Completed: December 2009

Couch to 5k is a 9-week program, which promises to have you running 5km without stopping by the end. Easy, right?! I have a nifty iPhone app to help me get through this, plus a running buddy to keep me focused.

Completed: June 2010

01. Ratatouille
02. Mushroom Ragoût with Goat Cheese
03. Mixed leaf salad with mango/lime juice/roasted pine nuts
04. Tofu satay stir-fry
05. Hummus
06. Thai pumpkin soup
07. Spinach fettucini with roasted vegetables
08. Grilled haloumi salad
09. Chinese broccoli & almonds with noodles
10. Miso soup
11. Lentil/coriander/sweet potato burgers
12. Caramelised pear/blue cheese & walnut salad
13. Potato and leek soup
14. Maldivian mango & chickpea curry
15. Coriander cheela

I am aiming to reduce the amount of meat that I consume, and would like to replace a couple of meat meals each week with vegetarian dishes. Sometimes I end up cooking meat just because I can’t think of anything else interesting to make, so I need to expand my repertoire.

Completed: January 2010
I’ll be honest: I’m a carnivore. I love meat in all its forms and would be a miserable vegetarian. On the other hand, sometimes I just eat meat because it’s habit. I’m challenging myself to a fortnight without it.

Completed: February 2008
If you thought #006 was going to be hard… this one may actually kill me.

I want to include a healthy number of fairly obscure countries too. It’s so easy to find unusual ingredients in Melbourne, so this should be a really inspiring exercise.

Completed: February 2008 (100km/62 miles)
This is about a 2 hour round trip, at an easy pace. I am hoping that this inspires me to walk more regularly.

Harry will think that he has died and gone to doggy heaven.

It’s been forever since my bike has seen the outside of the shed.

Completed: July 2008 – Senior First Aid (and renewed my CPR in April 2009)
I volunteered to be a First Aid Officer at my previous workplace, so they sent me off to do the course. And, um… then I quit!

Completed: September 2008.
I have now registered as a regular donor.

In Progress:

01. Secretary
02. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
03. Cloverfield
04. Batman Begins
05. The Corpse Bride
06. Tropic Thunder
07. Be Kind Rewind
08. Spiderman
09. The Thing
10. The Wrestler
11. Bottle Rocket
12. Akira
13. The Watchmen
14. Star Trek
15. Moon
16. District 9
17. Up
18. No Country for Old Men
19. Shimotsuma Monogatari (Kamikaze Girls)
20. Kick-ass
21. Inception
22. The Godfather
23. Scott Pilgrim
24.
25.

Getting pretty tired of hearing “No way! What do you mean you haven’t seen that movie!”.
I am ignorant and uncultured and Tim is apparently the only person who can rehabilitate me and turn me into a functioning member of society.

This is something that I have already started, but didn’t quite get around to sealing up. I’d like to get a few more letters from people before doing so, and then I’ll lock it away for 10 years. Or 5. I’m not sure yet.

Completed: April 2009
I don’t really hate the fact that I swear, but I do care that I sometimes do it without thinking or without realising. So for two weeks I will keep a swear jar, and donate the money that it collects. Sweet mother of crap that’s gonna be hard!

Completed: April 2009.

In Progress: This task used to be “Learn all the world capitals”, but it proved to be a bit too ambitious. I’m more of a visual person anyway!

Completed: December 2009
I know absolutely no sign language, and that’s bad. I’ll start by learning the alphabet, and some common words.

Completed: Tim and I have sponsored a 5yo girl from Ecuador, named Domenica.

In Progress:

01. Crux
02. Orion
03. Canis Major
04.
05.

Because they’re pretty, and in case I am ever lost at sea. What? It could happen…

Completed: We’ll be in New England for most of September, 2011!
Tim’s family are all in Connecticut and New York, and we plan to be back there in a couple of years. The plan is to see New England in Spring or Summer, see Boston and NYC and visit his family’s places in Maine and Vermont. I’d really like a day or two in San Francisco on the way home, too.

Completed: 10th February 2008
Any excuse to be a big kid.

Fairy penguins rule.

Completed: We finally made it there in June 2010!
In Progress (update): Friends, puppy, food, wine and awesome accommodation. That’ll be us in June 2010!
In Progress: The accommodation was booked, the car was hired… but I ended up having to miss the trip.

If you’ve never heard of the Great Ocean Road, you’re missing out. I want to see and photograph the Apostles at different times of day, and maybe stay at a B&B somewhere along the road.

Completed: 29 August 2010

I’ve lived my entire life in a state that never sees snow, and now that I’m in Victoria I want to build a snowman without getting on a plane first! I’d also love to show my dog snow for the first time.

Completed: November 2008. QV Markets, Richmond Markets, Camberwell Markets, Prahran Markets, St Kilda Markets
Melbourne seems to be full of markets for fresh produce and crafts. I can think of a few that are within a few km’s of my house, and I want to find more!

Completed: January 2009
This is part of an effort to get to know my new city better, and to just explore.

In Progress:

01. The Time We Have Taken – Steven Carroll
02. Seven Types of Ambiguity – Elliot Perlman
03. The Boat – Nam Le
04. Monkey Grip – Helen Garner
05. The Book of Emmett – Deborah Forster
06. Romulus My Father – Raimond Gaita
07. The Slap – Christos Tsiolkas
08. SOLD – Brendan Gullifer
09. Things We Didn’t See Coming – Steven Amsterdam
10.

I think locally-written fiction is a great way to learn about a new place, so I would like some of these books to also be set in Melbourne.

Completed: June 2008
I barely understand AFL, but I do know they wear those little shorts…

Completed: August 2009 The tram rides around the city for a couple of hours, and has a great menu and full bar. I’m really looking forward to doing this!

Completed: It was everything I dreamed it would be. Actually, we kind of ran away from the tour!
Don’t judge me, it’s just something I have to do! I will take somebody with me, so that I am not that sad and lonely Neighbours fan on the tour bus. Expect photos.

Completed: March 2010
The expense of doing this is one of the reasons why it’s on my list – otherwise I’d never find the money to do it, and it would end up being put off until I was too old and cranky. I think an hour long flight over the city at dawn is worth a few hundred dollars, so sometime in the next 1001 days I’ll be doing it!

Completed: Feb 6th, 2008
The idea of sharing a cinema with just a handful of people, and watching a great movie from a recliner sounds perfect to me. And if somebody wants to bring me food and wine I will not stand in their way.

In Progress: Flights and accommodation booked for September 2010
There are too many Australian states that I have never visited before. I intend to fix this, and I’m going to start with Tasmania.

Completed: Jan 12th, 2008
I watched the first episode in late November of 2007. I’ll mark this one complete once I have caught up to the end of Season 3, as Season 4 hasn’t aired yet. Thank God there’s a writer’s strike right now that is preventing them from making any more until I’m done!

I have some ideas in mind for this, but I can’t exactly write them down can I?

Completed: 2009. It was fun, harmless and totally anonymous.
I give with one hand, and take with the other…

Completed: July 2008
I tackled this in a fairly large way when I moved to Melbourne, but I still need to set up a new filing system for household-related stuff.

Completed: October 2008 – We bought an iMac!!
A Mac is looking more and more likely, considering the stuff I use my machine for. Getting really sick of buggy operating systems and BSOD. I just want something that works, and a beautiful monitor that I can use for working on my photos.

Completed: October 2008
I want to have my massive mp3 collection organised completely by album and genre, and I want to delete the huge amount of stuff that I don’t even like anymore. This will be a huge job.

Completed: I’ve bought an enormous external hard drive, and set up Time Machine to backup my entire machine every hour. Done!
I am incredibly stupid for not having backups of most of my photos. Right now there are just way too many to burn to DVD (as a single Nikon RAW file can be 12-15mb), so I need to start by culling. This will be a really big project that will be done over a long period of time, but it will feel great to have it done.

Completed: March 2008
We’re a bit limited in what we can do, since we’ll have to grow everything in pots, but there’s still plenty of stuff that will grow. In particular I love having fresh herbs on hand when I’m cooking, and food just tastes better when you’ve made it all yourself.

Completed: 20th Jan 2008 – with 6 days to spare!
… hopefully in time for Tim’s first Australia Day.

Completed: October 2008
I have inherited the world’s smallest, cruddiest microwave ever. I plan to upgrade to something with (gasp!) a digital display!

Completed: Jan 25th, 2008 – with the help of my brother. We then bought Global knives in late 2009.
We are currently operating with a $4.95 IKEA knife block, which holds 4 serrated knives. If we last another month without accidentally amputating a digit it will be a miracle. This one is a priority.

Completed: August 2008
I’ve been living on a budget for so long that I’ve always skimped on my hair. I dye it with something that comes from a packet at the supermarket, and don’t go anywhere too flash for a cut. Just once, I want to spend whatever it takes to have incredible hair.

In Progress: Strangest birthday present in history – I got a Will Kit!
Just in case.

Completed: June 2009 – Decided to outsource the design and do it properly.
That site has been ‘under construction’ for so long that it’s not funny – and mostly because I’ve been trying to do something far more complicated than is needed.

Completed: I have a RedBubble store, and awesome people like Olivia and Laura who bought my stuff!

April 2009 – My website has a built-in cart, but I think it’s a bit too overbearing so I’ve disabled it for now. With my site finally built, I can work towards promoting myself a little more.
My first step is to get my new website built, and then offer some prints for sale. I can also sell some of my work through deviantART and RedBubble, and maybe submit some of my shots to publications and competitions.

In Progress: See all my photographs here. In an effort to drag the camera out more regularly. Success is not necessarily completing all 100 themes, however.

Completed: September 2008 – a beautiful 70-300mm VR f/4.5-5.6, followed by a Lensbaby Composer in April 2009

In Progress: Building my online portfolio has made it easier to select shots for print. I’m making my book with Blurb.
There are plenty of websites popping up that offer the software and services to help you design your own book. I’d like to make a book of my photography with Blurb or Lulu, and give a couple of copies to family. It would be very satisfying to hold a bound book containing my own work.

Completed: May 2009
I really can’t draw. I’ve drawn a few things in the past, but it’s always really really hard work and it doesn’t come naturally to me at all. What I really need to do is draw regularly, instead of trying to tackle one huge project every couple of years.

In Progress: 2009 Because they’re so expressive, but so hard to get right.

In Progress: 2009
Because I find it intimidating, and usually avoid it.

In Progress: I changed this task to "Complete a course in art journaling". Due to complete in July 2010.
In an effort to curb my perfectionistic tendencies, I am not committing to writing every single day. This is about writing on a regular basis without getting all OCD about it.

Completed: December 2009
My dedication towards learning the guitar has been very haphazard. My goal is to be able to play a song at recording standard, and maybe add vocals and piano.