Friday, May 25, 2012

Day Six Hundred and Ninety-Two

Item #24 is done!  I took the kids to the Space Needle over spring break, and since I didn't have a camera with me, I just have the one we got taken in the little photo booth at the Space Needle.  (Thanks, Mom!)

If this was a real picture, we would be levitating about 550 feet over Seattle's Queen Anne District, but hey - we were there!  For real!


Buddy was fascinated with the interactive feature that showed a 24-hour minute-by-minute panoramic view from the Space Needle.  You could turn the little dial and see what the view was like at any time of the day - I think he'd have stayed there and turned it through all 24 hours if I hadn't moved him along so other people could play with it!  :)

Boo had a great time taking her own pictures from the top of the Space Needle, and had a long-held wish fulfilled while we were there.  She has flown on planes and been to airports, including the little local airport a few miles from our home, but somehow has never managed to see a plane actually LAND.  Much to her delight, we all got to watch a little yellow pontoon plane land right on Lake Union!

For me, the most exciting thing was having my parents show me the hospital where I was born, in easy view of the Space Needle.  I knew I'd been born in Seattle, but it was fun to see that it was so close to a universally recognized landmark!

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Day Six Hundred and Eighty-Six

Yes, I realize it has been more than one day since my last post on Day 685, and no, I have not spent the last 288 days in a stasis bubble outside of the space-time continuum.  (Although that would be a really awesome excuse for missing work.)  Instead, the blog has been on an accidental hiatus due to three things that were most decidedly NOT on my 101 Things list:

1.  Get divorced.  (November 2011)
2.  Lose camera.  (Sometime after Christmas 2011 and before spring break 2012)
3.  Get marvelous new temporary job as interim staff accompanist at local university, which devours all available time for most of the 2011/12 school year.

The divorce and the job have both upended many aspects of my life, my personal relationships, my expectations of myself, and (needless to say) my finances and schedule.  One thing I have learned over and over revolves around the concept of grace:  Grace towards others who don't behave in the way I would have hoped, grace from others toward me when I didn't behave as they hoped, and grace towards myself as a broken-but-healing human being.

And in that spirit of grace, I am giving myself an extension!  I decided to take those 288 skipped days and add them to the end of my project time frame.  The 1001 days originally ended on June 16, 2012.  With the extra 288 days added to the end, it is now scheduled to end on March 31, 2013.  (3/31/13 - that's kind of neat!)

I've done a few items on the list that I didn't have a camera to photograph, so I'll write about those in the next few days.  I also have a few items that I took pictures of and never posted, and I'll see about getting those up as well.  I have a possibility out there of a hand-me-down camera from someone who just got a new one, so hopefully I'll have this up and running soon.

You'd probably still better not hold your breath for me to learn French.