97. clean out my closet of clothes I haven’t worn and donate them to the women’s shelter

I have a problem.

I am a hoarder.

I tend to attribute things with emotions and therefore cannot possibly get rid of a shirt I haven't worn since high school because, oh my gosh, it was my senior shirt, I might need that in the future.

But since I'm working on moving out of my house, I decided that would be the perfect excuse to clean out my closet and donate my clothes to the women's shelter in Angleton.

My stipulation was that if I came across an article of clothing that I had forgotten existed, then I'd toss it.
I ended up with six garbage bags full of clothes.
That is shameful.

But now my closet is a lot neater and I wear every article in it on a regular basis.

And somewhere in Angleton, a woman is wearing my senior shirt.

2. attend jazz and tap classes

This one will be ongoing. Hurrah!

I started dancing when I was three years old, though I doubt it can be called dance at that age -- a bunch of children twirling in tutus is probably a better title. I danced (jazz, tap, and ballet) with various studios in my hometown until I was thirteen, then I joined the high school drill team. I had to quit after my junior year because my knees were (and still are) completely shot.

Because I spent my formative years dancing, I never had to exercise. Therefore I hate to exercise. Nay, I loathe exercise. Put me in a dance studio for hours and I'm fine. Put me on a treadmill and I'm begging to be shot to be put out of my misery after ten minutes.

I've always told myself that I'll find another dance studio because I really love to dance. I'm never the best dancer -- I never really learned how to gracefully control my long limbs -- but I love the way that I feel when I'm dancing. It's really indescribable. You feel both part of a group yet totally individual. The music moves through you and controls your body and you move in ways you never thought would be possible. It's also been hard for me to find an exercise routine that I like, because I have to have a class setting after so many years of dance classes. I can't be responsible for myself; I need someone with a severe accent and a large stick pounding out rhythms while I twirl to music from The Nutcracker.

A friend from the theater told me about a tap class that he and his wife take at a local studio, so I started with that class about a month ago. A few weeks after, a woman in that class told me about a jazz/modern/ballet class that she takes, and I've joined that as well.

I'm more Ugly Duckling than Swan Lake at this point, but I'm loving my classes and the way they make me feel.

68. go to the Houston Holocaust Museum

Sophomore year of high school in Texas means that you read Elie Wiesel's Night in class. My sophomore class is going to start reading the book this coming week. Night is about Wiesel's experiences as a teenager when he was taken forcibly from his home in Sighet, Romania and transported first to a ghetto and then to a concentration camp -- Auschwitz. While at Auschwitz, he spent time both at the extermination camp, Birkenau, and the work camp, Buna-Monowitz. The camp was liberated by Allied troops, and he was taken to a displaced persons camp in Buchenwald before eventually moving to New York.

Because the memoir takes place in Auschwitz, I wanted to go to the Houston Holocaust Museum to see the exhibits and find out any additional information I could pass on to my students. I had been to the museum on a field trip as an eighth grader, but only remembered a few things.

My awesome friend Haley was good enough to spend her Saturday afternoon at the museum with me. The museum is free, with a suggested donation of five dollars, and parking is free as well.

The outside of the museum is very striking -- there is a black stacked dome that resembles a chimney, and a sloped roof that reaches down to the ground with names of prominent Jewish communities that represented a fraction of the communities in Europe affected by the Holocaust. When Haley and I first went in, we headed to the permanent exhibit (there were also two visiting exhibits, one about Muslims who assisted in helping Jews and one on the late Pope John Paul II and his relationship with the Jewish people and his experiences during the Holocaust). It begins with a high vaulted ceiling and the hallway is very wide. There are religious artifacts, Torahs and phyllacteries, and portraits of Jewish history. There are also written statements about Jewish persecution, starting as far back as 300 A.D in Spain, when it was illegal for a Christian and a Jew to get married or have sexual relations.

As you head down the hall, the history heads into the 20th century and goes into Europe, with Hitler gaining power in Germany. The ceiling subtly gets lower and the hallway gets thinner as there are pictures from Kristallnacht and the early ghettos and the concentration camps and the Einsattzgruppen.

Then there are pictures from the extermination camps. The pictures become more and more vivid and violent -- Haley and I commented on the fact that what was almost worse than the pictures was the fact that someone was taking pictures of what was happening. As horrible as it is to see a picture of emaciated men stripped down and being forced to dig their own grave before they're knelt down and shot in the back of the head is the fact that someone thought that they should photograph the moment for posterity.

After the pictures and artifacts from the extermination camps are pictures and testimonies from the liberators, and finally names and statements of Holocaust survivors who live in Houston.

Outside of the museum, in the back with the Garden of Hope, they had a 1942 railway car that was used to transport people to the camps -- Haley and I stood in the doorway and looked in, but it seemed somewhat wrong to go inside. It was unbelievably small. There was also a Danish fishing boat that was used to smuggle people out of occupied Denmark and into neutral Sweden. The Danish people were able to save 7,220 of their 8,000 Jews by hiding them in boats and ferrying them to Sweden. Proof that people can make a difference.

Studying the Holocaust and learning about the horrors that occurred both makes me horrified and hopeful. It's horrifying to see and hear about what one human can do to another human. The experimentation, the extermination -- it was all from hatred, because of intolerance and 13 million people died because someone was afraid. Because that's really all racism or homophobia or anti-Semitism is; people are afraid of what they don't understand, and therefore they hate them. But at the same time, hearing about the people who helped hide the Jews or ferried them to freedom, or who survived despite the odds -- there is some hope in the world.

day zero project

My beautiful friend Caitlin introduced me to the Day Zero Project, where people compile lists of 101 things to do in 1001 days. After lots of thinking and lots of stealing ideas from Caitlin and other lists, I came up with my own project.

The Mission:
Complete 101 preset tasks in a period of 1001 days.

The Criteria:
Tasks must be specific (i.e. no ambiguity in the wording) with a result that is either measurable or clearly defined. Tasks must also be realistic and stretching (i.e. represent some amount of work on my part).

Start date: October 15, 2009
End date: July 13, 2012

Items in bold are completed
Items in italics are in progress
Related blog posts are linked where applicable
Donate $5 to the Save the Manatee Club for each thing I don’t complete
See all posts tagged 101 in 1001

Health/Food:
1. get to 175 pounds and maintain it for 6 months
2. attend jazz & tap dance classes
3. eliminate sodas from diet for a month
4. be a vegetarian for a month
5. go to the Hobbit Café
6. work out five days a week for a month
7. leave enough food at a restaurant to take home for leftovers ten times
8. train in and participate in a Race for the Cure
9. buy produce solely from a farmer’s market for two weeks
10. take a self-defense/kickboxing class
11. go two weeks without eating bread or potatoes
12. learn how to make rice correctly
13. do my knee strengthening exercises every night for a month (or, you know, forever, like I’m supposed to be doing)
14. take vitamins every day for a month
15. make a cheesecake
16. make a blueberry pie

Financial:
17. pay off credit card debt
18. pay off car note
19. pay off college loans
20. move out of my parents’ house
21. create a budget and stick with it for three months
22. achieve $1000 in savings account
23. pay for the order behind me at Starbucks

Friends and Relationships:
24. visit Catherine in Los Angeles
25. prepare thanksgiving/Christmas dinner
26. have a formal dinner party
27. ask a guy I’m interested in on a date
28. keep an updated address book of friends & family
29. participate in a wedding
30. beat Caitlin in a game of Scrabble
31. host a Halloween party
32. host a Christmas party
33. float down a river with friends

Culture and Entertainment:
34. audition & be cast in a starring role in a musical or play
35. join a choir
36. participate successfully in NaNoWriMo
37. go to the Harry Potter theme park
38. attend an Aggie football game
39. attend the Austin City Limits festival
40. attend one cultural entertainment (concert, musical, play, museum) event a month
41. throw a birthday party for myself
42. throw a surprise party for a friend
43. go to a murder mystery dinner
44. watch the extended editions of the Lord of the Rings in one sitting
45. see a Civil War battle reenactment
46. have a picnic in a park
47. go to a drive-in movie
48. watch all of the Sex and the City episodes (unedited!)
49. go to Disney World
50. see the original cast of a Broadway show
51. sing at a karaoke bar
52. attend the midnight premiere of a movie
53. get season tickets to a theater
54. go to a planetarium
55. attend a book signing
56. celebrate Saint Patrick's Day at an Irish pub

Destinations:
57. go on a roadtrip with a friend
58. go to Memphis
59. visit San Francisco
60. visit New York City
61. visit NASA
62. go to the Houston Holocaust Museum
63. go to Comic Con
64. travel out of the country
65. go to a Houston Astros game
66. swim with manatees
67. visit a wine vineyard and wine tasting
68. walk on the beach at night
69. go camping in a tent or cabin


Education:
70. work in a regular high school
71. attend a sporting event at the school where I teach
72. read the books I haven’t read from Newsweek’s 100 Best list
73. revise Emotion Sickness to make it safe for reading by the general public
74. learn to knit and knit a scarf and hat
75. take a sign language class
76. learn how to change a tire on my car
77. learn html and maintain a website
78. get an exceeds expectations score on my PDAS
79. frame my diploma

Family:
80. have a nice meal with my brother
81. write ten letters to my grandmother
82. work five times with my parents in their garden without complaining
83. transcribe Clancy family tree
84. go with my mother to Attica

Self:
85. get another tattoo
86. get a massage
87. get clothes that are too big/too small for me tailored to fit properly
88. get a haircut with a style by a stylist (a haircut that costs more than $30)
89. whiten teeth
90. go to bed before midnight for a week
91. wear makeup every day for two weeks
92. write a journal entry/blog once a week for six months
93. grow hair out and cut/donate to Locks of Love
94. keep a plant alive and thriving
95. drink an entire beer

Others:
96. send thank you notes for every gift received
97. clean out my closet of clothes I haven’t worn and donate them to the women’s shelter
98. give blood
99. attend a rally for a cause I care about

Miscellaneous:
100. go to Target three times without buying anything
101. complete everything on this list!

sirius crackberry

In a desperate attempt to check my email while I'm at work, I bought a blackberry yesterday, which Mary & I affectionately named Sirius Black. It's sort of rocking my world. I love it more than is probably a healthy level of love for an inantimate object.

In other Mary news, we saw Spring Awakening in Houston last night. Faaaabulous show. Faaaabulous shocking moments where my eyes were the size of saucers.
Then we came back & watched a History Channel documentary on Andrew Jackson. Because we're cool like that.

some people are having a hard time paying their RENT!

My love for Neil Patrick Harris knows no bounds.

i don't like children. at all.

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