14. Create a Twitter account

No. 14 on the list: I started a Twitter account. Finally, about five years after Twitter was cool :-).

What do I like about Twitter? It's more interesting reading than Facebook, at least to me. I'm following people with ideas about social media and film and Mexico, not just hearing about pets and babies and what happened at work today.

I'm following 22 Twitter accounts, mostly news and meta-news accounts, plus a couple of friends, Starbucks, Ellen DeGeneres and Kim Kardashian. I find that with 22 there's enough in the feed to keep it fresh but not so much that it's overwhelming.

I like being RT'ed and @ed and sent DMs. No matter how minute the mention it's big to me. I got retweeted a couple of times because I mentioned Starbucks. That was cool. I also like to RT other people's tweets. It's faster than posting it to my blog and I don't have to try to come up with a witty comment to go with it.

I have a paltry seven followers and I think a few of them may not exist. I guess I could try to get more followers but I want to really get the hang of it before announcing it to everyone I know. Like a lot of people I know, I like following more than I like tweeting.

A big thing I like about Twitter is that it's more anonymous than Facebook. You're more likely to get a follower who doesn't know you, who just likes the links you tweet. And you can follow people you don't know without it seeming weird. In that way it reminds me of the early days of blogging, where you just put stuff out there and hoped to build a following.

Some things I dislike: It can get inane. Must you post about breakfast, lunch and dinner and every article that was slightly interesting that day? I don't like to read conversations between two people. I get annoyed with people who tweet every 10 seconds. I don't like it when you follow someone you know and they don't follow you back.

Despite a few drawbacks I'm glad I finally took the plunge on Twitter. You can't really understand Twitter unless you are on it, no matter how many articles you read about it. It's fun, it's clever, it's of the moment. I'm starting to look forward to checking Twitter even more than Facebook and personal e-mail. With Twitter, you are almost guaranteed to stumble on something interesting. Not so with the other two.

There is still a lot to learn. I use my personal account mostly for my amusement, not for any serious purpose. But it seems like it could be a really great mouthpiece if I was so inclined. Anyone can be the next Twitter star...right?

The 5K

I did it! I ran a 5K last Saturday, the first big goal I set for myself on this project.

Most of the goals in my life are not quite so literal. They don't have a date and a finish line. But it was nice this time to have one that was so easily measurable.

I wasn't sure what to expect at a 5K. Who would be there running with me? Turned out there were firemen and police, a few people with their small kids in strollers, groups of friends who had come together. Oh, and since costumes were encouraged (it was the day before Halloween), a gorilla, a dog, and a puffy white ghost.


A group of maybe 100 people gathered behind the start line while a woman led us in a warm-up.

The gun went off right at 8:30 a.m. Going into it I feared getting lost, and I feared coming in last. But as I started I realized how ridiculous it was to worry about getting lost. There was no way to miss the markers going up Cincinnati, Robinson and finally Rim. The course went uphill half the way, then you turned around and went back down and finished where you started.

I wondered how hard I should push myself. I feared straggling in last; on the other hand, I didn't want to push myself so hard I would run out of steam at the finish. I finally decided to do it like I practiced, which was a steady jog.

About 10 minutes into the race volunteers held out cups of water, which I grabbed, drank and trashed quickly (exciting, I've only seen that in marathons).

It was quiet running uphill. There were a few runners around me but no one was talking. I could hear people, including myself, start to breathe hard.

The road turned and suddenly I could see the clear morning sunshine illuminating the buildings in Downtown and, behind them, the neighborhoods of Juarez. The colors looked soft and bright like a painting and the scene seemed so close that I could touch it.

A stream of runners started passing me going the other way. They had reached the turnaround.

I started to get tired. There was a girl in an orange dress and orange wig in front of me and I kept trying to catch up to her but I couldn't. Also just in front of me was a woman in a red jacket with long brown hair. Maybe I could catch her, too?

I finally caught up with orange dress girl just before I reached the turnaround. The turnaround was so clearly marked you couldn't miss it, thank God. I also passed a guy in a werewolf costume.

Running downhill was easier but not a picnic. Orange dress girl passed me, and it seemed like there was no hope of passing red jacket woman. Maybe I was going to be last after all? I reminded myself that just finishing the race was my goal. After all, two months earlier I could barely run a whole block.

I consciously sped up and finally passed orange dress girl. She didn't catch up this time. Funny how a race brings out your competitive nature.

Sooner than I expected I saw the park where we started and I started to get excited and emotional. This was what I trained for for eight weeks. I was going to complete the circle and finish what I started. I was having a hard time believing it.


The smart-aleck announcer said my name just before I crossed the finish line.

I walked over to the park, stood in the sunshine and felt a moment of euphoria as I caught my breath. It was a combination of runner's high and that feeling you get when you've accomplished something, like winning a softball game or acing a test. I was proud of myself.





I grabbed a water bottle and drank about half of it. A few minutes later I walked across the grass and looked at the results posted on a shed at the park. I had come in fourth in the women's 20-29 age group. The top 3 finishers in each age group got a trophy, so I had missed that by only one spot. Not bad, though I wondered if the only people behind me were orange dress girl and people in bulky costumes.

The entire experience made me want to enter another race the next weekend. The race was well-organized, and there seemed to be a positive vibe among the runners. I liked that it wasn't a cutthroat competition. Also, it was refreshing to go to an event that's not all about food or alcohol. And I wanted to feel that sense of accomplishment again, and maybe come in with an even better finish.

I don't know if there is another running event in my future, though. I felt like my knees were giving me a message the last few weeks of training. The message being, we're sore right now, push us more and we'll be talking knee surgery. Running is not my sport, I grudgingly have to admit.

But of course it's about more than running. It's about the journey. About two weeks before the race I was going to quit. I had missed two workouts and my knees hurt like hell, and I thought, why am I even doing this? What does it matter? But it does matter. I pushed my will and my body and I proved that I could do what once was beyond my reach. One goal down, a million more to go.

The Third Man

Roger Ebert mentions the 1949 film "The Third Man" in the introduction to his Great Movies list. I haven't seen it so I thought I'd check it out.

It builds on a great premise: Holly Martins, a writer of Western novels, arrives to meet his friend Harry Lime in post-WWII Vienna, only to discover Harry has been hit and killed in a traffic accident. But was it really an accident? Of course, Martins, played by Joseph Cotten, has to stay in Vienna to find out.

Martins meets Lime's girlfriend Anna Schmidt at Lime's funeral, and she turns out to have a few secrets. I could have sworn she was played by Vivien Leigh. Actually it's Italian actress Alida Valli, who shines in her performance as a world-weary actress.

Cotten earns our empathy in his role as the nice guy investigator in a foreign city. Looks-wise, he reminds me of a cross between Tony Curtis and Ray Liotta.

One of the most interesting aspects of this movie is the ambiguity -- whom can you trust in this post-war world? Friends, lovers, the police, seemingly uninvolved Austrians who were eyewitnesses to the accident/murder?

And Ebert makes much of the filming in Vienna: "(Director Carol) Reed defied convention by shooting entirely on location in Vienna, where mountains of rubble stood next to gaping bomb craters, and the ruins of empire supported a desperate black market economy." There's no explanation necessary for why characters in the film are so tired and distrusting.

The final chase scene is fantastic, a world of light and shadows that looks amazing in black and white.

The surprises (one scene in particular) and the visual details make "The Third Man" a movie you will remember.

Running update

I am mid-way through Week 5 of my 5K training regimen. This morning I ran for eight minutes in a row. Twice! And the thing is, it wasn't terribly tiring. I've never been on this kind of detailed program, where the amount you run and walk is prescribed down to the minute. Last week it was five minute blocks of straight running. This week it's blocks of eight. I can see myself being able to run that 5K, whereas at the beginning I absolutely could not see it.

My knees still hurt, though. Not as in major excruciating pain, but twinges at my kneecap when I sit down for long periods. I've tried the quadriceps exercises and hamstring stretches. I've tried to make sure I run with my feet straight in front of me. I think I will pick up some shoe supports and see if that helps. If the hurt becomes worse then I might have to stop. C'est la vie.

I haven't lost weight with the running, though I haven't gained any, a miracle with a week of bad eating this past week.

Honestly after five weeks I can't say that I love running. The actual act of running is not that fun. For me running is a lot of looking at the clock and seeing how many more minutes you have left. But I suppose the reward is the "runner's high" and sense of accomplishment you get afterwards. For that running is much more rewarding than walking.

29. Listen to five albums I don't have on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time

I've been curious about The Beatles' White Album for awhile. I would describe myself as a so-far casual Beatles fan. I have two of their greatest hits collections, Abbey Road and Let It Be. I'll confess I'm more of a fan of their songs with broad appeal (whoo, "Hey Jude" and "Paperback Writer") and not so much one who sits down and dissects their albums. Though the times I've done so for Abbey Road and Let It Be I've been pleasantly surprised ("Maxwell's Silver Hammer" isn't so bad and may have some deep meaning, but I'll never get "Octopus's Garden").

So the White Album is...

....a collection of amazing rock songs ("Back in the USSR", "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", "I'm So Tired")

...no, wait a minute, actually it's more like an experiment with folk ("Blackbird", "Mother Nature's Son"), country ("Rocky Raccoon", "Don't Pass Me By"), and blues ("Yer Blues", "Why Don't We Do It in the Road").

...no...it's a collection of weird psychedelic songs that make no sense unless you're on drugs ("Bungalow Bill", "Revolution 9", "The Glass Onion").

...or is it really a lot of tear-inducing odes to women ("I Will", "Julia", "Dear Prudence")?

I'm so confused...

Says Rolling Stone, "Each of the three main songwriters was pursuing his own vision, with the other members, however reluctantly, serving as backup musicians. Once a whole far greater than the sum of its parts, the Beatles were now a tense alliance of daunting individual talents." OK, so that clears things up a little.

According to Wikipedia, there was some debate over whether it should have been released as a double album, edited down to one album with B-sides, or released as two separate albums. Separate albums, I think. Enough good stuff and enough filler for two.

Wikipedia also has some interesting nuggets about the White Album. Are there secret messages in the album? Wikipedia cites Ian MacDonald, in his book Revolution in the Head, in saying that "The Beatles was the album in which the band's cryptic messages to its fan base became not merely vague but intentionally and perhaps dangerously open-ended, citing oblique passages in songs like 'Glass Onion' (e.g., 'the walrus was Paul') and 'Piggies' ('what they need's a damn good whacking')." I kind of want to know what Revolution 9 is all about.

The White Album is definitely mind-blowing in a lot of ways. I try to imagine the youth of 1968 listening to this on a turntable for the first time. What a wonder this must have been. "The walrus was Paul"? Really?

11. Reread Walden

As part of my list I included rereading two books. Until recently I haven't been a person who rereads. I can count on one hand the books I've read more than once -- Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, books of the Bible. I guess I've always thought it was a waste of time. If you've read something once, why read it again?

But my attitude has changed lately. I'm getting to the point where it's hard for me to recollect my so-called favorite books. Embarrassingly so. Is a book still a favorite if you read it ten years ago and can hardly remember anything in it? My favorite books list is becoming a list of books I know had an impact on me at some point, not really a list of books whose ideas and stories and characters I've thought about recently.

Walden is one of those books. The actual details of the book are pretty mushy to me now, but I can remember the fire that Walden started when I was 19. It was a volatile time in my life, and Walden was the spark that started the inferno. I remember questioning society itself, possessions, even food and drink. I remember feeling powerful, possibly for the first time in my life. I literally remember reading the passage about "castles in the air" and thinking, I need to read this again in a few years or else I'm going to forget how to live.

Ah, but of course I never read it again, and I did forget how to live :-).

I'm curious now, ten years later, will reading it again result in the same reaction? Walden is a dangerous book. Not if you read it, put it back on the shelf, and forget it. But if you really did live the way Thoreau describes in the book, this would be a different world.

I doubt I'll be ready to move to the woods after reading it for the second time. But after ten years of accumulating stuff, I think I need some dangerous philosophical ideas to put things into perspective.

I'm ordering the Kindle edition on Amazon and giving myself six weeks to read it. I'll update the blog with my reaction.

Another training update

The good news is the knee pain has subsided. I almost didn't run today because it was raining. Fortunately the rain didn't last very long. Saturday I begin Week 3 of the training regimen.

5K training update

Cool Running has tips on dealing with knee pain. I'm going to try the strength training exercises. If that doesn't work I'll look at some shoe supports.

17. Enter a 5K

If I was really an overachiever this would be "enter a marathon" but a 5K seems like a good starting point. A 5K = 3.1 miles. Twelve times around the track. Compared to 26.2 miles for a marathon a 5K seems easy...and yet, it's not *that* easy, when right now I can run less than a block before I run out of breath.

Last week I found this schedule online, which promises to get you "off the couch" and onto the 5K course in nine weeks, which is just about enough time to enter the "Clean and Scary" Halloween Run.

After one week of training I like the regimen a lot. 60 seconds of running, 90 seconds of walking, repeat for a total of 20 minutes, three times a week. I don't feel exhausted or too sore by the end of each session. Though running 30 straight minutes seems like it would be impossible right now, I guess the training plan will get me there if I stick to it.

I've had sore knees in the past when I go jogging, but so far my knees feel fine. Hmm, we'll see. Hopefully they will hold up.

It's nice to have a goal in mind when you exercise. Lately my fitness goal is to not allow myself to get too fat :-). A goal helps you stick to the regimen -- if I miss a session then I won't be where I need to be to run the 5K.

1. Start a new blog

So one thing is already crossed off the list -- I have started a new blog. I'm not new to blogging. I've had a blog but have been contemplating starting a new one for awhile.

Why? I enjoy writing but I feel like my skills have been languishing for awhile. Also I need a creative outlet. And well, it just might be fun.

I think focus is really important for a blog. Instead of just blogging about random crap like my commute and how cranky I was that day, why not make a real project out of it? I like the idea of a seasonal blog. This way the blog can not become a daily chore that drags on for years. I see this blog as like a chapter in a book. It's a chronicle of one time period in my life.

I'll make it a goal to post twice a week through May. Hopefully it will be entertaining and a few people will read it. If no one reads it, at least it will be there for me to look back on and I can laugh at my 29-year-old self.

I can hear my 40-year-old self laughing now...

The list

Birthday Graphics

The big 3-0. The end of my 20s, time for a freak out. Actually maybe I'm not as freaked out as some people are. I'm not so hung up on attaining the accessories of adulthood like a house, husband and/or child. But there are a few things I've always intended to accomplish or experience, and yet I never get around to them. Why not do those things *right now*?

So here's my list -- 30 things (a fitting number) I intend to do and blog about in the months leading up to my birthday in May 2012.

A few notes on the list: I didn't want to get so ambitious it's unrealistic (I don't think I can climb a mountain, visit Italy, run a marathon and read War and Peace in the nine months before the big day), but I think I included enough meaty goals to keep me busy for the duration. I tried to keep a mix of serious and not so serious. Yes, I think drinking a beverage can be a goal.

I've avoided resolutions as much as I can -- of course I'd love to become a better person in the upcoming months, but it might be difficult to write a blog post about that. I also have to leave work-related goals out, since I like having a job and I want to keep it that way. Also, some goals have been left open-ended to give myself some flexibility.

Well, here they are, in no particular order:

1. Start a new blog
2. Go on a hike
3. Submit a proposal to a magazine
4. Learn Spanish
5. Drink an Irish car bomb
6. Plan a 30th birthday party
7. Go on vacation to a place I've never been
8. Decide on a life philosophy
9. Ride on a roller coaster
10. Volunteer for an ongoing project
11. Reread Walden
12. Reread On the Road
13. Buy three new albums by up-and-coming bands
14. Create a Twitter account
15. Learn how to make enchiladas
16. Get a massage
17. Enter a 5K
18. Go on a diet for a month
19. Make a chocolate souffle
20. Finish reading the Old Testament
21. Go to a concert
22. Visit a farm
23. Watch 10 movies I haven't seen from Roger Ebert's Great Movies list
24. Read five books I wouldn't ordinarily read
25. Subscribe to The New Yorker
26. Start a book club
27. Find a date NOT via an online dating service
28. Decide on an idea for my book
29. Listen to five albums I don't have on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
30. Find peace with God

And so the adventure begins...