Well, I've now got one month down of doing the 101 things. Let's check in with my progress:
33. Do 5 video posts on my blog
#19: Attend three concerts/dance shows: 2/3 completed
I blogged about the Pittsburgh symphony, and I also went to a Bobby McFerrin concert that I never got around to blogging about. The McFerrin concert was really awesome. He played with Chick Corea and Jack DeJohnette, and this tour is the first time they've played together. They did two hours of improv jazzish music, and the threw in little bits of lots of other styles (including bluegrass, reggae, and opera). The neatest improv part was when Corea and DeJohnette started having fun with the drumsticks on DeJohnette's drum set. If you hold the base of a drumstick against a drumhead and pull your fingers tightly down the drumstick, the friction makes some awesome noise. The also started just dropping drumsticks on the set.
For the second encore, they came out and answered questions instead of playing another piece. That was also wonderful. McFerrin said that each concert is truly unique, and they don't talk out anything before starting the show. Their one agreement is that they won't play any recognizable tunes.
46. While living by myself (or if I have amenable roommates), switch to purchasing renewable power for at least three months
I have signed up for Green Currents. I'm going to be here for May, June, July, and August, so that should cover my commitment. I wasn't going to do it now, but I calculated that this will actually only be another $5 a month (2 extra cents a kwh), and I figured that wasn't bad. Plus, I don't know if every place offers green power. I saw a flyer for Green Currents on my friends' fridge, and I decided to give it a go.
68. Learn how to polish leather shoes
I learned how to polish shoes so that I could go to the symphony. I polished both a black pair of dress shoes and my brown Danskos. It's about time to polish them again; that stuff wears off fast. Polishing shoes was much easier than I realized. I think there is a more fancy way to do this, but I just used a Kiwiwax container with a dispenser built in. I buffed the shoes after I had spread the Kiwiwax solution on them. They looked nice, and I think that's the part that counts.
79. Write “how to do a video post on a mac” post
81. write on my blog every day for a month
Was I so stealth that people didn't notice my greatly increased posting frequency for April 2008? Maybe not. In any case, I blogged every day this month. It definitely got difficult near the end. I will try to keep up good posting frequency, but I think I scale back a touch from the every single day. I felt guilty every single time I posted a day of just pictures, even though I usually just wanted to share the pictures.
Tally:
3 in progress
3 completed
Not too shabby for a start! And I'm really in progress on more of those, but the progress is less tangible, so I'll wait to post on that until later.