I know everyone and their brother has one, but I’ve wanted to start one for awhile. So I guess I’ll get it moving and then add to it as time passes.

The Official Bucket List

• Visit the UK
• Do a 5/5 difficulty geocache
• Learn another language
• Go back to school… for something.
• Visit South America
• Learn to fly a plane
• Become SCUBA certified
• Learn to ride a motorcycle
• Get some of my writing published
• Take this local class on metalworking. I’m dying to do something creative like that.
• Do a long-distance hike somewhere. Doesn’t matter where. I just want to go many miles over several days and camp along the route.
• Visit Australia and New Zealand.
• Volunteer at a pet shelter
• Swim with dolphins. Doesn’t matter where.
• Take an Alaskan cruise
• Get married to Bayou.
• Be a parent with Bayou.
• See all of the Hawaiian islands. (Soon to be 2 down!)
• Learn how to correctly use a compass.
• Climb a mountain.
• White water raft.
• See the Grand Canyon.
• Become truly proficient at guitar and harmonica.

I’ll think of more later.

Initially I thought our trip to Kauai would be punctuated not by fun and rip-racing across the island, but by the gentle and relaxing sounds of the waves.

Not so. This trip is shaping up to be raucous, ya’ll. Read more…

This has been a week of weird, weird dreams.

Tuesday night I dreamed that I was at a Native American music recital- there were several kids and a few Native adults, all performing. My friends V & D were there. I had just seen them on Saturday so I am not surprised they were in my dream.

In real life I was discussing the merits of the iPod Touch with V, and this also made its way into dreamland. In my dream I had purchased a Touch as a surprise for V, but I had bought it from a third party seller on Amazon and there was a problem. I was getting agitated about it when I got a call telling me to look outside. Read more…

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly Edition:

The good: losing the cravings for processed crap, and staying pretty active over the weekend. Also, not ridiculously over-indulging with the 4th of July festivities we hosted Sunday.

The bad: the scale we bought broke. Which is probably a good thing, since the constant fluctuation was making Bayou crazy and depressed.

The ugly: Finding out the hard way Friday night that I can’t drink like I used to on this diet.

On a “Here’s To Good Service Note”, I emailed the manufacturer yesterday morning about the scale and its bizarre behavior and got a near-immediate reply saying it was defective and they’d be happy to replace it. So score for that.

I feel we’ve sort of plateaued since we began our changes, in terms of weight loss. But I feel stronger in other areas, especially the mental aspect of this process. It’s getting easier and easier to make choices that were once the bane of my existence- to drink Coke or not, chocolate or an apple, etc etc.

I don’t know if we’ll meet our 10lbs goal by the time we go to Kauai, but it’s ok. We’re on the right path. It’s still a challenge to incorporate daily exercise, but I hoping to get better in that area.

Thanks to everyone for their support. It means a lot to have such a great cheering section!