Oh, hello, Blog. Long time no see.

Oh, God. It's about time I updated this poor blog. It's still decked out for the holidays, for God's sake! The red and green color scheme will have to change- soon.

And speaking of changes, there will be some changes to my goals' list! Reviewing my fabulous one hundred and one, I've noticed that I made a lot more progress this month than I'd thought. For instance, thanks to the Free Rice toolbar, I've easily donated the 50,000 grains of rice I needed to complete goal #95. Let's see... From the little research I've done, approximately 7,000 grains equals one serving. So if I've donated 100,000 grains, that means I've fed about 14 people. Not bad, but I think I'll keep donating.

I've also been trying out some new recipes for Goal #10, and I've stumbled across a cookie recipe to die for! You can use any kind of sugar cookie recipe (preferably drop cookies), make the dough, mix two parts sugar to one part cinnamon together in a bowl (alter to you taste), roll the individual balls of dough in the cinnamon-sugar, place on a cookie sheet, bake, and... Voila! Delicious Cinnamon Sugar Cookies, every time! I made four dozen batches last weekend, and my friends are still raving about them.

I'm making progress on a few more of my goals, but I think I'll save those for later. It'll give me something to blog about later- which I promise I will do again, very soon!

It's been HOW MANY days and I've only completed THAT MANY goals?

Well, my Christmas break is sadly over. I kind of bummed around, so I didn't get quite as much accomplished as I hoped. I did, however, try out three new recipes: Tabasco pickles, gingerbread muffins, and apple pocket pies. The pies were my favorite and were helped along greatly by some William Sonoma products; they were too cute for me to eat, so I sent them off to the owners of my horse barn for a merry horsey Christmas. I think the gift basket replaces Christmas cards, so that takes care of Goal #59. And, if you're getting technical, there was a card amidst the pile of pocket pies.

I only made one bow for Christmas before realizing that I needed a TON more red and green scraps if I was going to make any more... Unfortunately, all the Christmas ads ended up in the garbage, and that one lone bow was all that got made. But hey, it was cute.

I have however been killing this FreeRice goal. In the past month, I've earned about 48,000 grains, which (when combined with the 3,000 grains I'd earned beforehand) puts me over halfway to my goal of 50,000 grains donated.

One of my resolutions for 2010 is to cross off 50 more goals this year. Hmmm. We shall see.

By the way, in case you were wondering, today is Day 185.

Feeding A Hundred

"If you can't feed a hundred people, then just feed one." -Mother Teresa

Next to Thanksgiving, Christmas is the time of year when people seem to gorge themselves the most. Ham, apple cider, gingerbread, fruitcake, eggnog, candy canes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, nuts, custard, pie... Is your mouth watering yet? The holiday season seems to be the time to eat, and as Christmas Eve approaches, I'll be spending less time on the internet and more time in the kitchen. But not everyone is so lucky as to gorge themselves on my sugar-tabasco pickles or sweet potato souffle.

In fact, there are about 852 million people in the world this Christmas who will go hungry. 852 million. You and I cannot possibly feed 852 million people... But the World Food Program can. Or at least, they can try.

If you want to join me in helping the WFP feed those starving mouths, there is a very simple way to do it: click the title of this post ("Feeding a Hundred") and it should link you to freerice.com's Toolbar Installation page. Or you can simply click here: http://freerice.com/toolbar.php?utm_source=lp_banner Downloading this toolbar is free and easy, and for every five searches you run, freerice.com sponsors donate 2,500 grains of rice to hungry people; it takes almost no time and very little effort.

Of course, through the toolbar, you can only donate up to 5,000 grains a day. If you're interested in contributing more, or just don't want another toolbar cluttering up your internet page, you can spend a little more time earning rice by playing the games at freerice.com. There, you donate as much rice as you want by submitting correct answers as you are quizzed on subjects of your choice. Improve your English grammar or vocabulary; learn some Italian, Spanish, French or German words; test your knowledge of geography, basic math, or the periodic table. You can even learn some famous paintings while you're at it.

I've made it a habit to "waste" extra time on the Internet on freerice.com when I'm bored rather than playing FarmVille or browsing bumper stickers on Facebook. If I'm at a loss for something to do, I just head over to Free Rice and start accumulating grains. For me, it's more than reaching some goal before my deadline's up; it's about making the lives of others easier to live, in any small way that I can.

So, Merry Christmas, everyone! Enjoy your holiday meals-- and, maybe, I'll see at FreeRice.com?

"I don't think I can explain this in any way that would make my parents believe me..."

Maybe you've never heard of the worldwide treasure hunting phenomenon that is Geocaching. If so, that's okay; I hadn't heard of it either until I began my 101 in 1001 project. In looking for random, fun things to put on my list of 101 goals, I came across geocaching.com and, without any real understanding of how the treasure hunt worked, slapped it on my list as Goal #86.

Last night, my friends and I finally decided to find out what geocaching is really about. We headed to the website and, after reading up on the details, decided to finally try it out for ourselves: at ten o'clock at night, on one of the coldest winter days on record. Four girls and a boyfriend.

So here's the gist: we each brought an object to place into the "cache" that we would make. I brought a ring and a bouncy ball; my friends put in eyeliner, and an oversized stuffed fish that probably shouldn't have been able to fit in such a small container, among other random objects we had found lying around. We closed our cache, which was, by decree of geocaching.com, an airtight, waterproof container. We were then ready to hide our geocache, but that wasn't all we would do: we were also going to find some hidden treasure of our own.

Now, geocaching is set up to work by GPS. The coordinates of each cache is recorded online, and it's cachers jobs to find the containers hidden at each location. When you find it, you can take something out, but you have to put something else in to replace it. Then you put it back in its hiding spot and let some other cacher find it. The key to finding the cache is the GPS coordinates, because while the geocache may be hidden, the GPS lets you know that you're looking in the right spot. Our only problem was that last night, we didn't have a GPS with us.

We ran around for hours in the dark, trekking across busy highways and deserted parks in search of the "sketchy door" where the cache we were finding was supposedly located. We nearly got arrested not once, not twice, but three times as we waved our flashlights into gaping holes in the ground shouting, "Is that the box?" We stopped at green lights and ran from strangers and dashed into oncoming traffic and jammed out to music and made illegal u-turns and waved to hobos and finally, finally found the box. Or rather, film canister.

And it was empty.

All right, fine. Not empty. But all it had was a list of the people's names who had found the box before us. Somehow, we weren't disappointed. We were just happy that we had found our box.

And so as we replaced the canister and hid the geocache of our creation, there was a spirit of triumph in the air. And then my friend Frenchie turned to me and said with a laugh, "I'm sorry my fish was too big."

The Greatest Time of Year

Well, the site has been made over for Christmas! I have time to do that now, since my novel is officially complete! That's right! 50,000 words in only 29 days this time! But I've got to move on to other goals before I get a sunburn basking in this triumph.

Lately, I've been volunteering at Rescue Ranch, a rehabilitation/adoption center for abused horses, in tune with goals #5 and #11. That means dodging the hooves of angry stallions and mucking out empty stalls while I jam out to the country station. Seems like a lot of work for only one volunteer hour a week. But I'll get my 125 hours one way or another.

I've also finally gotten a job, although I don't think it really counts for goal #2. I landed a gig babysitting for two grammar school cheerleaders and their six-year-old little sister. I can't really tell you if that's better or worse than volunteering at the horse shelter, but I do know that it at least pays. Goal #3, here we come...

And with Christmas cheer in the air, I'm getting ready to tackle several goals during the holiday season. I plan on volunteering at the retirement home over Christmas break (#4) and baking some holiday treats for my family and friends (#10 & 15). It's also the time of year for hot chocolate at the barn (#16) and stocking stuffers for my equine friends (#17). And as the presents and Christmas cards go out, I should be able to manage Goal #59 and at least some of Goal #18. Plus, all those presents need bows! (#76) It's also the time of year for spontaneous kindness, and I figure over the two week break that I get from school, I can fit in some Random Acts of Kindness (#83) and inspirational post-it notes (#88) and maybe even some more free rice (#95).

Now, I doubt I'll get to all of these in the 20 days left in the Christmas season or even the week or so that I have off following it, but if I at least get to half of them, I'm in pretty good shape for the New Year. And from there, who knows?

NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul

It's official. I now automatically check my word count on anything I'm writing every fifteen minutes. Like clockwork. Even on school essays.

I don't think I can last much longer. My novel, The Duct Tape Conspiracy, has no plot, and I have ten days to write 25,000 more words. FML. But at least my novel is amusing...

"This waiting game, she didn't like it. What was she supposed to do? Twiddle her thumbs and pretend that nothing had happened? But she had just pulled off the greatest heist in duct tape history! Someone, somewhere out to be talking out it.

Caden let out a frustrated huff. 'I need muffins.'"

"I'm so glad that you're singing softly to yourself. It really makes my ears bleed."

"I dressed up as Mayor Ray Nagin and gave a speech promoting the reinstitution of slavery."

"They're called the TIE DYE Police. ...They're way scarier than they sound, I swear."

"I'm not inviting y'all over anymore if Mr. Glitter keeps ending up in the freezer."

Only Americans would think to feed the world via internet

I decided to devote this morning to Goal #95 Donate 100,000 grains of rice to freerice.com. With a little less than 4,000 grains donated since the beginning of the 1,001 days, I'm sorely behind. But there's still time to complete this goal, and learn somethings while I'm at it.

Let's see what I've picked up today...

1,170 grains of rice

And I learned a something--how awesome of a word is tomfoolery! I think I'll have to incorporate that into my NaNo novel.

And I think that it's the first time I've felt alive

"When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return."

If I could have it my way, I'd never leave the back of a horse. There's something about the way they move that's indescribable. But it's sensational. It's almost like flying; it sets your soul free.

I love it when I'm jumping my horse and we're soaring through the air and dancing around the turns. The first time you fly over a fence of any decent height, you'll understand. It's empowering. Suddenly, the ground is no limitation to you. All you have is sky, and adrenaline, and this strange sense of peace. The only boundaries you have left to break is how high and how fast you can go.

And today, when I rode, I pushed these boundaries even further.

I didn't think I'd ever gallop until I moved out of the city. Arenas stuck in the middle of suburbia aren't made for galloping. Besides, everyone here is so hunter-focused that speed like that is rarely called for. But jumper lessons are my time to fly, and today, I was finally able to hand-gallop.

My horse is a jumper at heart. I never thought I'd have to kick him at the canter. But one swift kick and we're changing gears, charging forward like a mighty Crusader. Faster, faster; higher, higher. The jumps are raised, and we're rocketing over them, fences that look like mountains to this wide-eyed hunter. The usual 2'3" morphs into 2'6" and glides into 2'9" and suddenly I'm jumping more than half my height, leaping over oxers and through bounces like a ballerina from The Nutcracker. It was graceful and exhilarating all at once.

Sure, I'll soon be back to my hunter turns and pristine posture, but for just that one hour, I was able to melt away my old reality and create a new one: one who flies without wings, and leaps without fear.

So long, Goal #65. It's been a blast.

Aaaand we're back!

Phew. My computer's been struggling with a virus for the past week, but it seems to be pretty much over it now. Thank goodness.

There's been some progress on a few goals, namely:
#7 Volunteer Hours - Worked a school fair (the stuffed animal booth) and dealt with whiny children for three hours and plastered on a smile for my school's open house for five hours, bumping me up to 85 volunteer hours. Only 40 more hours to go... Good Lord.

#11 Cook with something purchased at the Farmer's Market - I made an incredibly delicious caprese salad with freshly picked tomatoes. Delicious. You have to try it.

#13 Bake a tie-dye cake - I didn't realize this was actually a goal in and of itself when I blogged about this a few weeks ago. Turns out, I crossed off a goal.

And, as there are 15 (I think) days until November, I'm focusing solely on NaNoWriMo now.
Novel: The Duct-Tape Conspiracy
Genre: Adventure/Comedy
Characters: 1 (and counting)
Words: 0
Cups of Coffee Drank: 0
Nervous Breakdowns: 0

Let Your Imagination Rain

To me, October is nothing more than a head start into November. And November is the one month of the year when I am truly free to be myself. November, to me, does not mean the New Moon premier, Thanksgiving, or my sister's birthday (sorry, girl!). November means one thing and one thing only: NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month.

I discovered NaNo a few years ago, and the idea of a month dedicated to writing a novel piqued my interest. I was one of those people who always said, "One day, I will write a book". But I'd never finished any short story, let alone a 50,000 word novella. I was also put off by the "No plot? No problem!" slogan adopted by NaNoWriMo. I thought, What's the point of writing a novel with no plot? The things I had read about NaNo were fairly misleading.

But NaNoWriMo is not some structureless "churn out 50,000 random words" kind of thing. It is very much an event where you will get out of it as much as you put in. November 2008 (yes, last year) was my first time participating in National Novel Writing Month. November 2008 was also the start of the biggest journey of my life.

I put my heart and soul into November last year, and The Circular Path, my complete, coherent, first-ever novel, is the least that I got out of it. I went from an insecure, over-critical, dubious girl with one scene in my head to strong, passionate dreamer who has tapped into a well of creativity. NaNoWriMo taught me who I was, not just as a writer, but as a human being. Through NaNo, I discovered the essence of me: the core of my fears, the heart of my longings, the source of my passions. I began to see the person that I was, the person that I am, and the person that I want to be.

That journey- the journey of disovering me- is far from over. In fact, it's going to restart again, more vigorous than ever, in just 27 days. Just being on the NaNoWriMo homepage fills me with a sense of peace, of pride, of invincibility. It fills me with the sense of being me.

All hail the thirty days and thirty nights of literary abandon.