The Forty List

On January 2, 2013, I turn 40.Here are 40 things I am going to do in the next 365 days.

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Forty List Recap

Exactly one year ago, I had turned forty years old. I had spent the morning shaving my face and used an hour or so later that night to write my first Forty List blog post. I have since completely shaved my face twice and have gradually gotten used to seeing my face without hair. The moles still freak me out a bit, but the lack of hair doesn't bother me at all.

At the time, I wondered if I could accomplish all forty things – I wondered how I was going to throw a bottle in a body of water; I wondered when I was going to get to Baltimore; I wondered about making dresses, books and paintings. I always knew I could do all forty things; I definitely didn't know how! So, here's my recap/awards to my most memorable Forty List items and a few other scattered thoughts about the last 365 days. Easiest Forty List Item: Bake a Cake I had never baked a cake from scratch. I do, however, cook a few things. This was as simple as following a good recipe. The best part of making the cake was taking the leftovers to work and giving it out to my friends. They seemed impressed by my (limited) cooking skills.    Item I Wish I Had Put On My List: Score a Baseball Game Baseball was my first sports love. I played for ten years and in the last couple of years (thanks to the Orioles' resurgence) have spent an inordinate amount of time watching games on MLBTV. I sorta-kinda know how to score a game, but not well. It is something I have never done and hope to do in 2014. Hardest Forty List Item to Accomplish: Read All Three of the Lord of the Rings Books Not even close. From the first night, I despised everything about these books. Before I started, I thought that this would be fun. Nope. In fact, after spending six months trudging through Tolkien's endless parade of wandering and walking, I decided I didn't want to read anymore for the rest of the year. Thanks, Tolkien...you ruined reading for me. My Favorite Thing I Made: Paint a Picture I like my daughter's dress. I really like my Skeletor book. However, my favorite thing is the Ray Lewis painting I made for my man room. The Ravens' Super Bowl Championship is one of the defining events of my fortieth year. It was amazing and completely unexpected. I have watched and followed Ray from his first NFL season in 1996. I love having a personal tribute to the Ravens' best played ever in the place I watch the Ravens week after week. Best Forty List Item With Another Person: Go On An Awesome Date With My Youngest Daughter While I loved hanging out my my oldest and my wife (and my friends at sporting events), nothing compared to hanging out for the night with my little Reagan. She was so excited about getting dressed up and going to dinner, she could barely contain her enthusiasm. She spent most of the night smiling. It was wonderful spending a few hours with someone who wanted to do nothing more than hang out with her dad. That was just an absolutely amazing evening. Favorite Forty List Item: Go Duckpin Bowling I thought that duckpin bowling would be fun; I didn't expect it to be the best thing ever. It's sports combined with skee ball and at the right alley, throw in beer. If I lived in Maryland, I would have a Ravens ball and be in a league. Outside of watching Star Wars, duckpin bowling is like my pinnacle of fun. So, those are some of my Forty List superlatives. It has honestly been one of the best years of my life. I have loved doing things that would never have happened without this list.  There are so many people to thank: my family and countless friends who helped share these experiences with me over the course of 2013. While I'd like to name them all, I will probably wait until I put my first 2014 project together: my Forty List book...an aggregate of this blog with a handful addendums and other insights. Lastly, I thank you, dear reader, for following along on my forty journey. It has been one heck of an experience! Perhaps, I'll do this again in nine years when I turn 50. Until then, cheers! -Chris

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3. Watch the First 10 movies from AFI’s top 100 movies

Over the course of the last four months, I have slowly been watching the first ten films from the American Film Institute’s (AFI) Top 100 American Movies of All Time. The list was originally produced in 1998. Surprisingly, one of the main reasons I added this to my Forty List was that I had only seen one of the top ten films, The Wizard of Oz, and that had to have been when I was a little kid. Not only did I want to take in some good movies but hopefully learn a bit about classic cinema.

Without further ado, here are the top ten. I am presenting them here from my least favorite to the one I enjoyed the most. Heck, I’ll even throw in a few comments…

10. Lawrence of Arabia (5)

There’s a reason the photo above is Peter O’Toole asleep. (It should have been a photo of me alseep). While watching this nearly four-hour long movie my mother said something that really resonated with me: without any back-end understanding of World-War I British rule of Arabia, this movie makes zero sense. There was so little of this movie I liked. I think the desert sequences were drawn out, it was incredibly slow-paced and I just never bought into O’Toole’s performance of Lawrence in the last quarter of the film.

9. On the Waterfront (8)

Honestly, I have no clue how this movie ended up in AFI’s list. For the time, this was probably some seriously gritty stuff; in 2013, the acting (aside from Karl Malden) was hackneyed. I would love to see this movie done by today’s film standards. The last fifteen minutes would be insane. Here, I just felt like I was watching an old movie. Meh.

8. Casablanca (2)

This movie should not be named Casablanca; it should be called Drinking and Smoking. It actually got to a point where all the drink pouring and cigarette lighting was pulling me out of the movie…that’s a no-no. This one for me also had a good bit of “stage play reek.” The first thirty-six minutes take place in one setting. Once I noticed it, I felt more like I watching a play than a movie.

7. Citizen Kane (1)

I can only imagine what this movie did to people’s brains when it came out. I imagine it was a lot like the reception to Pulp Fiction in 1994. People just didn’t know what to make of it. This film truly was ahead of its time. From the use of music to cinematography, this film’s production is just amazing. Not that there was a single thing wrong with Orson Welles’ performance, I would love to have seen a young Jack Nicholson take on Kane. Oh my, that would have been something to see.

6. The Wizard of Oz (6)

This was the only movie I had previously seen. However, in the course of watching the film, I remembered very little. So, watching it was like seeing it for the first time. I really enjoyed the large munchkin production number. Very impressive. I did not, however, like the flying monkeys. Super creepy. The real star of this show – in my opinion – is Toto. That dog is in the scenes watching people sing, moving on cue and is every bit a top-level character as the Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion. And if I am being honest, I liked the dog more than all three of them combined.

  5. Singing In the Rain (10)

Holy crap. I had no clue people could dance like that. There were two numbers with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor where I actually had to stop, rewind and watch again. I simply could not believe what I was seeing. I thought before going in that it was seriously suspect that a full-out singing and dancing movie should be in the top 10 movies of all-time. This one made me a believer.

4. The Graduate (7)

The first thirty minutes of this movie were near perfection. Watching Dustin Hoffman transform from a hilariously quirky young man to a summer slacker sex machine was highly entertaining. I probably would have moved this up one more spot if not for the last third of the movie. I didn’t care for the darker route this movie took; in a lot of ways it is the tale of two movies. I think if written for today’s cinema they would have figured out to keep the romantic comedy thing going for all two hours.

3. Gone with the Wind (4)

When I say I knew zero about this movie…I mean I knew zero about it. I didn’t know about Mammy, I didn’t know how flippantly suave Rhett Butler was, and I had no clue how absolutely stunning Vivian Leigh was. I could have watched her for ten hours. I loved the way she could go from precious and sweet to crazy bitch in ten seconds. After the closing credits, I went back and took screen caps and made her the background on my phone. I think the last hour of the movie was a little rushed, but overall I loved all four hours of this one.

2. Schindler’s List (9)

I was really scared going into this one. I was thinking it was going to be three long hours of tears and sadness. Surprisingly, I think this is more of a “triumph of the human spirit” film than anything else. Weeks after seeing this film, I am still captivated by Ralph Fiennes performance of Amon Goth. It is seriously one of the most terrifying things I have ever seen on film. This is just an amazing film and I am actually a bit irritated with myself for waiting so long to watch it.

1. The Godfather (3)

I have no clue how I had never seen the Godfather.

(Chris hangs head in shame)

This movie is perfection. After the opening wedding sequence this film becomes two-plus hours of insane tension. I have never seen a movie where anyone could die at any moment. The pacing (even for a three-hour movie) was spot on. Really, everything from the technical side (writing, direction, acting) was just flawless. I want to know from someone at AFI what Citizen Kane has over this film because I’m not seeing it.

I can’t close this one out without thanking my screenwriting professor/writing mentor, Jeff Stepakoff. Not only did he help me get a few of the films on this list, but also guided me in discussion on better understanding these classic movies. His insight is always interesting and always appreciated. 

And with that, friends, not only is this list item done…so is this Forty List!

Cheers!!!

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27. Start AND FINISH a home improvement project

For most of the year I operated under the assumption that for this Forty List item I was going to re-do a bathroom in my house that was last “fixed up” in 2003. My wife however, really didn’t want me to do that....and quite honestly the whole project changed in November when my oldest daughter told us that what she really wanted for Christmas was to have her room “fixed up.” Teenager style.

So, this is what I started with: 

When I said I was going to take on a home improvement project this was not what I had in mind. Once we got to gutting the room, we ended up with three tubs filled to the brim with One Direction posters, Littlest Pet Shop figures and other odds and ends that had been collected for the past thirteen years.

We left the business of picking out new bedding, wall color and carpet to my daughter. She opted for a mix of light blue and turquoise. Once we had a color, the two of us got to painting.

Now, my wife and I have been married for almost twenty years – and one of the reasons it has worked is because she always paints. We tried a couple times to have me paint the trim or cut-in, but that lead to all-around bad times. Because this is MY Forty List, she insisted to stay out of the painting.

Surprisingly, after three days of hard work (and a good deal of patience), I pulled off all the painter’s tape and the room looked half-way decent.

However, this list item couldn’t get checked off until the project was FINISHED.

Part of my daughter’s Christmas present was new carpet from her grandmother. So, two days after Christmas, a guy showed up at our house – SUPER EARLY – and got to work.

Two hours later, we were just a bit closer to having this thing done.

However, I did not anticipate having to go to Big Lots three times, or having to track down Christmas lights two days after Christmas, but a few hours later, we had finally transformed by daughter’s crazy room into her dream music studio / bedroom.

To top the whole thing off, I took a huge picture frame that she no longer wanted and put a 1D photo in there for her. With the frame and lights hung, I considered this most difficult Forty List item done!

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23. Write a book

There are two sides to this Forty List item. There is what I initially intended to do and what I actually ended up doing.

Let’s start with what I didn’t do...

You see, I have a Master’s degree in writing. I have published three books of poetry and written two 110-page screenplays. I know what is involved with a real writing project. There are months of planning; there are outlines. You should have character development and pages and pages of backstory. But more than any of that,…you have to want to sit down and REALLY write.

My first plan was to write a book, sorta in the style of Nancy Drew, about a twenty-fourish year-old girl who was a slacker and solved trivial mysteries. The title was Carrie Cash and the Mystery of the Missing Keg. I had the whole thing outlined with twenty chapters and all my beats.

I just didn’t want to write twenty chapters.

At all.

I wrote one and decided I needed a plan B.

So, early in October I was out walking my dog and had this brilliant idea. Three years ago, a friend of mine got me a tad hooked on comic books. Making a comic book is something that I want to do. I figured, why not mish-mash the art of comics with the art of children’s storytelling, mixed with the art of my awesome Halloween costume (Skeletor from Masters of the Universe)…and BAM! My idea was born.

The title is the first thing that popped in my head: Skeletor Makes Spaghetti. The book would be all about a routine day in the life of Skeletor. I thought if I could have my buddy, Caleb, take some crazy pictures of me in my Skeletor costume, I could Photoshop those things into an actual story. 

So that’s what I did…

STEP ONE: Come up with a rock solid outline

STEP TWO: Hang up a sheet in my mother’s living room and take pictures of me dressed up as Skeletor

STEP THREE: Take the photos, knock-out the backgrounds and make the remaining photo look like comic book art

STEP FOUR: Add backgrounds

STEP FIVE: Add text (After all this Forty List item was WRITE A BOOK)

STEP SIX: Send off to get printed and enjoy!

STEP SEVEN: Mark item #23 off my Forty List

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37. Go on an awesome date with my wife

My wife, Michelle, and I celebrated our 18th anniversary in October. I had initially wanted to do something fun and special for that occasion; unfortunately, I ended up spending two weeks in October going back and forth across the country to technology conferences.

I figured if I couldn’t do an awesome anniversary date for my Forty List, that I would fall back on a potentially even MORE AWESOME plan…Christmas-Themed Date!

To start our awesome date, I surprised my wife with a dozen red roses and a small little wrapped gift (earrings). Both of my awesome dates with my daughters involved some shopping component. I didn’t want Michelle to feel like she missed out on the fun.

We had reservations at Aspens Signature Steaks in East Cobb. Neither of us had ever been there; however, the Yelp reviews on the Interwebs were spot on – the place was dimly lit, had a fireplace in the center of the restaurant, and was absolutely perfect for a nice, romantic dinner.

After splitting an appetizer, the two of us enjoyed our main courses: Michelle had the Black Angus Burger with Mushrooms, Bacon and Swiss while I had the Salt Crusted Prime Rib with a side of Three Cheese Macaroni and Bacon.

Both of our meals were fantastic. We had phenomenal service and equally incredible food. I couldn’t recommend this place enough.

After dinner, we had tickets to see the Georgia Ballet’s annual performance of The Nutcracker.

This was a very special performance as twenty-five years ago (exactly), I was talked into “dancing” in the Georgia Ballet’s Nutcracker. I went to school with a couple girls who danced with the Georgia Ballet. They needed male humans who could dress up in tuxedos and pretend to be adults for the party scene. They promised me there would be minimal choreography. I think it may be the only time in my life that I danced a waltz. 

Anyhow, this 2013 performance was a slightly different interpretation on the Nutcracker. The most glaring departure from the ordinary was the Drosselmeyer – who sorta looked like a younger version of Dave Navarro sans tattoos. This Drosselmeyer did magic tricks and spent most of the time walking around stage with a cape in his outstretched arms. Clara also had a sister and Drosselmeyer traveled with Clara and the prince to the Land of Sweets.

While the performance had a few ups and downs, the real highlights were the Waltz of the Snowflakes and the first dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy. I would also add that the costumes in the party scene were as good as any I have ever seen in any performance of The Nutcracker.

After the performance, we stopped and got some hot chocolate and then drove around through a few neighborhoods looking at Christmas lights. It was a super end-cap to not just an awesome date night, but an AWESOME CHRISTMAS DATE!

And if the dinner, ballet and Christmas lights were great enough, we came to a house free of children (spent the night with Mimi and friends) and we could watch the end of the college football championship games and Saturday Night Live in peace and quiet. ;)

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7. Decorate the outside of my house like Clark Griswold

I honestly have no clue why I put this on my Forty List.

For the last few years the annual December ritual in the Ward household is to watch me completely lose my mind with the lights on our Christmas tree. Last year I got psychotic with a pre-lit tree that wouldn’t work and took a pair of scissors and went Mommie Dearest on the whole thing.

I hate Christmas lights. They hate me. It is a symbiotic relationship.

Year after year, I buy four or five new boxes. Of those new boxes, at least one won’t work. One of the other strings will go out halfway through the holiday season. Damn you, Christmas lights.

In fact, this past weekend we bought a new Christmas tree. I also bought three new boxes of lights. One of those boxes didn’t work. I went back out to Wal-Mart and bought four more boxes (because half the lights from last year didn’t work), and of those four, one box didn’t work. Two bad boxes out of seven…and I expected to decorate our house like Clark Griswold. Yeah, right.

This Forty List item technically started on Saturday, November 30th. I went into our basement to get out the tub with lights and extension cords. However, that tub was nowhere to be found. So, instead of putting up lights on Saturday, I spent that time at Big Lots buying ALL NEW lights.

Fast forward to Sunday morning. After praying over 3,000 new lights I went to work.

Here I am on the roof of my house having the time of my life.

Meanwhile, twenty feet below me my two lovely children fought each other with a variety of objects including a yard rake, a Razor scooter and extension cords. Once abusing her little sister got tiresome, my oldest decided to bug out of the Christmas decorating fun.

Long story short, I spent four hours hanging 1,200 icicle lights, securing reindeer into the ground with tent stakes, assembling spiral trees, and untangling box after box of net lights.

So much fun.

After getting all of the outside lights up all I had left was the candles for the windows. However, it was this seemingly simple task that pushed me to the brink of insanity.

My mother had given me a crate full of “Santa Trim Automatic Timer Candle Lamps.” I plugged a couple in and they didn’t light. I figured they needed new bulbs. Into the car, I went back up to Big Lots and bought three boxes of night light bulbs.

Came back home, put the new bulbs in…no luck.  In fact, out of eleven boxes, seven didn’t work. I actually believe that Satan – in an effort to destroy the magic of Christmas – set out to create a company called Santa Trim to specifically manufacture these piece of crap “lights” to demolish the holiday spirit of people around the world (or wherever these awful lights are sold).

After forty-five minutes or so, I finally gave up. The real statement was the 3,000 lights around the house, not the ten crappy candles in the windows.

So there. It may not look like Clark Griswold, but there are lights. My kids enjoy them; my neighbors enjoy them; and I actually think my dog likes them when I take him for walks at night.

Insane mission accomplished.

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33. Go to a basketball game

I would never claim to be the biggest basketball fan in the world. It is a game I never played when I was a kid. I don't ever remember my dad watching a single game - college or NBA. With the exception of the first week of the NCAA tourney and the NBA finals, it is a game that is seldom on my sports radar. However, when making my Forty List, I figured that since I was going to a baseball, football and hockey game...why not go to a basketball game too? Well, it sounded good up until the last month or so (as I am quickly running out of time) and I REALLY didn't want to have to spend $50+ to go to an Atlanta Hawks game. It is a Forty List, not a Waste My Money List. I was sitting at work one day with my student assistant, Caleb, and thought it might be fun to take him to a Kennesaw State game. Not only have I worked at KSU for twelve years, but I also have two degrees from the place. I figured since Caleb had never been to an Owls sporting event, that it would be a good opportunity to show him something new on campus and take care of a Forty List item.

Now, let me preface by saying that when it comes to Kennesaw State basketball, I am definitely old school. One of my favorite years of work was back in 2004 when Tony Ingle led the Owls to the DII National Championship. I liked the players; I liked the coach; I even liked the Sports Information Director. All that to say, the last KSU game I attended was in 2010 amid an eight-win season. Upon showing up the KSU Convocation Center to watch the Owls take on the Eastern Kentucky Colonels, the first thing that jumped out at me was how we have managed to class up the operation. There were actual ushers - in coordinated shirts - in every aisle. There is a massive video board now...with a live video feed. If I didn't know any better, it was like going to a professional sporting event. All that was missing were people to fill up the seats.

To Kennesaw State's defense, it wouldn't have been much better if I had gone to the Hawks game. So, Caleb and I were having a nice time. We got a couple free t-shirts, some nachos, and we watched Scrappy the Owl dance at mid-court... ...and then the game started. I am a firm believer of not throwing college kids under the bus, because at the end of the day they are student athletes and they are working hard to balance class with the rigors of a long season.  However, this was game number two and they appeared to be struggling with the very fundamentals of basketball itself, if not the core skills of any athletic competition. Things like:

holding on to a ball

passing a ball

shooting a ball

Quite honestly, I was sure that they had committed at least fifteen turnovers in the first half. I have since gone back and looked at the box score; the Owls finished with TWENTY-THREE TURNOVERS. That almost doesn't seem possible.

At one point, early in the second half, I took a picture of the Owls' game stats. They were 1/12 from the three-point arc and were shooting just around 33%. Throw in the turnovers and it actually seemed like Caleb and I had a front row seat to The Night Basketball Got Set Back 100 Years.

In fact, I would actually contend that the best shot of the night was made by a student who made a half-court shot at halftime and won a $10 Target gift card.  At the end if the night, the miscues and poor shooting were too much to overcome as the Owls fell 68-60. 

And while the basketball was not spectacular, Caleb and I did have a pretty good time. I would say that once KSU gets this team turned around, I would highly recommend an Owls game for a fun and affordable family outing.  Alright, now that this basketball thing is out of the way,...there's got to be a football game somewhere to watch.

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6. Run a race

Admittedly, I have never really been much of a runner. I have had maybe three times in my life where I consistently ran three times a week for a few months. While I kinda get the runner’s high and all, at the end of the day I really despise exercise and sweating.

So, now that it is November and I am down to the last few things on my Forty List, I have been banging my head against the wall wondering what could have possibly possessed me to put “Run a Race” on this list.

After much deliberation, I opted to go with a race that put more emphasis on fun and less on the actual race.  Goodness knows I wasn’t about to spend three months training for a 5K.

The race I picked was the Anything Is Possible 5K. My registration not only got me a race number, but a sweet pair of pajama bottoms.

The real “fun” in this race is that it starts at 1:50 in the morning just before the fall back time change. That way, when you finish, your end time is before your start time.

Plus people dress up in costumes.

I say if people are dressing up, then I’m running as Darth Vader.

I headed to the race with my wife and oldest daughter. Both of whom decided to ignore my idea of dressing up as Princess Leia and Chewbacca.

My girls were kind enough to hang out with me before the race. However, once it was time to start, they both took off with their respective set of friends. It didn’t matter as I fired up my iPod with “The Story of Star Wars” as narrated by Roscoe Lee Browne. I imagine there aren’t many people in the world who run/walk to narrations; however, I have always found that when I have to power through things like house work and lawn mowing that Star Wars makes the time fly by much faster.

Now, you need to know that I wasn’t insane and tried to run the whole thing. If that were the case, I probably would have fallen over dead after the first half mile. I took my wife’s advice and did a 1/5 split…run a minute, walk five. 

Truthfully, after the first mile or so, after I thought my shins were going to collapse and my legs were going to fall away from my torso, the race actually got easier. I sorta parked myself behind this guy dressed up as Charlie Brown with blinking lights on his shirt. Between whacking every traffic cone with my lightsaber and following the hypnotic blinking of the guy’s shirt, I finished that race in no time.

That’s right: forty-three minutes and fifty seconds. All done with zero training and sweating my ass of in a Darth Vader outfit.

Afterward, while my wife and daughter (who finished ten minutes after me) went to Waffle House, I cruised over to QT and got a chicken biscuit and a 32oz soda. It was an amazing reward for my “amazing” athletic performance.

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34. Go to a hockey game

Back when I was half my age, I lived almost every week at Atlanta’s OMNI Arena watching my beloved Atlanta Knights. My friends and I would load up in the car, get $5 tickets and sit up in the rafters while watching our favorite Knights stars: Stan Drulia, Chris LiPuma, and J.C. Bergeron. Even twenty years later, the names of the 1994 Turner Cup Champs are fresh in my mind.

And while the Thrashers came and went, it was never the same as the Knights. The tickets were WAY more expensive and the product was about a 1/4th as good. Sure, it was cool seeing classic NHL teams, including the Red Wings, Blackhawks and the Bruins, but for every one of those games, I think I saw three Penguins games…and I still don’t think I ever saw the Thrashers beat them.

Once the NHL decided that Phoenix was a far more important franchise/market than Atlanta, I more or less turned my back on the sport. Actually, I went the entire 2011/12 season without watching a single second of hockey. (I’ll show you Winnipeg for stealing our team). 

Well, when I was out in Anaheim, the lure of seeing real NHL hockey was too strong – plus the tickets were only $11 a piece. So, me and my buddy/work partner-in-crime, Amos, headed over to the Honda Center to see the Ducks take on the Calgary Flames (another former Atlanta team).

Now I know that hockey games are cold and I was fully expecting to get a nice little Ducks beanie cap to cover my hairless head. However, much to my surprise a beanie knit cap at the Honda Center was $35. 

Say what?!?!?!

A “24 ounce” Heineken was $12.

That’s just nuts.

How about a $10 cheeseburger? Or a $150 replica jersey? Or a $12 shot glass?

What the… 

So, I didn’t JUST go to a hockey game, but also visited the most expensive place on earth.

While it looks like there is no one there, it actually filled up to about 75% full. Ducks fans are a pretty different lot though. They were quiet for almost the entire game with the exception of three “Let’s Go Ducks!” chants that only started in the last ten minutes of the third period. In fact, the biggest (and longest) cheer of the night wasn’t for any of the Ducks’ three goals, but for a WWII veteran that they showed on the JumboTron.

This is me and Amos. I am flashing the puck that I got that was surprisingly only $6. For the Honda Center, that is an absolute steal. 

The game itself was pretty decent. I got to see a short-handed goal…and watch Teemu Selanne, the Finnish ageless wonder, put one away from the slot. And, like I said before, because I had been to a bunch of Thrashers games at Philips, it was fun to actually see the home team win for once. 

Nice win, Ducks. Quack, quack, quack!!!

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10. Watch a sunrise

Somehow, I slept through 287 consecutive sunrises since my Forty List started… Go figure.

For the last couple of months I have been trying to figure out the perfect scenario to take in the start of the day. I am NOT a morning person in any way. That said, I really needed to figure out a good reason/opportunity to want to set my alarm, crawl out of bed and watch a sunrise.

That great chance happened to present itself on Wednesday, October 16th.

I am currently in Anaheim, California at a Higher Education technology conference. Anaheim is an interesting place. It is packed with tons of Disneyland tourists, a handful of restaurants and A LOT of hotels.

For this trip I am staying the Clarion. Not exactly the greatest hotel, but they do have a decent happy hour and extended beer and food specials as long as the Dodgers are on TV. To my great luck, when I checked in on Monday, I found that I had a room with a balcony that faced due east.

Sunrise jackpot.

Honestly, sunrise opportunities don’t get much easier than setting an alarm for 6:00 am, literally rolling over and opening a set of blinds.

Yup, perfect.

So, this morning, that is exactly what I did. For this Forty List item however, instead of endless paragraphs, I will let my iPhone photos tell the story.

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32. Go to a football game

In any given year for the last ten years, I would have spent the spring and summer with my family tailgating in parking lots before Georgia Force games. I was a season ticket holder of my beloved Arena Football team since day one. Unfortunately, the team folded last year leaving me with minimal professional opportunities to see a football game this year. Well, there are the Falcons but I just don’t have $200 laying around to go to an NFL game. 

So, for this Forty List item I was down to a couple of realistic affordable choices:

Go to a Blackwell Bears football game. The Blackwell Bears are like Pop Warner football. I played one season for Blackwell back in 1980. I was on the 65-pound Red Bears. I hated the practices and quickly decided that baseball was a better option for me as there was far less running and hitting.

A Sprayberry High School football game. I graduated from Sprayberry in 1991. In the last twenty-two years I have gone to two SHS games. The last time I went, I couldn’t find a seat and ended up standing along a fence with a bunch of scary teenagers while all the band parents eyed me like I was about to make off with their marimbas and trombones.

I decided to go with the Sprayberry option… And it was homecoming. Yay!

With my youngest daughter in tow the two of us headed a couple of miles down the road to my old high school to watch my Sprayberry Yellow Jackets take on the Forsyth Central Bulldogs. Go Jackets!

We made sure to go extra early so that the seating thing wouldn’t be a problem. Not only did we get a decent little perch along the 25-yard line, but we also killed an hour eating hotdogs, hamburgers and funnel cakes. Huzzah for funnel cakes!

  Within an hour or so, we were packed in tight with a bunch of high schoolers, one of whom was a girl who constantly pulled out her iPhone, turned the front facing camera on her and checked her hair. She did this no less than four times every quarter.

Now, one of the BIG differences between this high school football game and just about every football game I have ever attended in my life was that both offenses had a near inability to pass the football. At some point in the second quarter, I was catching on that Sprayberry had a quarterback and running back that had almost amassed 120 rushing yards. And as the game went on, I couldn’t recall a single Forsyth Central passing play. The Bulldogs did however have a running back who tallied 150 yards and - if the game never ended - would still be running circles around the SHS defense. I felt at the time I was stuck in a performance of "Night of 101 Option Plays."

Once the clock hit zero, the Yellow Jackets had prevailed 45-28. It was their first victory of the year. With the exception of a touchdown in the last 10 seconds of the first half and a non-existent defense in the last part of the fourth quarter, Sprayberry more or less beat the Bulldogs senseless. Good Friday night fun with my daughter at my ol’ alma mater. 

So here a few of my random thoughts on my high school football experience:

It’s weird going to a sporting event where 98% of the people in attendance could care less about what is going on on the field. A high school football game is purely a social event; the football is a total afterthought.

The loudest cheer of the night was for an SHS 30-yard touchdown run. The second loudest cheer was for the homecoming queen.

Both Reagan and I sat in the same spot for three hours. In that time, we had no less than thirty different people alternate sitting spots around us. High school humans don’t stop moving. Like ever.

The kid kicking for the Yellow Jackets is pretty good. Nailed every kickoff; hit every PAT. He actually looked like the most talented player on the whole team.

The Sprayberry run defense is bad. Really bad.

Forsyth Central’s run defense is even worse. No defense should allow teams in 3rd and 17 situations to convert by running the QB straight up the middle.

I hope that girl with the iPhone was happy at some point with the way her hair looked.

ADDENDUM

On November 24th, I got to my first Baltimore Ravens home game since 1999. The Ravens pretty much demolished Geno Smith and the New York Jets. Behind four Justin Tucker field goals and an amazing hook-up from Joe Flacco to Jacoby Jones, the Ravens rolled 19-3. Probably the most memorable aspect of the day was that it was 33 degrees at kick-off with 30 mph winds. That, coupled with the fact our seats were four rows from the top, led to one of the coldest experiences of my life.

[fortylist]

35. Go on an awesome date with my oldest daughter

This is Grace, my oldest daughter.

Grace is a vibrant thirteen year-old who is currently in her last year of middle school. She spends most of her time in her room either playing guitar or cultivating one of her many One Direction-focused Instagram accounts. For a few hours this past Saturday, I was able to coax her out of her space and out on a date with her dear old dad.

Our date started by my picking her up and bringing her a half dozen roses. Not only did she look wonderful with her curled hair (a new thing), her make-up (an even newer thing), but she also looked radiant in the dress that I had made for her for my Forty List.

To start our date, we headed to downtown Woodstock, which is about twenty minutes north of our house. The main street in Woodstock is a nice little place with a variety of restaurants and shops; the area also has a small park with a fountain and a gazebo. Much to our great luck, not only was it a beautiful Saturday afternoon, but the little town was bustling about – all primed up for the FREE Marshall Tucker Band concert later that evening. Needless to say, in my tie and clothes and her in her dress, we looked sorely out of place.

We immediately headed over to the Elm Street Cultural Arts Village. The village's centerpiece is an old church that has been converted into a theater. We settled ourselves in for a production of All In The Timing. The play was a series of five comedic one acts that varied from three monkeys trying to type Shakespeare to a man conning people out of money by teaching them a completely made up language. Both mine and Grace's favorite was a piece called Variations on the Death of Trotsky. It's basically about the death of Leon Trotsky and the guy plays the entire thing with a mountain climbing pick sticking out of his skull. Funny stuff.

After the play, we headed out to main street and I took her on a little shopping excursion. We went to a handful of shops and I bought her a bracelet and clutch purse that matched her dress.

We needed to be quick about the shopping as we still needed to get something to eat before all of the Marshall Tucker devotees descended on the area making escape impossible. So, we headed across the street to a nice Italian restaurant, Vingenzo's. I had eaten there once before. They are a fancy little spot that makes their own mozzarella cheese and their pizzas aren't of the crappy Pizza Hut/Domino's variety, but produced with real ingredients and baked in a fiery brick oven.

The two of us thoroughly enjoyed a sample of their Bufala Mozzarella with Sopressata; and we paired that with their authentic “la margherita” pizza.

With bellies full of pizza goodness, we quickly skirted out of Woodstock and headed over to the Avenues in East Cobb for some more shopping.

We spent a good bit of time smelling all the scents in the Yankee Candle store, dropped our jaws at the prices for common household items at Williams Sonoma, and rounded out our Avenues trip with an amazing cup of frozen yogurt at Menchies. In one of those moments of sheer perfection, we sat outside on a cool September night, watched the sun go down and had ate the heck out of some cake batter yogurt topped with Kit-Kats, chocolate chips and graham cracker crumbs.

Of course, she still had $20 to spend, so we swung by Target on the way home, and picked up a DVD of the Regular Show Halloween special, a 4-pack of Jones Candy Corn soda and a box of Mike and Ikes. All told, it was about the most amazing date a forty-year old dad could have with his amazing teenage daughter.

[fortylist]

15. Learn all of the U.S. Presidents in order

One of my unique interests – outside of KISS and Star Wars – is U.S. History. Unbeknownst to many is that my undergraduate college degree was political science with a minor in history. I have spent more time than most in books in books ranging from early American political foundations and thought to the escapades of our founding fathers in Europe and abroad.

Of course, when it came time to make my Forty List, I wanted to use the opportunity to fill in one of those gaps of learning that I've always wanted to have in my brain: the order of the U.S. Presidents from Washington to Obama. All forty-three presidents across all forty-four presidencies.

To my surprise, learning them all in order was much easier than I expected. Really,I had the whole thing down in less than a week. And at no time did I ever print anything out.

For starters, I knew the first seven with no problems; I also had the last presidents all the way back to Kennedy. So, before I even started on this list, I had a full third of the presidents committed to memory.

The other thing which helped considerably was that I knew the names of the presidents. It's not like I ever confused Washington with some other last name that starts with “W.” This was WAY different than the provinces of Canada where I was having to learn names like Nunavut and Fredricton.

Once I finally got my mind ready to go, I more or less pulled up the Wikipedia page with the list of presidents and started memorizing them in groups of 10.

Now, one thing you REALLY need to know about my brain is that I have all kinds of strange mnemonic devices to remember things...and this list is no different.

Without further ado, here's the list of U.S. Presidents...all done from memory with my way of memorizing them:

1. Washington – I knew this one

2. Adams – I knew this one

3. Jefferson – I knew this one

4. Madison – I knew this one

5. Monroe – I knew this one

6. Adams – I knew this one

7. Jackson – I knew this one

8. Van Buren – He is the eighth president. An eight kind of looks like an “S.” Seinfeld starts with the Letter “S” and there was an episode about the Van Buren boys.

9. Harrison – I have two different friends who have sons named Harrison and Tyler. These two go in alphabetical order.

10. Tyler – see above

11. Polk – It's the first one after 10, let's do a polka...

12. Taylor - ...to Taylor Swift music.

13. Fillmore – Taylor Swift...I'd like to fill more of her...

14. Pierce – My grandmother's maiden name

15. Buchanan – I have no clue how I remember this...I just do

16. Lincoln – I knew this one

17. Johnson – Lincoln assassinated; Kennedy assassinated. They were both followed by presidents named Johnson

18. Grant – I knew this one

19. Hayes – The next two I remember the first two letters of General Hospital and flip them. Those letters are the first letters in their last names.

20. Garfield – see above

21. Arthur – The next four presidents lead up to the first Roosevelt...and they are all in alphabetical order. This one is the letter "A."

22. Cleveland – This one is the letter “C.”

23. Harrison – This one is the letter “H.” (And a repeat name)

24. Cleveland – Like this one is a repeat name.

25. McKinley – This one is the letter “M.”

26. Roosevelt – Which leads us to the first Roosevelt

27. Taft – And Taft was the president 100 years ago.

28. Wilson – The last name of my mom's next door neighbor.

29. Harding – I work with a guy named Bruce Harding. The “ooo” sound in his first name help me to remember that the next three presidents all have double “oo” in their last name – and they are in alphabetical order.

30. Coolidge - COO

31. Hoover - HOO

32. Roosevelt - ROO

33. Truman – There's only two presidents left until I am good and those last two are not in alphabetical order.

34. Eisenhower – see above

35. Kennedy – I knew this one

36. Johnson – I knew this one

37. Nixon – I knew this one

38. Ford – I knew this one

39. Carter – I knew this one

40. Reagan – I knew this one

41. Bush – I knew this one

42. Clinton – I knew this one

43. Bush – I knew this one

44. Obama – I knew this one

See. All that all made perfect sense.

[fortylist]

26. Sew something

For the last few years I have spent my Thursday nights enjoying one of my few television indulgences: Project Runway. In addition to marveling at the patient wisdom of Tim Gunn, I have learned to appreciate what some very talented individuals can do with a few yards of fabric, a sewing machine and a day’s worth of work. 

Sometime during last year’s season, I was watching one of the designers sketching (or lack thereof) and thought to myself, “ I could do that.”

So, channeling my inner Kenley Collins I started using the Paper app on my iPad to sketch dresses. I drew up ideas for Star Wars dresses, Baltimore Orioles outfits, and fashions for the 1950s and 60s.

(Yeah, that dress on the left is based on R2-D2)

After sketching for a bit, I finally decided that it was time to actually sit down and figure out how to make a dress from scratch. I mean if that Casanova guy from season 8 of Project Runway could sew, certainly I could. 

While I really wanted to make something of my own creation, my mother – who can sew just about anything – strongly encouraged me to work from an easy pattern. (She emphasized the word easy several times).

With my daughter in tow, I went to the fabric store and picked out a pattern and my fabric. I opted for a simple sleeveless dress, using black cotton for the top and a houndstooth print for the skirt.

To my surprise, the first three hours of my sewing project consisted of cutting, pinning and a lot more cutting.

Once I had all my parts cut out I finally got to work with the sewing machine. Now what you need to know is that prior to this I had never – not once – used a sewing machine. I had no idea what I was actually getting myself into. To make matters more interesting, I was also learning on my mother’s machine which is a model from the 60s. It’s built into it’s own table, can only do a regular stitch and a baste stitch, but still works like a champ. 

To my surprise, I picked up stitching pretty quickly. I figured out how to do the simple – like keeping things in a straight line – to the slightly more difficult easing of seams and edge finishing.

After four three-hour sewing sessions, my dress was complete. In total, I sewed about 75% of the dress; there were some things like the zipper and matching the top half to the bottom that I was simply incapable of doing without utterly wrecking the whole dress.

So, here are a few of my takeaways:

1.  I hadn’t finished this dress and I was already thinking what I could do for a second project. I think that this sewing thing is a good outlet for my creative thinking and personality. If I could just practice and get some skills, I think I could make some pretty good stuff, from Star Wars costumes to pajamas to strange outfits for my children…

2.  I learned all about back stitches, edge finishes, darts, vents, zipper foots, and a whole slew of terms with which I was completely unfamiliar.

3.  That’s right, I made a vent. Awesome.

4.  Working on a sewing machine is about 20% of a garment making process; the other is made up of cutting, pinning and ironing. Lots and lots and lots of pinning.

5.  Without my mother’s help, I could never have done this project. At one point I had sewn the top together and thought it looked like complete crap. I handed it to her and she started pulling things all over the place…I had no idea that I had sewn the thing inside out.

6.  Patterns are overwhelmingly confusing if you have never done one before. 

7.  While I never will be a Mondo, Michael Costello, or Kenley Collins, I have to think that at one point they all made a first dress and that this attempt was pretty damn good effort.

Lastly, this was as much fun as I have had on any Forty List item and am looking forward to using my new skills to make all kinds of new Halloween outfits and Christmas presents.

[fortylist]

4. Write a handwritten letter

Last October, my friend (and co-worker) Amos was getting married. The night before he headed off to the Caribbean to get hitched, he posted a photo on Instagram of a handwritten letter that he wrote to his new bride. With expectation, all of the women in our office went crazy and pretty much said that was about the sweetest thing that they had ever seen. 

(Photo courtesy of @trezzay)

I actually had to agree, it was ridiculously sweet and it got me to thinking…when was the last time that I sat down and wrote a handwritten letter?  Hmmmm…

In college I wrote a bunch of handwritten letters. I would write my friends from high school that had gone off to college. I would draw pictures on envelopes and embellish with stickers. I occasionally hand wrote postcards to friends when I went on vacation.

Since I never talk to people I went to high school with and because I rarely send postcards (or go on vacation), I determined that the last handwritten letter that I wrote was about 1994. 

Don’t get me wrong, I occasionally write letters, but not handwritten ones. For those of you that don’t know, I have a Master’s degree in writing. Writing is something that I absolutely love to do and the art of drafting a well-worded letter can go a long way.

My best example of the power of a well-written letter was two summers ago. My wife and I had a date night and went to an Outback Steakhouse for dinner. My meal was so poor that I was compelled to write the most sincere/scathing letter humanly possible to Outback’s Regional VP and the store manager. Two weeks later, I had two $50 gift cards and a box of hand-made cookies from a boutique cookie shop that they had shipped to me. Aside from listening to their customers and responding in an amazing way, I would say that not only does Outback read its mail, but that they take their customers’ opinions seriously.

I honestly think we’ve gotten so used to the Facebooks and the Twitters of the world that we have forgotten the worth of a good letter and how to write a compelling thought with more than 140 characters.

Which brings me to this Forty List item…

For the last half year I have gone back and forth in my mind on who to send a letter to… I thought about friends who could use a word of advice; I considered a couple of smaller businesses that would appreciate knowing the difference that their products are making; I also thought about a few family members that I don’t get to see as often as I’d like. 

During the month of July, I had a couple of moments of clarity and finally found the direction I needed. Without going into specifics, I knew who to write. While I am not claiming to be a self-help guru – or even partially wise – I thought there was a person who could use the benefit from a portion of my forty years on this planet.

So, with pen in hand, I sat down with a pack of parchment paper and my iPod and hammered out four full pages of handwritten words.

So, these are my handful of thoughts:

First, I am so used to writing (and gathering my thoughts) digitally, that it was SUPER HARD to keep my writing on point. My pen didn’t come with an eraser…no mistakes.

Secondly, just because I was writing extemporaneously did not mean I hadn’t crafted a half-decent outline in my head. I don’t care if I am writing an e-mail, a grocery list or a blog post, I always have a mental outline of what I need to cover and how I am going to approach it.

Thirdly, writing by hand for two hours – especially when you’re not used to it – hurts. My wrist hurt; my fingers hurt; I would even go so far as to say that my brain hurt.

Lastly, I would hope that, even though I am not Shakespeare, that the recipient of my letter knows how important and awesome they are and how thrilled I am they will forever be an amazing part of one of the best years of my life! 

[fortylist]

38. Do something I love to do

There are a handful of things I am SUPER into: Star Wars, Baltimore sports, pizza and my absolute favorite holiday, Halloween. 

Halloween is one of those things that gets more and more amplified with me every year. Sure, when I was a kid, I loved getting my plastic Ben Cooper costume and hitting the streets with my dad for candy. Once I got married and bought a house, I gradually started decorating the front yard and doorstep in anticipation of trick or treaters. Then came my kids, and Halloween was really on…

I literally have ten giant plastic tubs filled with hundreds of orange and black decorations. I have an iPod that is filled with nothing but creepy music and sound effects. I have dozens of costumes ranging from Darth Vader to Samuel Adams to a Land of the Lost sleestak. 

Halloween is a thirty-one day event in the Ward household.

Then in 2009, I had this wacky notion – why did I have to wait until October to celebrate Halloween? Why not throw a little Halloween fun into the middle of the summer. Thus was born the greatest of all made-up holidays…Julyween!

Julyween is celebrated on July 31st, exactly three months before Halloween. It is basically a Halloween-themed party minus the trick-or-treating. 

For this year’s Julyween, me and my kids all wore pumpkin shirts. I also broke out the “Halloween camouflage” pants. (Both of my kids roll their eyes at those pants).

We always start Julyween off with a couple of crafts while watching the Nickelodeon Halloween DVD with SpongeBob, Rugrats, and Fairly Oddparents. This year, my youngest daughter surprised me and made pumpkin-shaped sugar cookies. Throw in some candy corns and kick the Julyween into high gear…

For dinner, I made pizzas. Squeeze cheese in a can is perfect for drawing jack-o-lantern faces and spiderwebs. I made a few pepperoni spiders as well.

Since my youngest daughter is nine, our movie selection is still limited to Disney Channel’s Halloweentown and a couple episodes of Goosebumps. I imagine one day, once my girls are old enough, I will force them to sit through Creepshow on Julyween. I am looking forward to that day.

Once we finished the kids movies, I retreated to the bedroom to watch my newest favorite Halloween movie, Trick 'r Treat, and partake in a little light reading.

As an aside, if you happen to really be into Halloween, I HIGHLY recommend Trick 'r Treat. It came out a few years ago and is near Halloween perfection. It’s multiple stories woven together and it is tons of fun. The real highlight is a short three minute segment of a busload of kids with some of the spookiest costumes I have ever seen. Super creepy; super disturbing; supremely awesome.

Until next year, Happy Julyween!

[fortylist]

18. Make my own beer

In 1998, I received this Mr. Beer kit for Christmas.

Over the next two years, my dad and I made all kinds of beer with the Mr. Beer brew kits – Cowboy Lager and Linebacker Bock - as well as brewing from scratch with dried malts and hops.

We had tons of fun. We bought a capper, bottled with glass and washed every single one of them with bleach. Those were the days before the no-rinse sanitizer.

And then one day, the Mr. Beer kit disappeared into the recesses of my parents' basement.

Sometime in early 2011, I had this wild idea to get the Mr. beer kit back out. This time – with my mom – we proceeded to brew up a storm for a solid year.

While we made a handfull of “normal” beers, we had way more fun with adjuncts, making beer out of insane things like Kit-Kats, Cap'n Crunch, Maple Syrup and Old Bay. A list of all our homebrews can be found on Untappd...we're Wardland Brewing.

And then, for some reason, last summer the brewing just stopped.

Initially for my Forty List, I wanted to try and make wine. Once I figured that I had none of the stuff to make wine and that it would be too expensive, I decided to go back to making my own beer. Huzzah!

Back in May, while I was up in Pennsylvania, we stumbled upon a homebrewing store in Hanover. A nice guy named Larry talked us into trying a Muntons stout kit. I told him that I wanted to try making a milk stout so he also sold as a pack of lactose sugar.

With ingredients in hand, we returned home to Georgia and Wardland Brewing was back in action.

Unlike the Mr. Beer kits, the Muntons kit required no boiling of the wort. I would go so far as to say that it was the easiest batch of beer that I've ever made. It was literally dump water into the keg; add the Muntons malt; add the sugar; add the yeast and wait.

This is our "fermenting space." The bathroom closet: it's cool and dark!

We let our wort ferment for three weeks inside the Mr. Beer keg. After the yeast had done its magic, we bottled. Our keg yielded twenty-one bottles of beer awesomeness.

I followed the “good” Mr. Beer instructions and gave it two weeks to carbonate and another two weeks to let it bottle condition before diving into my first taste.

Lastly, I always have a good time naming my beers and making interesting labels. For this one, I wanted to make sure I dropped in a “40” reference. I decided to combine one of my favorite Forty List adventures, Duckpin Bowling, with my age. When put together, I ended up with: Duckpin 40 Milk Stout.

Absolutely perfect!