#60 Where's George?

There a site I had read about from another "new thing" blogger called Wheresgeorge.com. The idea is you enter the serial number of a dollar bill that you have and your city that you live in and it gets logged into a database. If a subsequent user of your dollar bill registers it as well, they can see where the dollar has also been. So I registered a dollar bill on wheres george? Unfortunately I was the first person to register that bill. I tried another 6 dollars and got the same result. Hopefully a future user of the money will be the beneficiary of my work.

#59 Marvelous

Today I went into a comic book store and bought a comic book. I've never been in a comic book store before today and I have to say it was quite the experience. Definitely a subculture that I'm not familiar with. There were about five guys my age or older that seemed to be working there who were debating or maybe conversing about some sort of X-men website that they should try to get placed on. I ended up buying a 1978 Marvel Comic featuring Spiderman, mostly because it was one of the few characters that I was familiar with among the thousands of different comics. To me the most interesting part of the comic were the 1970's ads that were in the back of the book, like the rattlesnake belt buckle or the free hypno-coin with 25 lesson in hypnotism.

#58 Stick 'Em Up

Besides duct tape, PVC piping has got to rank as one of the more versatile items you can find in a hardware store. So after a quick stop to Home Depot and some instructions, I made PVC Marshmallow Shooters. I have to say these things were alot of fun and the kids were pretty excited about it. All you have to do is load a mini marshmallow in the mouthpiece and blow as hard as you can. The speed and accuracy were pretty impressive, even without the mini laser pointer that I mounted for a bonus.

#57 Right to Vote?

This may prove to be one of the more difficult things that I've had to admit, but at my sister's suggestion, I voted for someone on American Idol. Not only once, but twice, for 2 different people. I can't recall their names at the moment, but it was number 6 and number 10. I asked for input from my kids on who I should vote for but my 3-year old daughter wanted to vote for Opa (her Grandpa) and my son couldn't decide, so I had to make the decision of 08' myself.

#56 The World's Funniest Joke

I've always been amazed at guys who can rattle off jokes seemingly at will. One of my best friend's dad can tell a joke no matter what the topic of conversation happens to be. My problem is I can never remember any. So today I am committing to memory the world's funniest joke. This has been proven scientifically from research carried out by psychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman, from the University of Hertfordshire at the LaughLab. I realize that by picking this joke, I am putting myself at a huge disadvantage because I run the risk of someone having heard it already, but that's the price I'm willing to pay. Here it is (with a few local edits):

Two hunters are in the north woods of Wisconsin when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy takes out his phone and frantically calls 911.

He gasps: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: "OK, now what?"

#55 Twisted

I wanted to try baking a loaf of bread from scratch today but I needed 2 bread pans, so instead I made soft pretzels from scratch. It was a lot more involved than I expected. First you have to make the dough, then you let it have some quiet time while it doubles it size, then you have to "punch"? it down. Then shape the pretzels, then bake them, then boil them, then brush them, then sprinkle them, and finally bake them again. The end result was pretty successful I have to say, much better right out of the oven than they are the next day.

#54 At Your Service

One of the challenges of trying to do something new every day is you have to be able to change your plans pretty quickly when certain obstacles arise. My plan today was to go to a toboggan track but it was closed because the hill was too icy! This was probably a good thing for me since I was in the beginning stages of the flu or a bad cold, I still am not sure of the difference even after looking it up here. So as I lay in bed I read a poem and biography by Robert W. Service. It was recommended by my boss who was introduced to these poems from his father. The poem was called "The Cremation of Sam McGee" and had I been in a better frame of mind, I would have enjoyed it much more.

#53 Chopsticks

In a feeble attempt at manual dexterity, I ate my entire meal using chopsticks. It took a little while to catch on and most of what I tried to pick up ended up dropping, even our dog caught on after awhile as she changed her usual spot from lying next to our 3 year old daughter to placing positioning herself next to me.

#52 Now I Know My ABC's

In case I ever need to make myself clear over the phone, be rescued on a deserted island, or happen to appear in a military movie, I thought it might be useful to know the military alphabet. So I memorized the NATO phonetic alphabet. Here I go without looking:

• Alpha
• Bravo
• Charlie
• Delta
• Echo
• Foxtrot
• Golf
• Hotel
• India
• Juliet
• Kilo
• Lima
• Mike
• November
• Oscar
• Papa
• Quebec
• Romeo
• Sierra
• Tango
• Uniform
• Victor
• Whiskey
• X-ray
• Yankee
• Zulu
  

#51 Total Eclipse of the Moon

With binoculars in hand, tonight I observed a lunar eclipse. The next time this will occur is in 2010 so I thought I should take advantage of this now. The sky was clear as a bell and viewing was perfect. My attempt at taking a decent picture failed miserably because my hands were so freezing cold I couldn't keep from shaking. At it's full eclipse the moon turns a reddish orange which as I found out Christopher Columbus used to his advantage in 1504 to save his life from the natives in Jamaica. He was able to scare them into thinking his God was angry at them and would destroy the moon and it would be "inflamed with wrath" if they did not provide him with the provisions he needed. Here's the full story.

#50 Primary Focus

I've voted in every presidential election since I turned eighteen, but today I voted for the first time in the primaries. I'm not sure why I haven't, my guess is that because Wisconsin's primary is so late, the nominee for each party is usually wrapped up by now. The nice part about it was there was absolutely no wait in line.

#49 Into Thin Air

It's about 6 degrees outside and below zero with the wind chill. I've heard you can do this if it's cold enough outside, so today I took a pot of boiling water and vaporized it into thin air. This was really cool! I wish I would have done this while it was light out to get a better video, but the effect was still pretty cool.

#48 The Great Race

I've never understood the fascination with NASCAR. I've never spent more than 2 minutes watching it on television. I've also had people who are fans swear that all I have to do is give it a chance and I will like it. So today I watched the Daytona 500 race. I can't say that the first 150 times around the track were riveting, mostly because I had a hard time understanding the strategy involved, but right around 50 laps to go, cars starting crashing into each other and things started to heat up a bit. I have to admit that I actually started to enjoy it. I don't think I'll go out of my way to watch another race, but I'd probably watch one if it happened to be on, well maybe the last ten minutes of it.

#47 The Great Scott

Not only was it the first time I attended one of my wife's work parties, I saw my first magic act. "The Great Scott" was this years entertainment. I was very close to being picked as a volunteer but luckily my wife got to experience this as something new instead. She got to help out with the magically linking rings trick. I think she would have rather had him make her disappear from the stage.

#46 Enter the Dragon

In desperation to do something new at 11:00 at night, I learned how to make a couple new styles of paper airplanes. This comes in handy when you have a couple of young kids. The first was called "the dragon", a great one for straight long distance flight, this would've been valuable to know in 3rd grade reading class. The second was "the condor", best for smooth gliding.

#45 Got MLK?

Today I pulled a suggestion from my friend Harry who suggested I read Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. I found a site that has the entire speech transcripted as well as the video of the actual speech that took place in August of 1963 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The speech lasted just over 17 minutes and is regarded as one the most influential speeches in all of American history. I’ve seen some of the more renowned parts of his speech a few times and the delivery is legendary but reading the speech gave me an appreciation for how well written the entire speech was.

#44 Massage

Snowblowing and shoveling all this snow we've had here in Wisconsin for the past couple of weeks has not only been a real pain in the you know what, but quite literally a pain in my back. It's messed up. So today I went in for some massage therapy. Swedish to be exact, with some deep tissue work thrown in there as well. It was probably one of the more relaxing things I've ever done, minus the first ten minutes it took for me to get past the weirdness of being in a low lit room alone with a stranger half naked while new age music played in the background.

#43 PTA

In an attempt to be a responsible and informed parent I went to a PTA meeting at my son's school. I should also mention the class that had the most parents in attendance would win a pizza party, so there was another equally important reason, at least to a five year old. Most surprising to me was there was only one other father that attended, the rest were all moms. Topics of the night were the new middle schools, fundraising, volunteering etc. Trying to stay comfortable for 2 hours sitting on a chair built for grade school kid when your 6'2" proved to be the most challenging part of the evening.

#42 Kumquats

I was grocery shopping and came across a bag of kumquats and realized this is the first time I actually even noticed what they are. Besides having a name that borders on being ridiculous and obscene they are a small Cantonese orange-like fruit bigger than a grape, smaller than a plum. So today I ate kumquats. The verdict, bittersweet. You are supposed to eat the thin rind which is not really all that different from an orange, so if you like eating orange peels you will like kumquats.

#41 Pro Bowl

With the weather as cold as it is and my wife working all today I had to resort to something in the house. So today I watched the entire NFL Pro bowl. Not the most exciting 3 hours of my life, especially having to watch these guys play in the hot Hawaiian sun as I sit cooped up inside while the windows are glazed over with ice because the temperature is below zero outside.

#40 txt 2day

I realize this is pretty lame but I never have sent a text message to anyone before today. I've never had a reason to do it or even taken the time to figure it out. I'm not even all that big on using my cell phone at all. So today I sent a text message. I sent it to my wife, who also has never text messaged, which made it even more laughable because I had to show her how to retrieve the message from her phone when she got home.

#39 Scratch Off

In an effort to change my luck from the Super Bowl, I went and bought some instant scratch off lottery tickets. I've never had a desire to buy these before, mostly because it seems like a waste of money. I got $12 worth which amounted to 4 cards. My luck immediately started to change when I won $4 off the first card. Nothing on the next 2 and then $5 on the last card. Only $3 in the hole. I guess it's better than 12.

#38 Masquerade

At wife's suggestion I applied a beauty masque today. Mint Julep to be exact. It smelled more like toothpaste to me. After fifteen minutes of looking like a sick mime I washed it off and I have to admit my face never felt squeakier.

#37 Mmm Donuts

Now that we've had over 16 inches of snow in the past 24 hours, I seized the opportunity to do something I probably should have done about twenty years ago. I did donuts in a parking lot. I'm not sure why I've never done this, but I haven't. The whole time I kept thinking how ridiculous this would look if someone saw a guy my age doing donuts by himself in a parking lot. I don't have any pictures of this one, unless I'm on a security camera somewhere.

#36 Mustache

Today I shaved my goatee down to a mustache. No more than a minute later the phone rang, it was Tom Selleck, and all he said was "Welcome to living." Things immediately began to change, my ride to work was faster, a police officer told me to "go ahead and jaywalk, he wouldn't say anything" and people seemed to smile a little more. At the end of the day I pondered life with a mustache and I thought maybe today I made just a little bit of a difference in the world.

#35 Now Serving Number 76,001

The Green Bay Packers are the only sports team that I feel I have to watch every game no matter what and now that the football season is over, I thought I would do something new to help me look forward to until next season. Why not make the effort to get season tickets? So today I sent a written request for season tickets to the Green Bay Packers. Did I mention there is a waiting list? I also didn't mention that the list is at the very least over 76,000 people long . According to an article on SI.com, only 70 tickets become available each season, this is due in part to people willing the tickets to their families. So if you do the math my number should come up somewhere around the year 3093. According to the Packers, the wait is around 30 years and I've also read some accounts that it may be 37-40 years based on how far they've moved up the list. So I think I'm safe in saying that the wait is somewhere between 30-1000 years. If you want to get behind me in line, here's the information on how to do so.















Update: I received my confirmation letter from the Green Bay Packers. There's only 78,368 people in front of me on the waiting list!

#34 Super Loser

Since football on this Sunday comes once a year, I thought I would take advantage of trying to capitalize on the day. So today I made a couple of wagers on the game. I've never even done this for a regular season game and the result was far from a success. My luck immediately went bad before the game even started, let's just say I should have picked the other side of the coin and I should have taken the other team. My loss was enough to put me in a funk for the rest of night and remind me why I haven't done this before.

#33 Frozen Fish

My friend Dave invited me to come out to Okauchee Lake and join him and a group of about 25 other guys for the annual Stone Bank Fishoree, an ice fishing tournament. In other words, drink some beer, eat good food and oh yeah, watch for "tip ups". For those that don't know, these are the flags that pop up when a fish has bitten. It was a good time, I played horseshoes on ice for the first time, drilled a hole in the ice and I went ice fishing for the first time ever. I believe there were only three fish caught by our group the whole day, which really is beside the point. The one that I'm holding in the picture is a 20 inch Northern. Another one that I tried reeling in got away.

#32 Constitution

My memory may be terrible but I don't recall ever reading the Constitution of the United States in high school. I know we must have studied it and discussed it at some point but I don't recall reading the entire document. So at the risk of revealing just how exciting my Friday night was, I read the Constitution of the United States in its original form. It took about a half an hour to read with comprehension, all the "shall be's", "herein otherwise" and "notwithstandings" makes it a pretty tough read. Here's a few questions to test your knowledge:

1. What are the first seven words of the Constitution?
2. What age must you have attained to be a Representative of the House?
3. How many years a citizen do you have be in order to be a Representative?
4. What age must you have attained to be a Senator?
5. True or False: The President can increase or decrease his compensation while in office?
6. What age must you have attained to be President of the United States?
7. What date was the Constitution signed?

Answers: We the People of the United States, 25, 7, 35, False, 35, Sept 17, 1787