101 Things in 1001 Days

82a. Visit the National Aquarium

Date Completed: 2 June 2013



The National Aquarium in DC (as opposed to the awesome one in Baltimore) is one of the biggest ripoffs in town. It's nothing more than a teeny tiny collection of tanks in the basement of the Department of Commerce, and yet it costs $10 in a city of free-admission Smithsonian Museums. But hey, I'm glad I went. It was a fun little outing with friends.

88a. Attend a mailart/letter-writing party

Date Completed: 9 May 2013

On a whim, I drove up to Artisphere in Rosslyn to attend a mail art making session hosted by a lady I know on Twitter. It's kind of stupid that we hadn't met in person before now, but we (unsurprisingly) hit it off. She showed us how to make two kinds of envelopes - one origami and one not - and provided all the tools to make several cards as well. I ended up sending off quite a few pieces of mail this morning, all made last night:



Definitely want to attend another mailart party sometime. This was so fun and inspiring. I also did a Glue Stick Tourist spread on it. Good times!

1a. Donate blood 5 times.

Current progress: 1/5

I made out like a bandit at the blood bank today. They were doing some sort of spring cleaning promotion and I walked out of there with four free shirts, plus a pack of Teddy Grahams. Score!

33a. Read/listen to 200 books

Current progress: 30/200 (15%)

I'm trying to only do this when I have ten or more books read to list.

18. Uglies: Shay's Story by Scott Westerfeld, Devin Grayson, and Steven Cummings
19. The Manual of Aeronautics by Scott Westerfeld and Keith Thompson
20. The Sign of the Four by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
21. Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles by Ron Currie Jr.
22. The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde
23. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
24. A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
25. Marbles by Ellen Forney
26. Blue Moon by Alyson Noel
27. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
28. The Dark Lady by Mike Resnick
29. Every Day by David Levithan
30. English As She Is Spoke by José Da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino

42a. Finish Farscape

Date Completed: 23 February 2013

I really enjoyed this series. I understand why people were so angry when it was canceled, since it was left on a super cliffhanger. The Peacekeeper Wars tied up the loose ends all right, though I was still a little disappointed by the death of a certain character.

33a. Read/listen to 200 books

Current progress: 17/200 (8.5%)

1. Servant of the Jackal God by Keith Taylor
2. City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare
3. The Darlings by Cristina Alger
4. City of Glass by Cassandra Clare
5. Eighty Days by Matthew Goodman
6. The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan
7. Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld
8. The Devil and His Boy by Anthony Horowitz
9. Behemoth by Scott Westerfeld
10. The Fantasy Worlds of Peter S. Beagle
11. The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner
12. The Burning Time by J.G. Faherty
13. What Cats Teach Us by Glenn Dromgoole
14. Goliath by Scott Westerfeld
15. The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
16. The Ghosts of Nagasaki by Daniel Clausen
17. Hoot by Carl Hiaasen

93a. Create paperback book of previous 101/1001 journal

I use LJbook to convert my main LJ to a paperback book every year, but it's erroring out on this account. The guy who runs the site said there's some bad HTML in one of my last couple entries. I removed a bunch but there must be something I'm missing. So I'm still working on it.

59a. Finish snarfing Fairfax City/County

As of this writing, I have six markers left. Two of them are in Mount vernon, one of them appears to have gone missing, and another is in an unknown location. The last two are in Lorton, roughly twenty miles away. I know there are some that have been direct-logged but not yet put in the catalog, but most of those I've either already snarfed (but not logged, since it's not in the catalog yet) or are also in Lorton.

50a. Get ancestry.com account and make family trees for W, C, and M branches of the family

I got the account and had a grand old time entering in data, but now things have kind of stalled. I've decided to skip out on doing the W branch because my grandmother is currently tracing all that back, and considering she lives in the town where most of those folks lived, I'll leave her to it. I have, however, made a fair bit of progress on the M and C branches, which are my husband's side of the family. I've done all I can for the time being, but evidently my father-in-law has some more information that might come in handy. Good times!

75a. Visit the Newseum

Date completed: 30 December 2012

So I visited the Newseum today because I had a couple of paid-for Living Social tickets expiring tomorrow. My husband bailed on me at the last second, and I couldn't find anyone else to take the extra ticket, so as I left the museum I handed it to a woman in line who said she didn't have one. I hope she was able to use it.

The museum itself was well done, but pretty depressing. I guess I shouldn't have been all that surprised - after all, what makes the news? Crime, tragedy, and politics. All pretty depressing subjects. Luckily there was a fair amount of "fake news" (The Daily Show, SNL, etc.) that helped lighten things a bit. But when your 9/11 exhibit has boxes of tissues placed at regular intervals, you know you're not in for a breezy jaunt through the museum. The memorial to journalists killed on the job was extra heartbreaking.

It's somewhere I'm glad I went, but I don't see myself visiting again. I'm just not much of a news junkie.