#121 No Sense

A friend gave me a suggestion that some of his colleagues had come up with, to go without one of my senses for awhile, so I went blindfolded for the evening – almost 5 hours. Definitely one of the more interesting experiences I've had and probably not the best night to have tacos for dinner. Once the novelty of it wore off after the first hour, it was hard not to think of the impact it would have on your life. Other than the obvious physical obstacles, it was the other little things like not being able to see my kids faces when they talked, reading, or even the sounds that you hear that I realize I take for granted.

#120 Crush

Here's something I've never done and for good reason. I crushed a can my forehead. I'm guessing I was smart enough not to do this back in college, which leads me to the conclusion that I'm not getting any brighter.

#119 You Rah Rah

Shouldn't everybody know the words to their alma mater's fight song? Well I didn't. The University of Wisconsin's song On Wisconsin is arguably one of the most popular school songs in the country, it's also Wisconsin's official state song. Composed in 1909 it has been called by John Philip Sousa "the finest of college marching songs" So without getting the nerve to actually tape myself singing the song, I learned University of Wisconsin's fight song. Here are the words and the music.

On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Plunge right through that line!
Run the ball clear down the field,
A touchdown sure this time.
On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Fight on for her fame
Fight! Fellows! - fight, fight, fight!
We'll win this game.

On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Stand up, Badgers, sing!
"Forward" is our driving spirit,
Loyal voices ring.
On, Wisconsin! On, Wisconsin!
Raise her glowing flame
Stand, Fellows, let us now
Salute her name!

#118 The Art of Lawnmower Maintenance

I've not had very good luck with lawnmowers, some I'll chalk up as circumstances beyond my control, the rest I'll take the blame for. Pure neglect. I've never changed the oil on one, never changed a spark plug, air filter, blade...nothing. Now that I've admitted that, I can say that today I gave the mower a little love, I changed the blade, filter, spark plug and oil on my lawnmower. How's that for pride in ownership.

#117 Common Sense

Here's a suggestion from a friend of mine, I read Common Sense by Thomas Paine. It was a pamphlet written in 1776 presented to the American colonists as an argument for independence from British rule. It was written in a style that could be understood by the common people and was the first work to openly ask for independence from Great Britain

#116 Sir Duke

This one I have to admit is a reach, but I went out after work with a couple of coworkers and did not plan for the evening to be taken up like this. I went to a place called Dukes on water street.

#115 Whistleblower

My dad can whistle with his fingers like nobody I've ever heard. The ear deafening kind. His dad could whistle with his fingers, and I'm sure it goes on and on. So coming from what I can only imagine to be a long line of finger whistlers I figured it was time to carry on the trait. Problem is I've been trying to do this most of my life and all all I've been able to produce is a lot of air and lightheaded-ness. So today I gave it a real serious try. I researched it until I found a few good explanations for how it's done. I wasn't really expecting this to work but to my surprise I got it, I whistled with my fingers. It's not much yet, but it's a pretty good start. Here's one my attempts:

#114 Whoosh?

I'm not really sure how to explain what it is that I tried today. We were at my mother and father-in-law's house and found this toy thing. It's red, football shaped, it's on strings with handles and I can't find it on the internet. I can say I've never done this before and it somehow turned into a battle to smash that thing as hard as you could into the other guy's handles so it would hurt. Not mention the intense tricep workout I got as result, I'm already feeling the hurt.

#113 Solo

I searched the internet to see if there was a different version of solitaire than I was familiar with and had no idea there were hundreds of versions out there. I picked one that looked interesting and I played pyramid solitaire, sometimes called thirteen. Set up in a pyramid shape, you basically have to remove pairs of cards that add up to thirteen. It took about ten tries to finally win one, here are instructions on how to play pyramid.

#112 Share Nice

Now for something completely uninteresting to most people: I bought some individual stocks on Sharebuilder. Investing for me up until now has been something very calculated and thought out, 401k, IRA's , Mutual Funds. For once I just wanted to be able to do it on my own and play the stock market. Sharebuilder makes it pretty easy and you can invest minimal amounts if you want.

#110 Really Swahili

I wanted to learn a few phrases in another language other than Klingon
and the first language that came to mind was Swahili. Mostly because it's kind of fun to say. It's one of the more widely spoken languages of Eastern Africa and is heavily influenced by Arabic. Having decided on the language, I learned a few Swahili phrases like "Jambo" and "Tafadhali nataka bia baridi" and "Wapi choo?" In other words; "Hello", "I'd like a cold beer", and for about 1 hour later, "Where is the bathroom?" For more useful phrases here is great site.

#109 No Remorse

Dit dit dit, dah dah dah. dit dit dit. At the very least this is what I'll remember from this new thing. In case I'm ever stranded on an island with a flashlight I can signal S.O.S. I learned some Morse code and with a little practice and I could probably master it, but then again why? The chart below is a pretty easy way of learning it, begin at the START and for dah (which is a dash) move down and to the left, for every Dit ( which is a dot) move to the right. For example the letter D would be; dah dit dit or –..

#108 Ring Taw

This is one of those things that as a kid it somehow escaped me, probably because the video game world was just being discovered and playing Atari was all we wanted to do. Ask a guy ten years older than me and most likely playing marbles was great pastime for them. So today I played marbles, and lost bad. And thanks to my coworker Rick for being a good sport and taking part in something this ridiculous, although he's probably not complaining because he's now got a 12-pack of King Ludwig German beer coming to him.

#107 Oil Change

How can a 37-year old guy claim he's a man if he's never changed the oil on his car? Well today I achieved this rite of passage when I changed the oil on my car. A couple of lessons learned:

Spend the extra 2 bucks to buy the bigger oil drain pan so you don't have to go into a panic when you realize the oil is going to overflow in the one that you have.

Do not try to drain your oil on a very windy day. The wind will redirect the stream away from your drain pan no matter where you try to put it. Trust me, it knows.

Do not drop the drain plug into the drain pan full of dirty oil. It will result in an unattended mess.

#106 The Taxman Cometh

Yes, I'm exposing the unbelievable procrastination we have had this year in getting our taxes done when I say that I did my taxes online and E-filed. Every year on this day the news channels would cut to shots of people rushing to the post office to get their taxes turned in and I would wonder why on Earth would people wait that long? Well, there we were at 7:00 pm and we were beginning our taxes, not only were we up against the clock but we were doing it a way we have never attempted before. We did finish in time and although I do not recommend cutting it this close, I do have to say the online TurboTax version made it easier than it has ever been.

#105 Guitar Hero

Learning an instrument has been something I've wanted to do for a long time and I can hardly say that I learned much when I learned how to play a song on guitar today other than my fingers are not physically capable of contorting to three different locations to play a chord. I'm much better at the one-note-at-a-time style of playing. Maybe I'm more of a linear thinker than a multi-tasker.

#104 Horse Around

In preparation for hopefully witnessing a horse being born, I got a behind the scenes tour of an equine clinic and hospital. I've never even pet a horse before today, so this was really fascinating to see. Currently there were about 4 or 5 foals that had already been born and were in the stalls with their mothers. One particular foal had been born with a lack of oxygen so it was in need of some extra care because it still had difficulty in standing. I was also able to see the room where they perform the surgeries. In order to perform surgery, they sedate the horse in a separate room that has a floor that can then be wheeled out on tracks once the horse has laid down. I also got to pet a horse that was recovering from a broken pelvis and a foal that was about 1 month old. The horse that I might be able to see give birth is due on April 20th, so if the timing is right I could get the call to rush over there in the middle of the night!

#103 Never Give Up

To see the complete video of what I did today click here. Afterwards, if you need a complete explanation of what you are seeing you can follow this link.

#102 What A Cream Puff

In an effort to get a ride on a Zamboni (that giant ice resurfacing machine you see at ice arenas) I called the office of the Milwaukee Admirals hockey team. Unfortunately, they didn't have a spot for me. But I was offered something equally as cool and I took part in a cream puff eating contest during the Admirals last home game. Eating one of these famous Wisconsin State Fair cream puffs in less than 30 seconds in front of a crowd of over 8,000 people was definitely out of my comfort zone. My kids thought it was pretty cool to see dad on the jumbotron and I had an awesome time, despite coming in second to that big guy next to me, I think he won four tickets to see REO Speedwagon.



A big thanks to Tim Van Wagoner at the Milwaukee Admirals for helping me out.

#101 BMA

Tonight I attended an awards dinner held by the Business Marketing Association, our design firm had won and award for some work we had done for Harley-Davidson. Sorry no pictures, I wasn't really thinking about taking the camera out. Anyways it was good time, lots of food, drink and time spent with coworkers.

#100 The Last Lecture

On ABC last night I saw a story about a man named Randy Pausch a 47 year old computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon who has been diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer. He has three children and wife and was given 6 months to live, I believe that was 8 months or so ago. He gave his final lecture to students and colleagues called "How to Live Your Childhood Dreams". It has received over a million viewings on YouTube. I watched "The Last Lecture" I highly recommend watching it.

#99 Home Brew

For two weeks I've been waiting for my new thing #85 to come to fruition. I uncapped the bottle and I drank homemade root beer. Very flat. I'm not sure what happened, maybe not enough yeast, bad yeast, the yeast didn't activate, I don't know. Despite it being pretty flat the taste was great and we made root beer floats with it. Master brewmeister I'm not.

#98 Star Grazing

I know that I have already had a posting of eating a some different tropical fruits but this particular fruit keeps getting suggested and my son picked it out for me when they went grocery shopping. I ate a starfruit, in my opinion one of the cooler looking fruits around. It comes from Asia from what I understand and it tastes kind of pinneapplely-melony-grapefruitish.

#97 In Six Words

There's a book that has been getting a lot of attention called "Not Quite What I Was Planning" in which people were asked to submit their life's memoir in six words. The book also features submissions from many celebrities and a site that you can submit your six word memoir to. So I wrote my memoir in six words. I submitted it to the site and it goes like this:

No hair. Big Hair. Losing hair.

#96 Letter to the Editor

I wrote a letter to Time Magazine's editor. The subject was about the April 7th issue cover story on biofuel. I always wondered why people felt the urge to write the editor and give their two cents. I basically had to force myself to do it, I had a definite opinion, but absolutely no desire for a complete stranger to hear it. But then again I am writing a daily blog.

#95 Pay It Backward

Tonight I paid for someone's meal behind me at the drive thru. I've made two other unsuccessful attempts at this, on both occasions I've gone to order something and absolutely nobody drove up behind me. Tonight it started to look like the same was going to happen, when I got there the line was about five deep in front of me and again nobody behind me. By the time I got to the pay window, finally I could see a car pull up to order spot, as they rounded the corner I could see it was a car full of teenage boys. I told myself that I was going to go through with this as I winced in preparation for the little red digital readout of what the damage was going to be...$17.37! I told the cashier I was paying for the car behind me, got my change and pulled out of there as fast as I could to avoid looking like some creepy old guy that just bought their meals. As I pulled into the street and drove away I could see the cashier pointing to my car and all three in the car staring at me in disbelief.

#94 Old Fashioned Guy

I'm not sure how this is possible, but I've managed to live my entire life in Wisconsin and never had a Brandy Old-Fashioned Sweet. Quite possibly our state's unofficial drink besides beer, it's virtually unheard of anywhere else. I believe there's a number of different variations on the recipe and if you have one feel free to post yours here. But here's what used:

2oz. Korbel Brandy
4 dashes Angostura Bitters
2oz. 7up
1 tsp. sugar
1 Maraschino Cherry

#93 The Nose Knows

There's no graceful of saying this, I stuck a thing called a Neti Pot up my nose poured saline through my sinus. The Neti Pot is a simple device that's supposed to help with sinus problems, since I don't have any sinus problems at the moment I can't really report if it works or not, but I can say it felt like the water was going to come out my eyeballs, then for a brief second there is a sensation that I can only imagine is what drowning would feel like. After that it's a piece of cake.

Here's the video, my apologies to anyone who actually wants to see this.

#92 The Constrictor

Having never been in Boy Scouts I missed the boat on Knot Tying 101 and with my recent discovery of The Windsor for ties, I learned how to tie a knot with rope called "The Constrictor" The Constrictor knot is a binding knot which I guess means you can tie it to another object. It's also very difficult to untie. All this is great, but to be honest the only real reason I chose this knot is because it had a cool name.