Sing Karaoke - Check?

I have presented on panels, sung in front of thousands, and participated in district Toastmasters competitions, but nothing...NOTHING...makes me as nervous as singing karaoke.

Maybe it is the pressure of picking just the right song (pop-y and fun but not stupid, hard to sing yet with a good hook, classic yet relevant, and one everyone hasn't already heard that night); maybe it is the competition felt with the girl who has decided this is HER karaoke place and she just lets you sing, though of course you will never be as good as her; or maybe it is the fear of realizing you don't know the song as well as you thought you did and you will make an idiot of yourself in front of everyone, and while they may have heard you sing before they might realize that apparently you've gotten suckier. Whatever it is about it that makes my knees want to give way, it also makes it insanely fun.

So of course I had to add it to the list.

Technically, I did karaoke in the last 6 months at Matt's work holiday get together, but the song I picked just wasn't the right one; no hook, not as well known, and it all sounded the same. I needed to redeem myself with something with piZZAZ.

So when my sister and brother-in-law were in town and suggested going karaokeing (sp?) at their resort, I was all in.

That night there was a big thunderstorm - as there is every night lately - and the karaoke place was of course at a rooftop venue. I was nervous, but no one else seemed to be, and it ended up just being a nice backdrop.

The Karaoke Queen was there, but everyone was on vacation and just there to have fun. Kids sang, groups sang, and no one was judging anyone. It was the perfect karaoke venue. It was chill enough to coax my brother-in-law to sing, which is quite a big deal since he hadn't done karaoke since he came back from Japan a few years ago.
He did a...classic...version of Backstreet Boy's "I want it that way." It was a special moment in time; I've never heard nor seen anything like it. He had the crowd dancing and wailing for more, even doing a quick stag split on the ground. You are sorry you missed it, I promise you.

Matt did the best version I have ever seen of "Ice, Ice, Baby." He has never been hotter. The crowd loved him. If you ask him nicely he might do it for you sometime.

Heather and I decided to do a duet, and we wanted to pick just the right song. Maybe "I'm gonna be/500 Miles" by the Proclaimers, "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun," or something from Ace of Base, or "Footloose." Finally, we decided on "I will survive" by Gloria Gaynor, a solid karaoke tune. We turned in our name and waited. And waited. The pit-of-the-stomach ache grew.

Then the DJ gave us a nod that we were coming up, let one more guy sing...and said goodnight, opening it up to a dance party. Doh! We thought he forgot us, but he told Matt his time was up and he had to finish. *sigh*. We still had a great time, though, and it was so wonderful to see my sis and her hubby.

Since two of our party got to sing, we actually picked a song and got nervous, and I had sung in January, I'm counting this item as done.

Run a 5k - Check!

If you are planning on running a 5k, for goodness' sake, train a little bit in the weeks beforehand.

Don't think about it the Thursday before and ask your über-fit husband if maybe you should go running to prep. He will only slyly smirk at you and tell you that you should have been running weeks ago, and that if you were to run now you wouldn't be able to do it on Saturday.

No, training is important, especially if you end up participating in a race with only 200 people. If you are doing a race with 13,000 other people, you're fine; there will be plenty of other people who procrastinated like you. But when it is the "first annual" race, only the die-hard runners (who show up to every 5k, 10k, triathlon, and marathon) show up.

Should you choose not to train, you will be running (did I say running? I mean walking) alone. At least in a big race you will have "goal" people to pass next. 200 person race? Not so much. Oh, and you will have the people who finished at the front of the pack coming back around for a victory lap...and they will almost lap you.

And when you are done, after a few hours, your legs will tell you how much they hate you, your knees will laugh at you, and your husband will slyly smirk and ask how the race went.

Trust me on all of this. This morning I woke up at dark-thirty and had said experience with the First Annual Fighting Hunger 5k.

Thankfully, my friend Ellen, who is also über-fit, having done P90x (REALLY done, none of this half-way stuff; we're talking food and all 90 days) and trained for a marathon, took pity on me and joined me in the race. She could have easily done much better than the 46 minutes and change that I took, but she stayed right with me the whole time, encouraging me on. She is a saint. Thanks, Ellen.

I do think I deserve just a little pity, though. I have a growth in my leg (no, it is not an alien; why do I always get that question?) that I have had surgery on twice that can make running a little painful. I did run some after my first surgery, but time got away from me and then it became uncomfortable again. But running won't kill me and the pain is a lot less than it used to be; an aspirin normally does the trick. I mean, ooooh the pain; poor me....

To be fair to my husband, he may have also had a little worry on his face. But he knows I am really fine, that I know better than to not train, and that if he had tried to dissuade me from going I would have gone anyways. I'm a little stubborn.

Overall, though, it was fun. The area was beautiful, the company was fantastic, and the victory chicken minis were delicious. So was my victory nap.

Chariots of Fire

While Chariots of Fire has been one of Matt's all-time favorite movies for as long as he can remember, I am ashamed to say I had never seen it before now. And I really should have, because I simply love the Olympics. I'm so glad they are staggered now, so we get to watch them every two years! I am always spellbound; when the Olympics are on, don't even bother inviting me over unless you are planning to watch the games.

If you, like me before this week, have never seen the movie, there are three things you should know about it that will encourage you to watch it:

1. We all know the theme song by heart, and I'm sure have been inspired by it. You should know that the whole soundtrack is like that song...with awesome bits of synthesizer thrown in to remind you it was made in the 80s.

2. You will recognize people in it. The running coach is Bilbo Baggins, and one of the main runners was Spock's dad in the newest Star Trek (he was also Barnabas in Dark Shadows, a guilty pleasure of mine from early college).

3. The story-telling is great and doesn't need to rely on false tension and mini-crises at every turn to keep things moving. I kept getting so stressed out thinking that the other shoe was about to drop, being used to modern movies, but Matt kept reminding me it is not an overly tense movie. It is about the race and their reasons for running. It made mention toward the end that if they allowed their reasons to be minimized or compromised, they wouldn't run as well. Pertains to every day life, no?

For those that have seen it, I would bet many don't know why it is called Chariots of Fire. I had never questioned it when I simply heard the music score, but it was really bugging me after the movie finished. I knew Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire in the Bible, but it just didn't seem to fit the story. Thanks to Wikipedia, I learned that it was inspired by the line, "Bring me my chariot of fire," from the William Blake poem adapted into a controversial yet popular British hymn "Jerusalem"; the hymn is heard at the end of the film (and was also in the Royal wedding of Prince William and Kate, incidentally). The other Bible reference can be found in 2 Kings 6:17. I still don't think it fits all that well.

Pick out a book blindfolded at the library and read it. - Check!

When I put this one on the list, I thought I would pick some random book, like A History of Clowning, How to Rebuild an Engine, Dragon Song, or The Influence of Charlie Brown on Theater Thru the Decades (none of which I am sure actually exist, but I had hoped). I wanted to read something I never would have otherwise.

Instead, I picked one of the books I would have picked with my eyes wide open, at least at first blush: A Dead Man in Trieste - a work of historical fiction based on the British Foreign Service in the years leading up to World War I. It's like I have a homing beacon.

Well, I almost would have picked it. I skimmed the first two pages there, and the writing of those two pages...well, too many commas and run-on sentences. There was no flow. Or maybe, too much? Definite logorrhea. Interest gone.

The original point of this item intact, I set about to read the book. And am I glad I did! It was intelligent, amusing, just mysterious enough without taking itself too seriously, informative on political sensitivities at the turn of the last century, and long enough to be a complete story but short enough to be read in an afternoon. In the end, I understood why the first two pages were the way they were (the rest was an easy read) and everything wrapped together nicely.

Bonus: it is part of a series, making my next book choices easy.

Even more Zelda.

I had absolutely no intention of blogging about our latest Zelda night, as it was just supposed to be some general story-moving, errand-running in between big castles...but then something wonderful happened. Cats appeared on the screen.


You could pick them up and carry them around, and they would play with balls of yarn.


Kibby got a little jealous.

Matt and Grant took over to keep the game moving.

Start a Fire Without Matches - Check!

In doing this list, I have been amazed at how talented my friends are. I had no idea of the untapped wealth of knowledge that surrounds me every day. At the top of the list of talented people is my friend Terry, who among other things worked leather for a while as a hobby and is by trade an amazing graphic designer.

It turns out he was a Boy Scout for a time and knows quite a bit about starting fires, so he helped me complete this one. He began by explaining the different methods of fire starting - friction, spark, sun, pressure, electricity, etc. - and then we set out to try to make fire in three different ways: with a magnifying glass, with a flint, and with a bow and stick. The Boy Scout that he is, he already had the materials we needed (though we did bring the magnifying glass!).

We made the basics for starting any good fire: tinder and kindling. Tinder is a light and fluffy material that can be lit easily, such as grass, wood shavings, or pine needles. Tinder provides the initial flame, which catches the kindling on fire. Kindling is a little bigger and is the segue between the initial flame on the tinder and the full fire on the logs, as it burns longer than tinder. Read more on those materials here.

We started out with the easiest of fire-starting techniques - using the magnifying glass. Now, I was not one of those kids who used to pop ants with one, but I think I might try it. The glass was quick, easy, and fun. It could also be simulated with glasses or a plastic bag of water. Don't worry, we were safe and had water around with each one.

Next we used a pocketknife and a flint. Making sparks was as fun as using the glass.

The tinder we had wasn't catching as fast as we would've liked, so we went and got dryer lint. By far the best tinder. A little scary.


Finally, we used the bow method, which takes two sticks and a string - you can use a shoelace if necessary. We got a lot of heat out of it and bored through the wood, but we never actually got a flame (though some embers we accidentally smothered). But if my life depended on it, I could do it. This was the most tiring of methods.

He does have something under his hand...having a "friction guard" is probably the most important part of that method.

If I were stranded in the wilderness six months ago, with nothing but a pocket knife and my dignity, could I have survived? Undoubtedly, no. But now, having learned how to start a fire using only basic elements...well, I probably still couldn't survive, but at least I wouldn't freeze to death and could eat if I could bring myself to kill and skin something.

So basically I wouldn't freeze to death.

But I could start a fire so big I could be rescued. Though that never did work for Tom Hanks. I'll have to put "build a raft from woodland or island materials" on my next list, just in case.

Incidentally, I had a Castaway Wilson antenna ball for years, and I think I sold it at the last garage sale. I'm regretting that decision at the moment.

Go to an Observatory - Check!

I have always been fascinated by astronomy. I remember many a night gazing up at the sky and imagining what the stars and planets looked like up close. The opening credits of Star Trek: Voyager, where the ship crosses various beautiful space wonders, play across my mind before I drift off to dreamland to this very day. Had math and I remained friends after high school, instead of losing touch and only awkwardly meeting in the grocery store from time to time, engaging in meaningless conversation to acknowledge the fact that we were once close but are different people now, I may have pursued the study of galaxies as a second career.

While I did not take that path, my interest has been well fed by my parents; my dad is a science teacher and was my Google before Google, and my mom taught me science and constellations in 2nd and 5th grade. Between the two of them, there weren't many questions about space that they couldn't answer.

While I love reading about the cosmos and seeing pictures in books and online, there is just something special about seeing it with the naked eye. I had a telescope when I was younger, but it was never enough. I always wanted to unlock the mystery of the round-topped buildings and see what the scientists saw. And having an observatory in Orlando, I've been keeping my eye out for a chance to go.

And then the perfect day came: Astronomy Day at the Orlando Science Center, complete with a guided planet tour (projected on a sphere), dry ice comet demonstrations, a live planetarium show on the big cinedome, and of course solar and planetary observatory viewing. I called my parents, and they were all in for going with me and Matt.

The various shows and demonstrations were fun and educational, but what I was most excited about was viewing our galaxy with my own eyes in ways I never had.


First stop was the terrace, where the Central Florida and Brevard Astronomical Societies had a Celestron telescope set up for solar viewing. It had two different views - one that let you look at the surface of the sun, so you could see sunspots, and the other that let you see the corona around the sun. That was my favorite one, as we could see solar flares as they were happening. Simply spectacular.

Then we made it to the dome on top, where we got to look through the big 10-inch telescope at the surface of the sun again and see the sunspot even bigger.

As we waited for the sun to go down so we could do some planetary gazing, we went for dinner at Steak and Shake. I tried to check off getting something from a claw machine off of my list....but I was awful and didn't want to spend too much money without an expert advisor around. So we'll do that again another time.*

Returning to the science center for sunset, we anxiously awaited the appearance of Saturn...and the disappearance of clouds. The line wasn't too long for viewing, but it took longer than expected because the clouds were lingering. Almost too long, as closing time started looming. While this was a little worrisome for us, I can only imagine how cloud cover must affect astronomers who book these telescopes months in advance at high cost to do their research, never knowing what the weather might bring.

The dome rotated with the planet, people slowly getting glimpses, and then finally, a steady break! We got to see Saturn in all its glory.** And glorious it was! It's amazing how much it looks like the pictures, and yet it still seems special to see it for yourself. I really can't describe the feeling. Matt even saw one of its moons.

It was so neat to do that with my parents, after all they have taught me. A day I don't think any of us will ever forget.

If you want to get in on the fun, they said the Orlando Science Center's observatory is open most Fridays and Saturdays this summer. You won't be sorry.

As for the relationship between me and math, perhaps someday we will reconnect and forge a second career together. But until then, I am happy to enjoy the wonderment of the stargazing available in my own backyard.

*I just noticed the Jetsons were in the claw machine. How perfect would that have been??

**I did not take this picture there, but this is exactly what our view looked like.