Hey, it’s the return of the 101 Things in 1001 Days! Shit has been chugging along, as usual, and I’m making pretty good progress. My only concern at this point is time. I definitely bit off more than I could chew on this list, and it’s going to bite me in the ass.
Items completed this quarter: 8 (7.9%)
TOTAL COMPLETED: 12 (11.8%)
Items in-progress: 19 (18.8%)
Completed This Quarter
10. Buy Didi a gravel bike. I snagged her a Specialized Diverge Carbon Comp. We didn’t have enough time in the lead-up to the wedding and honeymoon to get out on it, but we’re going to get it out in early July.
34. Do 365 brain puzzles (sudoku, ken ken, crosswords, etc.). (365/365) I blasted through this, and while I did briefly contemplate doubling my goal, I want to claw back some time to put toward other items on this list. I primarily used Wordle, Connections, and the crossword puzzles on the Apple News app. An issue of Games magazine helped, too, and I’m seriously thinking about going ahead and subscribing to that one.
47. Get cholesterol and triglycerides into normal ranges. This is done! To be fair, this probably started last year when I got back into being serious about my exercise, but I don’t think it really happened until this year. Didi was instrumental in me revamping my diet in the last few months, and that’s helped a ton. I did manage to drop 20 points on my cholesterol and get my triglycerides from just over the high end of normal, to middle of the normal range. The only issue outstanding is that my good cholesterol is a little low and my bad cholesterol is a little high. Pretty pleased with this outcome.
52. Honeymoon in the Bahamas. As I write this post, I’m actually in the Bahamas doing this. For reals. Mission complete! This place is amazing. Beautiful, peaceful, and the accommodations are everything I could have hoped for.
58. Go see the 2024 solar eclipse in April. This was a lot of driving for what turned out to be a few minutes of “wow, that’s incredible”, and while the drive was grueling due to traffic, it was worth the trip. The sight of the totality was (quite literally) breathtaking. We got on the road immediately after totality was over, and we had a few minutes of “okay, we’re making good time” before the door slammed shut on us in the form of ridiculous traffic. The drive from Indianapolis to Chicago (normally a 2.5 to 3 hour affair) took about seven hours. The upside was that by the time we hit the area south of Chicago and started our westward turn toward home, most of the traffic was off the road. After driving the opening shift from Indianapolis to somewhere in northern Indiana, and taking a 30-minute nap in there somewhere, I took back over again near Beloit, Wisconsin. Dropped the hammer, and we rolled in just before 4 a.m., about four hours later than planned. That said, it was a blast, worth every minute, and gave us great insights for how to handle our drive to Colorado later this summer.
86. Build a bike gear locker with slots/drawers/spaces for all my riding gear. The original intent for this was to build, from-scratch a locker-ish setup with storage for my riding gear, clothes, etc. In the interest of keeping to a schedule and keeping my sanity and not trying to learn woodworking that quickly, I opted for pulling together a solution via IKEA and some thought. The end result is space for all my riding gear, slots for my helmets and shoes, and is a better overall experience than I could create for myself.
94. Get a new set of really nice kitchen knives. Holy fucking shit, Josh! Really?! Thank you! (As you can guess, my boy Josh got me a beautiful set of Wüstof knives as a wedding gift. I’m stunned.)
99. Get the Ghostbuster HQ Lego Set. Holy fucking shit, are you kidding me? Didi snagged a new-in-the-box one of these as my wedding gift. This has been my “white whale” set since it went out of production in 2017. I’ve always regretted not buying it, and now I have it, and I cannot wait to build it.
In-Progress This Quarter
17. Ride the DAMN. Well, some things are changing here. Given the state my lower back is in and how slowly I’m progressing with the recovery there, I’m delaying the ride until 2025. I’m a little frustrated, to be sure, but it’s really for the best.
21. Get at least two Microsoft Azure certifications. (0/2) I’ve been studying for the AZ-104 again after I tanked the practice test. I’ve also discovered that it overlaps heavily with AZ-305, so I’m going to be studying for that about the time I take the test for AZ-104.
22. Contribute to an Open Source project. I need to identify a good one to get crackin’ on.
23. Get the danbailey.dev website up and running. I finished the front-end portion of this in early May, and then paired it up with a Wagtail backend, just because I’m about sick to death of WordPress.
32. Get my D&D campaign world finished; start running it. This isn’t quite ready yet, and has been a victim of wedding planning.
37. Finish three Zelda games I haven’t completed. (0/3) Holy crap, I’m sure I’ve mentioned it, but I am totally in love with Tears of the Kingdom. It’s a massive improvement over Breath of the Wild, which was a masterpiece already. I feel like I’m making great progress here, wedging gameplay time in between training rides, work, etc. Next on deck will be A Link to the Past and Skyward Sword, seeing as how I never finished either of those. I’m not trying to 100% TotK so I suspect that you’ll see this again in the next quarterly update with mention of one of the other two games.
40. Get my weight below 195; keep it there. On May 1st, I was within 4 pounds of my goal. I’ve been adding muscle in the gym, so just losing fat isn’t enough here.
41. Clean up my diet. This is massively underway, and I’m very pleased with it. Light lunches, healthy dinners, more fiber, and taking my supplements regularly. I’ve cut way the hell back on soda, but until I’ve dropped it entirely, I’m not calling this complete.
42. Exercise at least 3x/week for 52 weeks. This has been going since the third week of January. A gym membership and the stationary trainer have been a great combo for achieving what I need to.
49. Family camping trip to Rocky Mountain National Park. This is fully booked and scheduled. We’ve got a little cabin reserved about 30 minutes from Estes Park, and a whole bunch of amazing hikes planned. We’re going to put a Thule cargo pod on Di’s CR-V, get the kids new hiking boots, day packs, and sleeping bags, and we’ll be ready to, uh, rock. (Yes, I went there.)
51. Take Eddy to Florida for a launch. This is in the early-planning stages. I’m looking for a weekend in September or October with a launch (or two) scheduled. Pretty excited about this one.
54. Las Vegas! Booked, paid for, flights reserved, concert tickets acquired. So ready to go! This will happen in late August.
61. Read at least 150 books. (24/150) Oh man, I am WAY behind schedule on this as I’ve made the mistake of getting bogged down in non-fiction stuff. I’m going to have to blitz through a bunch of graphic novels in order to catch up on all of this.
75. Do at least six Udemy courses. (2/6) Working on courses on Docker/Kubernetes and GraphQL.
77. Master Python. Working through a Udemy course right now. I’m going to spend some time on Algorithms and Data Structures once this is done. But I’m feeling pretty good about things so far.
84. Take guitar lessons. In mid-April, I went out and bought a cheap Epiphone guitar, a used amp, a tuner, and a few other assorted minor things. I started with a Udemy course, which I’ve been working my way through, and I’m planning on getting in to Twin Town at least once a month for a lesson, just so I can get somewhere with this. I’ve been meaning to take guitar lessons since I was in college, starting in 1994, but have been stopped by my anxiety. Well fuck that shit. It was time. The downside is, now I’m getting waylaid by the dog’s anxiety. Every time I pick it up, she goes berserk.
89. Go to at least five concerts. (0/5) While I haven’t attended any of them yet, I do have three of them booked for just this year alone. In July, Sam and I will be attending the Foo Fighters concert. In August, Didi and I are going to Las Vegas for the Killers (the Hot Fuss 20th Anniversary show), and we bought tickets for the Minneapolis Yacht Club festival, which also takes place in July. I fully expect to have this completed sometime in early 2025, the way things are going. We’ve been looking at other potential concerts coming to Minneapolis — Green Day, Dropkick Murphys, and others — but will probably wait until 2025, as prices are still ridiculous, and we’ve spent a LOT of money this year.
90. Go ziplining. Planned for the Vegas trip.
91. Drive a supercar. Planned for the Vegas trip.
Analysis
Making awesome progress. Next quarter will see a huge leap forward in moving some of these things into the “done” category. I’m also thinking about redoing #26 on the list (“Build a card tracker/deck builder for Magic. Website and mobile app.”) after finding the Lion’s Eye app.
(Featured image created with/generated by Adobe Firefly 3 Beta. Prompt: A line drawing of a orc wielding a giant pencil like a sword. It is battling a giant calendar.)