Wine, Roosters, and Boats

43. Make a batch of wine

It's been bottled! We bottled it at 1 a.m. the night that my sister-in-law arrived. I bought some labels from Amazon and we've been having some fun with them. We printed out labels for the winners of our Ugly Sweater Party and called it "Ugly Sweater Sauvignon" and another label was called "Headless Chicken Wine." Or something like that. It was fun!

59. Eat a rooster that wakes me up too early

He was delicious in Buffalo Chicken Dip. I tried not to think about it too much.Let's just say that if there was  a zombie apocalypse, I could probably kill and eat my own chicken, but it's not something I think I'll ever be comfortable with. They're too much like pets to me. I tried to rationalize it by thinking what a better life our chickens have had than those who are raised until they're only 6-8 weeks old, then shoved into tiny pens and processed at a big plant, but it is still tough to eat something that was once a cute little peep.

76. Decide if buying a boat is right for us

I would like to mark this one off. I think it makes more sense for us to rent a boat from Schnaitman's whenever we want to go fishing or crabbing than to own a boat ourselves. Not to mention that we have several other friends with boats. It just doesn't make sense for us to buy one of our own. Yet. Maybe next year it will be a different story. Jay thinks that a small crabbing or rowboat would make sense for us to have. So, we will re-evaluate at a later date, but for now, I'm crossing it off.

I have completed 27 items of the 101 - 26.73% through my list.

177 days into my 1001 days - 17.68% through the days.

I am doing a good job keeping up with my schedule!

Oil Pulling... gross or helpful?

77. Try out oil pulling for at least a month

I've been at it for a month, only taking a day off here and there when I was away or when I forgot. I've been pretty good about getting into a routine with it and I would say that it's pretty much a habit now. I scoop out a spoonful and swish it around while I'm showering and getting ready in the morning. 

It really grossed me out for the first few days, but I eventually got used to it. The chewing/melting of the oil initially was also rather disgusting, but at least the coconut oil has a nice flavor.

Here are the claims:

1. It whitens teeth. 
2. It clears up acne. 
3. It can lead to a healthy, glowing complexion. 

There are also claims that it detoxifies your body and all sorts of other stuff. I'm not so sure about all of that, but I will tell you what I think.

My experience:

It whitens teeth. 

I should have taken photos for comparison, but I believe this claim. Mostly for me, I have problems with build up of coffee and tea. I've had no tooth staining since I started this regimen. My breath also seems fresher and my gums feel like I just left the dentist, even though I'm not always great about flossing.

It clears up acne. 

I actually did notice an improvement. When I began oil pulling, I was in the midst of a horrific breakout on my forehead. I thought perhaps it was a cycle issue, but after oil pulling for a month, I have to agree that my acne has been reduced by at least 50%.

It can lead to a healthy, glowing complexion. 

Well shucks, my complexion is already glowing. Ha! Actually, there may be some improvement. I should have taken before and after photos.

All in all, I'm glad that I did this little experiment, and I think that I will continue using the coconut oil. A few times I have also smeared it on my face as kind of a night cream, and I've also used it as a moisturizer. 

Verdict = coconut oil is some pretty awesome stuff. Give it your own trial!

It helps to be a little nuts

89. Harvest pecans from our tree

I had always planned to do this by putting a big tarp underneath the tree, but it turns out that the easiest way is to just pick them up after they've fallen off. 

I don't know if I'll be able to make a pecan pie with them, but I should at least be able to use them for the topping on my pumpkin pie crunch.

#90 Done

90. Finish painting privacy fence

Completed!

The awesome thing is that Jay did it. I came home from work one day last week and it was finished. :)

#23 PADI Advanced Open Water SCUBA diver certification

I posted about my experience on my main blog. There are some photos and even a video from the weekend about the fun I had getting certified.Next up will be Rescue Diver. 

That should be a challenging class, and I'll also have to get my EFR. I'm going to see if I can get my EFR taken care of at work. I'll have to check with the dive shop though... PADI likes to do everything their way and they have some kind of international standard EFR. The diver community on Scubaboard jokes that PADI stands for Put Another Dollar In. I think they might be on to something.

Our instructor and one of the divemasters were encouraging us to go on to Rescue Diver and continue on to divemaster eventually. Apparently rushing out, buying gear, and doing Advanced Open Water right after Open Water is a sign that you like diving. 

I really love the fitness aspect of diving. It's fun, so you don't feel like you're working that hard...and helping with the set-up of slinging tanks and weights gives you a good workout. 

I think being a divemaster would be fun. I greatly enjoyed helping the open water students, even though I didn't know much more than them. It's a wonderful world underwater.

I'm 21% through my list and only 13% through the time period. Hurray for progress!

Down to 17 hens

67. Sell/giveaway laying hens

It's official, we are down to 17 hens. I gave three hens to an arts council friend (one black star, one Ancona and one Australorp). I know that she'll take great care of them.

Here is our current flock:

4 Rhode Island Red/Barred Rock Crosses aka sex links (2 red star, 2 black star)

3 Easter Eggers

3 White Marans

2 Australorps

2 Silver Cuckoo Marans

1 Silver Laced Wyandotte

1 Golden Laced Wyandotte

1 Ancona

#94 completed

94. Attend a literary supper

Last weekend, I attended the Poe literary supper at the Caroline Country Club. It was a lovely event, full of Colonial Ladies wearing hoop skirts.

Plenty of bad jokes to go around, some death metal, and of course readings of Poe's works. 

All in all, a lovely night. Sadly I have no photos of ladies in hoop skirts. Or I do, but I must protect the identity of those involved. :)

I graduated

#19 is completed. 

My next run will be the entire 5k. 

I'll be taking it VERY slowly. After that run, I'm planning to do several shorter runs. I'm planning on going back to structured intervals - 90 seconds of running with 60 seconds of walking. 

I definitely wouldn't say that I'm at the peak of my health. But maybe I'll get back to my peak in a few more months if I keep up the running. 

#79 Completed

79. Research and buy a new car

We bought a 2014 Subaru Forester. We weren't planning to buy until the end of the year, but it was a good deal (we got about $2,000 of MSRP).

We are planning to call her Fanny. Fanny the Forester. We are all about alliteration.

Checking off four more items... nearly 20 more in the works!

I am making pretty good progress on my 101 list. Not too bad considering that I've completed 15% of my list and I'm only on Day 96 (about 10% done). So I am on target. I anticipate that #70, visit Nancy and Darryl in Australia again will be one of the most difficult things to achieve. But I am hopeful!

• Buy a map and put pins in the locations where I've left a little of Dad

The map is up and has pins in most of the places that I’ve left dad. It also has other places that we have traveled and places that we want to travel.

• Go camping

We went camping on the last weekend of September, while we were doing our dive certification. I anticipate that we will be going camping much more frequently, now that we’re certified divers. Lake Rawlings is a great place to practice.

• PADI Open Water SCUBA diver certification

Speaking of certified divers, knock it off the list. Next up is our Advanced Open Water certification, which we are also planning to do shortly. Since we’re planning on starting a family in the near future, I am trying to get a good start on my certifications since you can’t dive while you’re pregnant. Next year I’m hoping that we can get our Rescue Diver certifications. I also want to complete courses in Enriched Air Nitrox and Wreck Specialty. Maybe some others, but those two are top on my list at the moment.

• Write up TripAdvisor reviews for 5 places/things in OZ and/or NZ

I have contributed six reviews from our trip so far. I’m planning to review more places including Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary, Poseidon Agincourt Reef Cruises, Pullman Port Douglas Sea Temple & Resort, Woodlyn Park Accommodations, The Legendary Blackwater Rafting Company,  Taupo DeBretts Spa, Almaden Railway Hotel, and Whitsunday Getaways catamaran.

Near future updates and plans:

• Plan and organize a WCCC meeting 

I have volunteered to host/organize/lead the women’s club meeting in May at the Choptank Wharf. 

• Try out oil pulling for at least a month 

I bought the coconut oil to do this, which I was told by someone at the railway market in Easton was the stuff to use. I’m planning to swish with oil while I’m in the shower. Will let you know how it goes!

• Attend a literary supper  

I’ll be attending the Poe dinner at the end of this month. 

Here is a list of everything I anticipate accomplishing by the end of this year:

• Go horseback riding with Rancho Lorilar in the Dominican Republic
• Complete the Couch 25K program
• Swim 1000 yards
• PADI Advanced Open Water SCUBA diver certification
• Make a photobook of Australia and New Zealand trip
• Frame and hang one or more of my own photos
• Eat a rooster that wakes me up too early
• Sell/giveaway laying hens
• Make brownies from scratch and share recipe on blog
• Visit Kathy's store Bead Soup
• Send Renee and Joanne souvenirs from vacation
• Research and buy a new car
• Dive a wreck
• Perfectly cook salmon
• Spend an entire afternoon reading in the hammock (this will more accurately be "a" hammock)

Made my first sale!

68. Sell eggs from our flock (hopefully enough to sustain price of feed)

I brought some eggs in to work to give away and ended up selling them to one of our directors. We decided to price them at $3 a dozen. I was thinking that I should probably begin sorting them into medium, large & jumbo sizes and sell them at 2.50, 3.00 and 3.50. 

But $3 for a jumble of different sized and colored eggs is just easier. We have quite the rainbow of colors going on in our egg basket. I love it!

I think that I'll continue with Marans and Easter Eggers just for the egg colors.

Although I planned to take the $$ that we make from the eggs to offset feed cost, perhaps we'll instead put it in a piggy bank for something fun. 

Progress!

I’ve made some progress on my 101 list.

   20.  Sign up for a 5K race - then do it

Last Saturday, I ran my first 5k. I’m still not finished my C25k program, but I’ll be finished in the next week. My goal was to run the race in 40 minutes, and I pretty much hit that mark. There was a big bottleneck at the start of the race where we were stopped for a good 30 seconds. Judging by my Endomondo tracker, I was held up for a minute and a half. My time was 40:46, so if it weren’t for the hold-up at the beginning, I definitely would have been finished in 40 minutes or under. I’m planning to run the Sea Witch next month. Hopefully I’ll be faster then. I don’t expect to ever be truly competitive, but it will be fun to beat myself.

26. Figure out what I want to be when I grow up or figure out my degree path

I'm not sure if I'll ever figure out what I want to be when I grow up. However, I have at least determined my degree path - to get my bachelors in social work. Eventually I also hope to get my masters. I’m planning to begin taking classes at Chesapeake in the spring. It’s going to be slow going, as I plan to only take one or two classes a semester. “You have to eat that elephant one bite at a time,” as my buddy TK used to say. It’s not going to happen overnight, but I have to start somewhere. Fortunately for me, I already have a 2 year degree so I’m not starting from scratch. One of my greatest friends and mentors didn’t get her bachelor’s degree until she was in her 50s. If she can do it, so can I.

54.  Find a cool glass bottle to display my Whitehaven Beach sand

This was one of the easier things on my list. More difficult was to put the sand in it. However, I managed and it is now sitting on the mantle of our fireplace in the chocolate room.

71. Decide if finishing my degree in OZ is a viable option

If I were unmarried and five years younger, it would be. But I’m married and 33 now. One of our physicians is planning a move to OZ and promised to keep an eye out for jobs for me. I’m also on New Zealand’s immigration email list. They have something called a Silver Fern Visa that I would qualify for if I had a 4 year degree. But alas, I have no 4 year degree. 

I’m afraid that Down Under will only be a place that I visit. Maybe one day I’ll be able to take an entire month off to stay in OZ. I don’t know what the cure for wanderlust is. Most times that I yearn for being somewhere else is usually when I’m at work. 

It seems that the best cure for wanderlust would be to compete in the Amazing Race. 

In the next month, I plan to:

Buy a map and put pins in the locations where I've left a little of Dad

Complete the Couch 25K program

Swim 1000 yards

PADI Open Water SCUBA diver certification

Make a photobook of Australia and New Zealand trip

Frame and hang one or more of my own photos

Fence in entire backyard

Write up TripAdvisor reviews for 5 places/things in OZ and/or NZ

Spread some of Dad at Martinak State Park

Eat a rooster that wakes me up too early

Sell eggs from our flock (hopefully enough to sustain price of feed)

Finish painting privacy fence

Another update once a few of these are checked off!

Six items off the list!

I can check off some items from my list… here are the details:

Climb a rock wall

On Saturday, I went with a group of friends to Tuckahoe State Park to participate in their Adults Only ropes challenge. Their rock wall was more of an upright wooden deck with handholds and footholds bolted onto it. I wonder if I would have done better on a traditional rock wall, like the one at the YMCA. I was able to get maybe a third or halfway up the wall. I was proud of myself and quit while I was ahead so that I could still climb up through a 50 foot rope tube. The only way to get to the zip line was to either climb up the rope tube or to climb up and over the rock wall.

This is what I have to show for my hard work:

Send Aunt Nancy thank you gift 

Send Chris and Sally thank you gift

I finally remembered to bring the bag with the goodies in it to work so that I could assemble and take it to the post office. I packaged it all up and took it to the post office today at lunch. Funny thing about sending packages overseas… the shipping costs more than the stuff you’re sending!

Design egg carton to sell/giveaway eggs

I’ve come up with a design… it has a black & white photo of one of our chickens trying to come into our house at one end. Then it says:  Chicken Knock Farm – Fresh Eggs – Happy hens lay better eggs… then it says gathered on and eggspiration. To be safe I’ll put an eggspiration date of 6 weeks from the gathered on date. I’m sure that they’ll be fine for longer than that, but people might be weirded out by how long eggs can last (3+ months depending on storage). 

Buy a brick for the FACES building

I did this a week or two ago… I had the brick inscribed in memory of my dad.

Make Jay a new mug

It looks like a 5 year old painted it… just the way he likes it.

I signed up for a 5k

Sign up for a 5K race - then do it

I've completed week 2 day 2 of my couch25k training program and signed up for my first 5k, the Run 4 Shelter on September 14th.

I'm not doing so well with the word of the day. I did two days and then I forgot about it. My brain hasn't been working so well lately. Work is busy, it's hot, I'm studying for my scuba class, other stuff. 

An easy way to accomplish #3 (2/1001)

Day two of one thousand and one days

Use a "word of the day" in a sentence every day for two weeks (or longer)

For those days that I don't participate in any conversations, I will blog using the word in a sentence.

I'm also planning to use a few different sources for the word of the day. 

Today's word of the day on Word Think is indigenous. I'm pretty sure that I could slip that in to a conversation pretty easily. You know, since I'm an indigenous Eastern Shore girl. 

Why am I using different sources? 

The word of the day from Merriam-Webster Online is ephebic: of, relating to, or characteristic of a youth of ancient Greece or a young man
Read more at http://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day/#T6SyW6A7lDcooKYD.99 
The word of the day from the New York Times is tout. I'm pretty sure that's doable.

The word of the day from Dictionary.com is edacity: the state of being edacious; voraciousness; appetite.

101 in 1001 - The 2013 Edition

I've come up with a new 101 list... my old 101 list can be found here. 

Start Date: Sunday, July 7, 2013
End Date: Sunday, April 3, 2016

1. Make my new 101 list (it's nice to have something to check off right away, isn't it?)
2. Find the perfect mojito recipe (preferably from Fish D'vine)
3. Use a "word of the day" in a sentence every day for two weeks (or longer)
4. Get my wedding ring re-sized (it was too small to begin with)
5. Buy a map and put pins in the locations where I've left a little of Dad
6. Use one week of our timeshare in a place other than the DR
7. Go camping
8. Go fishing
9. Go crabbing
10. Go horseback riding with Rancho Lorilar in the Dominican Republic
11. Attend one of the monthly USA Dance  events (or something comparable)
12. Go to a murder mystery dinner theatre
13. Raft a Class V river
14. Climb a rock wall
15. Go without eating out for two weeks
16. Have a yard sale
17. Have my aunt Mary over for dinner
18. Hike Old Rag
19. Complete the Couch 25K program
20. Sign up for a 5K race - then do it
21. Swim 1000 yards
22. PADI Open Water SCUBA diver certification
23. PADI Advanced Open Water SCUBA diver certification
24. Come up with a weekly housecleaning list
25. Make a filing system for all of my important documents
26. Figure out what I want to be when I grow up or figure out my degree path
27. Drink bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape from 2006 France trip (hope it's still good)
28. Make a photobook of Australia and New Zealand trip
29. Set up a computer with photo editing software
30. Frame and hang one or more of my own photos
31. Look into providing photos for Shutterstock
32. Select photos and apply to be a juried photographer at the Foundry
33. Fence in entire backyard
34. Can tomatoes from my own garden
35. Re-learn how to play Chess
36. Spend a weekend in NYC
37. See a Broadway show
38. Send Aunt Nancy thank you gift 
39. Send Chris and Sally thank you gift
40. Make gluten-free bread
41. Design egg carton to sell/giveaway eggs
42. Take an impromptu trip to the beach (for the day or weekend)
43. Make a batch of wine
44. Meet up with Nancy and Darryl in Germany or Austria
45. Visit Key West (maybe even for Fantasy Fest)
46. Meet up with my cousin Emily - either in Boise or elsewhere
47. Write a letter to the editor
48. Plan a visit to South America
49. Take a two-week vacation (or longer)
50. Write up TripAdvisor reviews for 5 places/things in OZ and/or NZ
51. Sign up to be a Foodie pen pal at least once
52. Write a magazine-worthy essay or short story
53. Send out Christmas cards (hopefully every year)
54. Find a cool glass bottle to display my Whitehaven Beach sand
55. Spread some of Dad at Martinak State Park
56. Buy a brick for the FACES building
57. Plan and organize a WCCC meeting
58. Go on a sailing adventure
59. Eat a rooster that wakes me up too early
60. Make Jay a new mug
61. Spend a day technology-free
62. Plant hardy perennials in front garden
63. Get rid of red couch and chair
64. 10,000 steps a day for two weeks straight
65. Do a liveaboard trip or cruise vacation
66. Use Chase Sapphire points for a vacation
67. Sell/giveaway laying hens
68. Sell eggs from our flock (hopefully enough to sustain price of feed)
69. Make brownies from scratch and share recipe on blog
70. Visit Nancy and Darryl in Australia again
71. Decide if finishing my degree in OZ is a viable option
72. Visit Kathy's store Bead Soup
73. Send Renee and Joanne souvenirs from vacation
74. Enter something in the county or state fair
75. Try out paddleboarding
76. Decide if buying a boat is right for us
77. Try out oil pulling for at least a month
78. Successfully grow a plant from seed
79. Research and buy a new car
80. Dive a wreck
81. Go to the Dry Tortugas
82. Have a fabulous time at Christina and Dan's wedding
83. Make lemonade from scratch
84. Stay at a bed and breakfast
85. Go to pony penning
86. Have a gait analysis done and buy proper running shoes
87. Watch a meteor shower
88. Send a message in a bottle
89. Harvest pecans from our tree
90. Finish painting privacy fence
91. Go on a last-minute vacation 
92. Bring in fresh flowers to work for a month
93. Give someone a gift for being awesome
94. Attend a literary supper
95. Attend Second Saturdays at the Foundry at least twice a year
96. Make Maryland Beaten Biscuits
97. Go vegetarian for a week
98. Perfectly cook salmon
99. Grow herbs inside
100. Put up blackout curtains in bedrooms
101. Spend an entire afternoon reading in the hammock