and intelligence easily make 3 times more than what I make.  Plus, if I want to travel, I gots to fund these trips!

Highlights from My Roaring Twenties:

2000:  Sophomore year at Hollins.  Internship at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.  Got engaged.  Internship at the North Carolina Museum of History.

2001:  Junior year at Hollins.  Spent January in ItalyNipple pierced (and removed in 6 months).  Won the Frances Niederer Scholarship.

2002:  Senior year at Hollins.  Internship at the Southwestern Virginia Museum of Art.  Spent New Year’s Eve in Times Square, NYC.  Internship with the Queen Anne’s Revenge Shipwreck Project.  Graduated from Hollins.  Traveled through New England to visit New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts.  Got married.  Went to Disney World.

2003:  Began my first real grown up job (with benefits).  Visit Atlantic City.

2004:  Quit first real grown up job.  Started grad school at Campbell University.  Began teaching.

2005:  Began working as Executive Director of the Johnston County Arts Council.  Completed my Non-Profit Management Certification from Duke University.  Left my husband.  Bought my house.

2006:  Completed my grad degree from Campbell.

2007:  Visited Miami (swam with dolphins and bet on the ponies).  Took cruise to Grand Cayman, Cozumel/Tulum, Belize, and Honduras.

2008:  Visited New Orleans for Mardi Gras.  Got engaged.  Went to Playa del Carmen (swam with Whale Sharks).  Went White Water Rafting.  Began my job at NBC 17.

2009:  Got laid off from NBC 17.  Became Executive Director of Ava Gardner Museum.  Got married in Vegas.  Traveled to Ohio to ride Top Thrill Dragster.  Got a piece of art in an exhibition.

What did you accomplish during the “Aughts?”

Final Report for 2009

I posted my Things to Do for 2009 in the beginning of January and did  follow ups throughout the year.  We’re still a few days from the end of the year but I figured I could go ahead and post my final report:

#12 Get a piece of art into an exhibition – Completed!

#14 Ride the World’s Biggest Rollercoasters – Rode the Top Thrill Dragster but Son of Beast was closed.

#22 Go Up in a Hot Air Balloon – FAIL!

#28 Sky Dive – FAIL! (Although when I went to New Hampshire in April, I went Indoor Skydiving.  I’m working my way up…)

#37 Make fire without matches – FAIL!

#52 Read the All-Time Greatest Books – Completed my goal of reading 8 (Asterix and the Golden Sickle, The Day of the Triffids, Atomised, The Buddha of Suburbia, The Lost Estate, An Artist of the Floating World, The New York Trilogy, and Stupid White Men)  Even went above an beyond and succeeded on my third try of The Grapes of Wrath.  Also read Winter’s Tale, Earthly Powers, and The End of the Affair.  Of course, these are the books that are on THE OFFICIAL LIST, but I also read: Ava: My Story, Grabtown Girl, Secret Diary of a Call Girl, The Little Prince, Revolutionary Road and the first four of the Sookie Stackhouse books (almost all brain candy :)

#88 Get Married Unusually – Completed June 6, 2009.  Vegas, Baby!

#99 Confess –  FAIL!

So this is where I am on the original goals for 2009.  However, I also manged to be a part of a flash mob during the No-Pants Subway Ride, went snow sledding for the first time in my life, saw a Bald Eaglemilked a cow, and started toward trying to get my name in the ring of honor at Flying Saucer.  As of right now, I have drank 54 of my 200 beers . 

How did you do on your New Year’s Resolutions/goals for 2009?

Thing to Do #66: Be a Part of a Flash Mob-Guerrilla Christmas Tactics

I completed this thing to do last January by participating in my No-Pants Subway Ride in DC.  I still follow Improv Everywhere just to see videos and stories of their crazy antics.  Some are funny, some are sweet, and some are just plain silly.  The one where they did an impromtu wedding reception for a couple that had just been married at City Hall was truly touching.  And the one they just did where they had a 13-member handbell choir provide some unexpected accompaniment for a Salvation Army bell ringer in front of Bloomingdale’s was full of the Christmas spirit.  Watch the video and go to Improv Everywhere for the behind the scenes story.

Thing to Do #66: Be Part of a Flash Mob-UNC Flash Rave #3

When I first began this blog, one of my first posts was about Flash Mobs because UNC students had just held a Flash Rave during Final Exams week at Davis Library.  From that I found out about Improv Everywhere and from THAT I found out about the No-Pants Subway Ride.

The UNC Flash Rave began three semesters ago. It was somewhat covert then and surprised some students and library staff.

But the rave is no longer a secret. It has a Facebook page, where at least 5,600 students had pledged their participation, and was the subject of a recent story in the Daily Tar Heel, which reported on it as it would any other campus event expected to draw thousands of participants.

This year’s video is in elapsed time, so it gives a good idea of how many people are involved, but last year’s video was so much better.  I’ll post it again because it makes me happy :)

Thing to Do #57: See the All-Time Greatest Films (or just of the Decade part 3)

Miranda has continued seeking out “Best of the Decade” lists but I’ve given up.  Here is the SUPER LIST compiled from five different lists. I’m kinda dissapointed that no movie was on all five lists-I was kinda hoping there would be a SUPER MOVIE from the SUPER LIST.  I have seen of the 29 of 53 – ones I’ve seen are in black/not seen in red.  (I really have no excuse for having not seen Kill Bill as both volumes are in my personal DVD collection)  How many have you seen?

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days (4 votes)
Brokeback Mountain (4 votes)
Children of Men (4 votes)
The Dark Knight (4 votes)
Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind (4 votes)
Grizzly Man (4 votes)
The Lord of the Rings trilogy (any mention-4 votes)
Mulholland Drive (4 votes)
Pan’s Labyrinth (4 votes)
Spirited Away (4 votes)
The Royal Tenebaums (4 votes)
There Will Be Blood (4 votes)
Almost Famous (3 votes)
Cache (Hidden) (3 votes)
City of God (3 votes)
Donnie Darko (3 votes)
In the Mood for Love (3 votes)
L’Enfant (3 votes)
Lost in Translation (3 votes)
Memento (3 votes)
No Country For Old Men (3 votes)
Talk to Her (3 votes)
The Squid and the Whale (3 votes)
Yi Yi (A One and a Two) (3 votes)
25th Hour (2 votes)
40-Year Old Virgin (2 votes)
AI – Artificial Intelligence (2 votes)
American Psycho (2 votes)
Before Sunset (2 votes)
Capturing the Friedmans (2 votes)
Dancer in the Dark (2 votes)
Dogville (2 votes)
Gladiator (2 votes)
Gosford Park (2 votes)
Hotel Rwanda (2 votes)
In the Loop (2 votes)
Iraq in Fragments (2 votes)
Kill Bill Vol 1 and/or Vol 2 (2 votes)
Little Miss Sunshine (2 votes)
Man on Wire (2 votes)
Morvern Callar (2 votes)
Moulin Rouge (2 votes)
Oldboy (2 votes)
Punch-Drunk Love (2 votes)
Syndromes and a Century (2 votes)
The Incredibles (2 votes)
The Last King of Scotland (2 votes)
The New World (2 votes)
Traffic (2 votes)
United 93 (2 votes)
WALL-E (2 votes)
Y Tu Mama Tambien (2 votes)
Zodiac (2 votes)

Original Thing to Do #97: Live in a Van

This past September I updated the original list to reflect more of the things I wanted to do.  One of the things on the original list that I was not interested in was to live in a van.  The News and Observer recently had this article about a Duke grad student that is living out of a van on Duke’s campus.  The story is below and go to the full story here to get an idea of the practical issues you would encounter if you ever decided to live in a van for a year (or two)…

Among the criteria Ken Ilgunas used when deciding where to go to graduate school: Would the local climate allow him to sleep in his van?

Yep, that’s right. Ken Ilgunas lives in a van. In a Duke University parking lot. That’s as specific as Ilgunas gets. See, he’s doing this as a social experiment, to see if he can get through graduate school without debt.

Which means he’s keeping a low profile. Or at least he was until he blew his own cover this week in this story featured prominently on the salon.com website.

Oh, and he has his own blog where the 26-year-old, who is enrolled in Duke’s liberal studies graduate program, has chronicled his adventures.

Ilgunas grew up in a suburban, middle class family in Niagara Falls, NY. Mom’s a nurse, dad’s a factory worker. It was a good life but left Ilgunas wanting something more.

“I felt there was something vapid about the suburban lifestyle,” he told me this week. “People work 40 hours a week and come home and watch TV. There’s no beauty or poetry or adventure in that sort of life. I recognized I wasn’t getting something out of that lifestyle.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, Ilgunas is inspired by Henry David Thoreau and his “Walden,” classic, a tale of inner peace.

“He’s my guy,” Ilgunas said of the author he dressed up as this past Halloween. “I have a nasty man-crush on him.”

So Ilgunas has spent much of the year in his 1994 Ford Econoline he bought on Craigslist for $1,500. He “retrofitted” it by pulling some seats out. He converted the back seat to a bed.

Cozy!

He gets his mail at a campus post box, and he stays connected to the world using his laptop at the library or elsewhere on the totally-wired campus.

By the time you read this, Ilgunas will have left the parking space he has called home for four months to head to the North Carolina mountains for some outdoorsy winter-break adventures. But he’ll return to Duke next semester and hopes the campus cops won’t crack down on him, now that his story is out there.

I marked this one off of my list because I am simply one of those people that need the comforts of home, or at least a hot shower every day.  However, for those that can pull it off, it truly is an accomplishment.  Think you could live out of a van?

Thing to Do #57: See the All-Time Greatest Films (or just of the Decade part 2)

More end of the decade film lists!  (Jeez, I love lists!)  All four come from TTDer Miranda (where does she find these wonderful lists!?)  Miranda and I are working to condense these lists and come up with a SUPER LIST of movies from the past decade.  Stay tuned…

The first is EW’s List of the 10 Best Movies of the Decade.  I did the best by far on this list, getting 9 of 10.  (I’m sorry but I started Moulin Rouge and just couldn’t make it all the way through).

EW’s List of the 10 Best Movies of the Decade
1. The Lord of the Rings (the Trilogy)
2. Brokeback Mountain
3. Gladiator
4. The Dark Knight
5. WALL-E
6. Moulin Rouge!
7. Children of Men
8. The 40 Year Old Virgin
9. Lost in Translation
10. Almost Famous

The second one comes from Paste Magazine as the 50 Best Films of the Decade.  I’ve never even heard of some of these, but there are definitely a few that I’ve been meaning to see and are on my Netflix queue.  I LOVE Amelie and O Brother Where Art Thou?.  I thought Spirited Away was overrated (I don’t like Anime) and Junebug was pretty awful.  I know I need to see Up and I’ve heard good things about Half-Nelson.  Any other suggestions?

I’ve seen exactly half-25 of the 50.  The ones I’ve seen are in black;  not seen are in red. 

1. City of God
2. Amelie
3. Almost Famous
4. The Lord of the Rings trilogy 
5. Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind
6. Beau Travail
7. Lost in Translation
8. The Son
9. No Country for Old Men
10. The Royal Tenenbaums
11. The Dark Knight
12. There Will Be Blood
13. Mulholland Drive
14. Up
15. Juno
16. Half Nelson
17. Memento
18. Syndromes and a Century
19. 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
20. Elephant
21. In the Loop
22. Dogville
23. Traffic
24. O Brother, Where Art Thou?
25. Pan’s Labyrinth
26. Ghost Dog
27. Cache (Hidden)
28. History of Violence
29. Man on Wire
30. Once
31. Gosford Park
32. Ratatouille

33. Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2
34. Little Miss Sunshine
35. Junebug
36. Millions
37. Billy Elliot
38. Donnie Darko
39. Spirited Away
40. The Departed
41. L’Enfant
42. The Last King of Scotland
43. In America
44. Hotel Rwanda
45. Whale Rider
46. Iraq in Fragments
47. Grizzly Man

48. Flight of the Red Balloon
49. High Fidelity
50. The Squid and the Whale

The third is from Time Out New YorkGrizzly Man, L’Enfant, and Talk to Her keep popping up, so I guess I need to add those too.  But I’m sorry, Miami Vice?!  Like, the one with Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell, directed by Michael Mann?  Am I missing something?

Didn’t do too well on this list: only 14 of 50.  The ones I’ve read are in black;  not seen are in red.

Read more…

Thing to Do #57: See the All Time Greatest Films (or just of the past decade)

To celebrate the end of the decade (I’m calling it the end although I know that 2010 is supposedly still part of this decade),  Miranda shared a list that hails from United Kingdom’s Times Online as the 100 Best Films of the Decade.  As this list comes from a UK news outlet, its heavy on the Brit films (although I guess we here in America tend to choose our own, but that’s mostly because we’re more awesome!  Sorry, arrogant Americanism showing through).  In truth, its mostly just more international.

For the most part, the ones that I have seen (especially the dramas) I thought were terribly overrated and really didn’t like.  As for the comedies on the list, they chose a lot of quirky ones that have a similar comedy style-must be the style that appeals to the Brits.  I’ve only seen 41 of 100-ones that I’ve seen have an X beside it. 

1. Hidden (Cache)

2. The Bourne Supremacy/The Bourne Ultimatum-X

3. No Country for Old Men-X

4. Grizzly Man

5. Team America: World Police-X (only those crazy Brits would put this on a Best list)

6. Slumdog Millionaire-X

 7. The Last King of Scotland-X

8. Casino Royale-X

 9. The Queen

10. Hunger

11. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan-X

12. The Lives of Others

13. This is England

14. 4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days

15. Downfall

16. Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind-X

17. Brokeback Mountain-X

18. Let the Right One In

19. United 93

20. Donnie Darko-X

21. Good Night, and Good Luck-X

22. Far from Heaven-X

23. Man On Wire

24. 28 Days Later…

25. Dancer in the Dark

26. Minority Report-X

27. Sideways-X

28. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

29. Being John Malkovich-X

30. Irreversible

31. Iraq in Fragments

32. Gladiator-X

33. Monsoon Wedding

34. Finding Nemo-X

35. Y Tu Mama Tambien

 36. Capturing the Friedmans

37. In the Mood for Love

38. Mulholland Drive

39. Lost in Translation-X

40. Syriana-X

41. Children of Men-X

42. The Incredibles-X

43. The Dark Knight-X

44. Under the Sand

 45. Touching the Void

46. Traffic-X

47. My Summer of Love

48. Little Miss Sunshine-X

49. Knocked Up-X

50. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King-X

51. The Son’s Room

52. The Constant Gardener-X

53. Milk

54. Bad Santa-X

55. Chopper

56. Volver-X

57. The Consequences of Love

58. Shaun of the Dead

59. Etre et Avoir

60. The Squid and the Whale-X

61. Spirited Away-X

62. Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy-X (YES!  Stay classy San Diego!)

63. There Will Be Blood-X

64. L’enfant

65. Waltz with Bashir

66. City of God-X

67. Gomorrah

68. Memento-X

69. Persepolis

70. The Class

71. Monsters, Inc.-X

 72. The Hurt Locker

73. The Beat That My Heart Skipped

74. Pan’s Labyrinth

75. Talk to Her

 76. Control

77. Bowling for Columbine

78. About Schmidt-X

79. Le Grand Voyage

80. Me, You and Everyone We Know

81. In the Loop

82. Yi Yi: A One and Two

83. The Wind that Shakes the Barley

84. Hotel Rwanda-X

85. The Piano Teacher

86. The Orphanage

87. Time and Winds

88. The Royal Tenebaums-X

89. School of Rock-X

90. Wedding Crashers-X

91. Lantana

92. Dirty Pretty Things

93. House of Flying Daggers

 94. An Inconvenient Truth

95. Amores Perros

96. Morvern Callar

97. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

98. Crash-X

99. Battle Royale

100. The Devil Wears Prada-X

Thing to Do #52: Read the Greatest Books Ever Written-the Southern Edition

Totally stealing from Miranda again (don’t worry, she knows when I do).  She found this list of The Best Southern Novels of All Time by Oxford American.   I’m disappointed that it’s so short; it seems to imply that out of all of the Southeastern United States since the beginning of time, there are only 10 novels worth your time.  I think we could come up with a longer list, and a more diverse list than just Faulkner’s oeuvre.  Where is Gone With the Wind,   Look Homeward, Angel,   Blood Meridian, The Color Purple, and Native Son?  And they aren’t novels but The Mind of the South or Let Us Now Praise Famous Men are quintessential Southern Books.

Having grown up in the South, having taken both Southern History and Southern Literature courses in college, I probably should have done better with this list (6 out of 10-hey, it’s a majority).

1) Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner
2) All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
3) The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner-X
4) The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain-X
5) To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee-X
6) The Moviegoer by Walker Percy
7) As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner-X
8 ) Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison-X
9) Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
10) Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston-X


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 110 other followers