Never Have I Ever:

And Maybe Never Will Again 365 Days of doing something new every day. Started 12/21/2012.

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Necklaces! Pictures are pretty awful, but it was the best I could do.

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Made a necklace

This isn't entirely true.  I've certainly made necklaces of the 'put a bead on a string and tie the ends together' variety.  I'd never made one with real clasps, and cord ends, and actual thought as to what it would look like afterwards.

I made three!  Both the single strand ones turned out fine.  The double strand one needs a bit of work.  I think I twisted the suede before I put the ends on and it doesn't lie flat.  Still overall a decent project, though.

I'm into DIY clothes.  I love being able to say I designed something myself.

The pictures are pretty terrible (I didn't have a solid background to put them on), but better than nothing, right?

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More from day 23!

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Looked into CouchSurfing alternatives

If I've learned any one things since starting this project it's that I'm shit terrible at updating a blog on time.  At least I'm pretty good at doing new things.  And technically I have still been maintaining this blog, even if it's intermittent, so I don't think I've failed yet.

Day 26! Today I researched couchsurfing.com alternatives, just to see what's out there.   I really like CS and the people I've met through it, but I want to make sure I'm not missing out on anything else.  Looks like I'll be signing up for BeWelcome, too.

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Signed up for an Amazon subscription service.

I will never have to buy toilet paper at a regular store ever again.  I might, however, have to tell them to send me less if I wildly overestimated how much I need.  At least I have a lot of pantry space.

This is going to be amazing.  I'm going to stop talking now, before I start to sound like an advertisement.

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Attempted to become self-employed!

This one is super exciting for me!

I've been a volunteer English tutor for a few years, now.  Lately I've been kicking around the idea of trying to find paid work.  Today I took the first step towards doing that, and posted my first ad!

Obviously this doesn't guarantee me success, but I'm never going to get anywhere without starting somewhere.

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So tasty!

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Made vegetable chips

It's a good thing I set a 'one week between similar items' rule.  Right after I made carrot powder I was in pretty serious danger of this turning into "Will it dehydrate: 365 days of removing the water from things!"  I imagine that would have been about as exciting as it sounds.

The vegetable chips I just made, however, are amazing. I used a cheese grater to cut super thin slices of sweet potato, yam, carrot, and cucumbers.  Then I tossed them all in light olive oil and cajun seasoning before drying.  

Seriously, they're amazing. I'm going to have to make these more often.  Mission success.

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Learned a word in French

I've studied a lot of languages (note that I make no promises about my retention of any of them), but somehow never French.

I mean, I'm under no illusions that the sentence "Je mange une pomme" will lead to anyone swooning at my language prowess, but I had to start somewhere, right?  Remember: sucking at something is the first step to being sort of good at something. 

This is stage one of learning a bit of several useful languages before Europe.

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Recap

I'm now three weeks into a year of "Never Have I Ever" and things are going well so far!  This post is more for me to keep track of what I've done than anything else.

Day 1.  December 21, 2012.  Started a blog.

Day 2.  December 22, 2012.  Visited Nico's Recovery Room.

Day 3.  December 23, 2012.  Made carrot powder.

Day 4.  December 24, 2012.  Sang along with the radio where someone could hear me.

Day 5.  December 25, 2012.  Made an eggnog latte.

Day 6.  December 26, 2012.  Hula hooped on the roof.

Day 7.  December 27, 2012.  Watched Sunset Blvd.

Day 8.  December 28, 2012.   Did a barbell squat.

Day 9.  December 29, 2012.  Bought a live herb.

Day 10.  December 30, 2012.  Threw a football.

Day 11.  December 31, 2012.  Tried hair removal cream.

Day 12.  January 1, 2013.  Started an exercise journal.

Day 13.  January 2, 2013.  Visited a speakeasy.

Day 14.  January 3, 2013.  Ate at Quiet Storm.

Day 15.  January 4, 2013.  Started an IRA.

Day 16.  January 5, 2013.  Received a corporate discount.

Day 17.  January 6, 2013.  Watched Dr. Strangelove.

Day 18.  January 7, 2013.  Broke glass for mosaic tiles.

Day 19.  January 8, 2013.  Mixed bitters and coffee.

Day 20.  January 9, 2013.  Walked home without my headphones in.

Day 21.  January 10, 2013.  Bought a ticket to Europe for April!

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Bought a round trip ticket to Europe!

Day 21!  Three weeks in and possibly the most exciting thing I've managed so far: today I bought round trip tickets for me and my mother to spend a month backpacking around Europe in April!

I can't wait!

I've been to Europe before, but this will be an entirely new kind of trip.  I'm looking forward to couchsurfing with no real itinerary.  

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Walked home from work without headphones, deliberately

Day 20 was sort of a strange choice.  I finished work at 9PM and made the decision to walk home without my headphones in. 

There have certainly been days where I've forgotten them, but I tend to spend those times irritated and walking as fast as possible.  Today I slowed myself down, looked around, and listened.  

I do tend to walk through new neighborhoods fairly often.  I tend to never take the same route somewhere twice.  This doesn't mean I spend a ton of time truly looking or listening.  Tonight I did.

I can pinpoint two apartment houses now where the outside light makes a humming noise so loud you can hear it from the sidewalk.  I heard snippets of a really interesting cell phone conversation ("Well, are you a thief?").  I actually stopped for a minute to listen to the sound of melting snow dripping down a drain-pipe (tap-tap tap-tap) play an almost perfect drum beat for an ambulance siren in the the background.  I can point out a really out of place house done in farmhouse style.

I had a really good night.  I might have to do that again some time.

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Day 19: Mixed bitters and coffee.  Results pleasant and delicious. 10/10 would mix again.

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In some of these pictures it's clear I'm learning valuable lessons about things like "wearing gloves" and "containing broken glass debris."

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Deliberately broken glass for mosaic tiles

We drink a lot of beer.  The upside of drinking a lot of beer (besides the obvious) is that when you decide you're going to make a mosaic you already have two cases of empty beer bottles on hand for smashing.

I've learned some things today:

1.  Smashing beer bottles is not as easy as previous drunken shenanigans had led me to believe.

2.  I am an idiot.

I started out in the basement with a couch full of beer bottles (It kept them from rolling around), the lid from a plastic storage tub, and a hammer.  My plan was to set a bottle in the middle of the lid and smash it with the hammer.  Easy enough.  Bottle number one smashed just fine.  Then I tried to smash another and the leftover chips from the first went flying everywhere.  Bad news.  

Setup number two was an improvement.  First of all I put on gloves and shoes (I'm an idiot).  Second of all I wrapped the bottles in a towel to keep bits of them from flying everywhere. It went okay.  It turns out it takes forever to sort different sized glass chips, though, so I didn't get very far in the time I had available today.

The mosaic is for planter boxes for the garden, though, so I have a lot of winter time to finish up.

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Watched Dr. Strangelove

Day 17!  I promised I was going to try to space similar things at least a week apart.  I haven't watched a movie since day 7, so I'm doing OK, so far.

Dr. Strangelove was alright, I guess.  People have been telling me forever that they can't believe I've never seen it, so maybe I had unrealistic expectations going in, but I expected a bit more.  That said, I really enjoyed the sound.  Both the musical choices and the contrast between sound and silence.  

In any event, that's another one off the AFI top 100 list.