I didn’t do the weekend bonus #scintilla prompts. Oops! Honestly, I was so busy over the weekend, I wasn’t even home much, so I lacked the time. Saturday I spent with Mr. Fox doing grocery shopping and other things, and yesterday was spent up in Reading visiting some relatives (with a short pitstop in Royersford to visit Shanaynay on the way home). My lesson for yesterday is, never go to Walmart on Grant and the Blvd after 9pm. However, yesterday’s bonus prompt reminds me of a hilarious story that I apparently love to tell. So I may just write about that one later…

ANYWAY.

So today’s #scintilla prompt:

Prompt B: Write a list of 23. (23 things to do, 23 people you owe apologies to, 23 books you’ve lied about reading, 23 things you can see from where you’re sitting, 23 ten-word hooks for stories you want to tell….)

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Have you ever heard of the Day Zero Project? Basically, you make a list of 101 things to do within 1001 days. I tried making one of these lists a couple years ago and then I ended up faltering and forgetting about it. After I made the list, it seemed like such a daunting task, that I just became extremely discouraged.

So in light of today’s prompt, I’ve decided to make a list of 23 things that I would like to do/accomplish/see by the end of the year. The difference is, I am only going to choose 23 feasible things, and make sure that they’re attainable/doable by December 31 (or the end of the world, whichever comes first @_@).

Here is my list!

1. Try 23 new restaurants. This is really not all that difficult honestly. Mr. Fox and I made a rule when we moved here that we would try and stay away from the typical chain restaurants and go to places that are unique to Philly or the region. And there are LOADS of restaurants here that we will never be short on places to try.

2. Read 5 books. I have a problem with books for some reason. I love to read, but I suppose I haven’t really found anything that strikes my fancy. I’ve been told that I MUST read the Hunger Games series, as well as Game of Thrones and some other ones. Instead of setting the bar at 23 books, I am going to start with 5 and go from there.

3. Make a fail-proof cheesecake. Have I ever told you about my last attempt at a cheesecake? Yeah, it ended in epic failure. Enough to make me want to throw it out the window and never attempt it again. But honestly, thanks to Pinterest, I have bookmarked so many wonderful-looking cheesecake recipes that I MUST try it again.

4. Go to New York City. I haven’t been to NYC is goodness knows how many years, and neither has Mr. Fox. We are tentatively planning on going for my birthday, but in the event we don’t get there around that time, as long as we go sometime this year, I will be happy.

5. Walk to Frankford Ave and Cottman Ave and back. This is a completely doable walk, for anyone who’s in shape. I, on the other hand, am not in shape, and therefore this walk of about 2.5 miles round trip is very daunting. I’m exhausted even thinking about it. But I know that, in time, I will be able to. And then I will just keep going.

6. Go to the beach. Since I grew up on in Jersey, I can remember many childhood vacations to the shore, specifically Wildwood. My parents and I would go every Memorial Day weekend, and sometimes also later in the summer. I haven’t been to the beach in about 15 years, and Mr. Fox has never been to Wildwood (despite growing up here) or the shore, so I plan to take him. We’re going down to Cape May in May for a friend’s vow renewal, so we’re going to make a nice little vacation out of it.

7. Get back to my roots. When we moved here, I decided that I wanted to get back to my Jewish roots and join a synagogue. Unfortunately thus far, we have been unable to get the chance to do so, but I am determined to get us there in the near future. I miss going to services (my family and I belonged to a congregation in Las Vegas when we lived there), and Mr. Fox is really interested in it.

8. Be a more healthier me. One of the things that I struggle with is emotional eating. Well, eating in general. I want to feel better, in general, and about myself. I am working very hard on the latter, but I need to master the aforementioned in order to achieve the latter. It’s a long process, but I’m working on it,

9. Pass this semester with all A’s. This won’t be difficult either. The semester is more than half over already, and I have a high A in both my classes. It would take a zombie apocalypse to make me fail either one of my classes.

10. Swim 3-4 times a week. Mr. Fox and I are members of a gym that has a gorgeous indoor swimming pool. I love to be in the water, but I have been very self-conscious about how I look in a bathing suit. Honestly though, the only way to feel good and better about it is to GET OVER IT AND DO IT. I can attribute the loss of my love-handles to water aerobics, and would like to lose some other unsavory bits and bobs on my body. Also, water therapy is wonderful for aches and pains.

11. Get my parents out of Indiana. This might be the most difficult of all my 23 things. Not because they don’t want to go, but because of the housing market between here and there. It’s a matter of being able to sell their house for the right price, and turning around about buying a wonderful house here. They’re doing everything in their power to get the house done up and sold, so it’s more just a waiting game now.

12. Build my craft room/office. Mr. Fox and I have three bedrooms upstairs. One is the master bedroom, one is the office that we’re currently sharing, and the third will be my craft room. I decided to make it also my office so that I could have my own space to do my work and so Mr. Fox could have his own space. I have a vision for it, including what IKEA shelves and furniture I will furnish it in, as well as everything I will do in there. Unfortunately, we can’t do anything with it until we get what’s in there currently, out. It’s a matter of divvying up what needs to get sold, given away, or put in the basement.

13. Finally completely organize my kitchen. This has been an ongoing project since we’ve moved in. I keep buying new tools and finding unopened boxes and I’m slowly running out of space to put things. I guess that’s the disadvantage of buying a home that doesn’t have the latest and greatest updated kitchen. We have plans to add on to it, but that won’t be for a very very long time. And in the interim, I would like to have a place for mostly everything. I started with the spices, now if I could just figure everything else out…

14. Go shopping at B&H Photo and Adorama. One of the things I’ve done as a photographer is lusted after products at B&H Photo and Adorama. Living in Indianapolis, I had Roberts, but that wasn’t really the same. I now live less than an hour and a half from both stores, and I would love to actually go there! I’ve seen photos of B&H’s huge store, and I will for sure be a kid in a candy store once I actually make it there. I suppose this could be lumped into #4 on my list, above.

15. Eat more organic. The post I recently did on pink slime in ground beef being sold in America’s grocery stores really got me thinking about the amount of chemicals that Mr. Fox and I ingest on a regular basis. So we have made an effort to start buying more organic. Now, organic may be a little more expensive than the regular stuff, but I would gladly pay more money for beef that doesn’t contain fillers, or vegetables that have not been sprayed with pesticides. Call me crazy, but the idea of that is just plain gross.

16. Start a local knitting group. If you haven’t already figured it out, I love to knit. And one thing I miss about Indy is that my best friend there also knit, so we would knit together. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love knitting in solitude. But I would love to also meet some like-minded knitters who live near me, so I could maybe start a weekly get-together that would meet up at either the local coffee shop or maybe even a pub. We had the Indy Pub Knitters in Indy, and I think that would be cool to have here. The closest yarn shops to me are either in Chestnut Hill or Center City, so anything closer to me would be a godsend! Which brings me to #17…

17. Develop a business plan. I am not going to elaborate too much on this one.

18. Bust my yarn stash. This is going to be harder than it sounds, mainly because I love buying new yarns! I have an extensive collection as it is, and it doesn’t really help that I just bought a ton more. Mr. Fox and I visited the Yarn Gallery up in Reading yesterday and I bought two gorgeous skeins of Crystal Palace Chunky Mochi in this color way. Also, I just bought three skeins of hand-dyed yarn from three different sellers on Etsy, as well as a bunch of bulky weights from Knit Picks. I have plans for all of it, I just need the time to bust through everything! The good news is that I finally invested in a yarn winder and a swift, so this week I will be turning all my yarn into some neat little yarn cakes! MMMM FIBER CAKES.

19. Drop a couple dress sizes. You see what I did there? I didn’t make a specific weight loss goal. I just said I wanted to drop a couple dress sizes. I did this because, well, I don’t want to say I want to lose 50 pounds and then not do it. It’s easier for me to say that I want to drop a couple dress sizes because, even if I lost 10-15 pounds, I’d drop a size. Dress size is not necessarily related to number of pounds lost. And if I do lose 50 pounds, fantastic! However, being able to see my dress size in the teens would be even more fantastic, to me anyway. This will be related to #10.

20. Visit Colonial Williamsburg. This is completely doable. Mr. Fox went there as a child for many years, and I think I’ve only been there once, a long time ago. Living in such a central place, we have access to so many weekend vacation spots. Specifically, I would like to go in the late spring/early summer, and take lots of photos. My camera is not very happy with me at the moment, because I haven’t been using it much.

21. Start Couch to 5K. This one is going to be hard. I am not a runner, and I never have been. Even when I was 115 pounds lighter, I was just not in shape to run. One of the benefits though of getting in shape and losing the excess weight I have to lose is that I WILL be in shape to run, so I have no real excuse other than lack of drive and motivation. The good thing about Couch to 5K is that you can re-do parts of the program. Like if you need to do Week 1 for three weeks, you can. Which is why I put “start” instead of “finish” Couch to 5K.

22. Learn to spin. This kind of has a double meaning. I would like to try spinning, as in a spinning bike. Our gym doesn’t have a spinning room, but there is another location that does have a spinning room, that is close to where Mr. Fox works. So I thought that maybe, if I take him to work one day, I might go there and try it out. I used to ride my bike a lot, and I miss it. However, the last time I rode, I was 115 pounds lighter. So I have been weary about getting back on a bike. The other part of this item on my list, is that I would love to learn how to spin yarn! I have seen a lot of gorgeous hand-spun’s on Etsy, and would love to try my hand at it. One of my local yarn shops has a spinning class, so I think I am going to eventually take it. It sounds like fun!

23. Drink more water. I hate water. Isn’t that lame? But it’s true. It’s too plain for me. But, in an effort to get healthier, I have made a pledge to drink more water and less everything else (with the exception of unsweetened iced tea). I’ve come across some really cool ideas on how to make water more bearable, such as adding real fruit as flavoring, instead of those flavor packets. So as it gets warmer outside, I plan to make some flavored waters, and do away with all of the artificial stuff I’ve been drinking. Even if that means…giving up beer. Maybe 1 on occasion. Maybe.

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Well, that’s it for my TL;DR list of 23 things. Hope you enjoyed reading them!

scintilla project day nine twenty-three things list goals aspirations