Day 364: Learn How To Shuffle Cards

Gnar card

     I had no idea how bad at shuffling cards I was until I found myself in a heated card game with my family. How can you expect to have any card-carrying-confidence when you're constantly fumbling when you shuffle? I decided to take on the task of learning the ways of the shuffle, which proved to be easier said than done. I must have spent forty minutes trying to scramble the deck like a pro. My grandpa gave me a thorough lesson, but it wasn't much help. My shuffle had improved slightly, but it was still suffering. I'd get lucky every so often and have an impressive shuffle, and then completely embarrass myself on the next go. My technique seems so mechanical compared to my grandpa's seasoned approach, but don't worry, I got myself a deck of cards for this very occasion. I'm gonna master the art of card scrambling.

Day 363: Investigate A Conspiracy

     I don't suppose that many of you have heard of a man by the name of William Tapley. He's some old kook that claims that he has unraveled the secret of the conspiracy that has plagued the Denver International Airport (DIA) in recent years. He says that phallic images are hidden throughout the airport and that they are sure fire signs of the end times. He believes that our leaders are trying to get on Satan's good side by covering the airport with suggestive symbols. You'd have to be hopped up on goofballs to believe any of this garbage. The amount of crazy that this guy was spewing out of his face-hole was insane, but Mouse and I decided to go with it anyway. We wanted to snoop around the airport and see if we could find proof of the Satan-worshiping-wiener-dissemblers (never thought I'd say that).

     We were greeted by Mr. Tapley's most convincing evidence of a satanic conspiracy at the entrance of the airport, the giant blue devil horse. At 32 feet tall, and 9,000-pounds, this hellish fiberglass statue is one of the freakiest works known to man. It's seriously evil. His burning red eyes and hellish demeanor just freak me out. Not to mention, the artist of the Hell-horse was crushed and killed by a chunk of the cursed art while he was working on it. Everything about this thing screams Satan! So we carried on...

If you squint reeeeeeeally hard...

     Once we got inside, we began scouring the grounds for anything phallic. We looked at some rather disturbing paintings and support beams, but we really had to let our imaginations run wild to find anything that even remotely looked like something phallic. Personally, I just think that this William Tapley guy has his mind in the gutter. We tried, we really did. We spent a good hour in that airport looking for suggestive shapes, but I guess our gay-day just isn't as precise as Mr. Tapley's. Here's what some of the pieces of art that we dug up, see if you can find something phallic or Satanic.

Odd stuff

Need I say more?

Day 362: Drive Down The "Wildest Street In America"

     According to Mouse; Colfax Avenue is the longest straight road in America. And according to the Playboy Magazine quote from Colfax's Wikipedia page; Colfax is "the longest, wickedest street in America." Apparently there was a whole other side to Colfax, one I'd yet to see. So Mouse and I decided to experience the entirety of the "wickedest" street in America. We would cruise down the 26.1 mile long street and see just what all the fuss was about. We started at the West end (Heritage Rd) and ended our trek at the East end (Gun Club Rd). It was a solid hour or so of cruising the street, and it was actually funner than I thought it would be. We stocked up on potato chips and acted like tourists in a city we've always known as we saw the sights of Denver. We saw the glorious Casa Bonita, and we passed the Occupy Denver protesters at Civic Center. It wasn't the "wickedest" time of my life, but it was still pretty fun. Here's a short time lapse of the journey.

Day 361: Graffiti

Mug shot

     Ok, before you start freaking out about how I lost my morals and whatnot, I should let you know that my graffiti experience was totally legal. See, there's this wall in Boulder, that has been designated as the town's tagging wall. Graffiti artists (and Mouse and I) can go there and doodle to their hearts content, and not get in trouble. We got to the wall right as the sun was going down, which was good cause it made the experience that more authentic. I tried my best to find an area on the wall that wasn't already claimed by somebody's illegible work, and started working on my masterpiece. I was going for an abstract "medeyum" down the side of the wall to advertise the blog (welcome new readers!). Sadly, it became obvious almost instantly that my art was going to turn out like poop. I could try to blame it on the cheap spray paint or the lack of inspiration, but the truth is, I just suck at graffiting. I have no experience with tagging, and I don't even have an interest in it. Here is my one stab at it, and I don't see myself doing it anytime soon. For now, I'll just stick to doodling on paper.

Day 360: Juggle Fire!

     If you've been following this shit-show of a project for a while, you may remember a previous challenge I did called mildly high risk juggling. It was back in the early days of the project and I have since then decided to up the stakes a little bit and try some very high risk juggling. That's right, we're talking about playing with fire. It's a testament to both my stupidity, and my dedication to the project. There's no way that I'd ever try this if it weren't for this little experience experiment. It constantly reminds me that "Just because it's a terrible idea, doesn't mean you shouldn't try it" and I'm thankful for those idiotic stunts I've forced myself to do this year. It's one of my first life lessons and it's exactly what this project needed.

     Mouse and I cut three strips of cloth from a cotton T-shirt I had and tied them up in little balls. Then we soaked each one in butane and lit them and they became terrifying fireballs. The hardest part was gathering the courage (stupidity) to reach out and grab the flaming cloth ball. My brain kept telling my hand to reach for it, but my arm would only extend halfway before I'd pull away in fear (common sense). Mouse was the first one to successfully touch the fireball, and moments later, he holding it in his hand like it was nothing. It was all downhill from there, we found ourselves drunk with adrenaline as we tossed fire around. It was so manly, I felt like I was in an Old Spice commercial or something. It was insanely fun/scary/stupid and we both walked away without a scratch/burn. Check out the pictures and don't try this at home!

Day 359: Roadkill

     I feel so bad about this one. I was just driving around, minding my own business. When outta nowhere, the cutest little bunny jumps into the middle of the road. He had no idea what hit him. Unfortunately, I did. It was a 96 Subaru Outback. It was two tons of metal vs. one unlucky bunny. I don't want to go into much detail because I have respect for the deceased, but I will say that I'm not proud of myself. Poor little bunny =(.

Day 358: Try Mediterranean Food

     I bought a Mediterranean lunchable at the Natural Grocers because it looked both curious and delicious. It had falafel balls, hummus, tabbouli, and pita bread in it, all of which looked tasty annnnddd it was totally new to me. Mouse assured me that hummus was the greatest thing since sliced bread as he picked out his to-go Mediterranean dinner. Mouse wasted no time digging into the exotic dish, while I tested the waters of some pita bread and hummus. A couple timid bites later, I had sampled a little bit of everything. I found it all to be decent tasting, but really dry. There wasn't much flavor to any one entree, it was just a blur of dryness. By then, Mouse had polished of his dinner, and I had yet to even make a dent in mine. It just wasn't my cup of tea I guess.

Day 357: Energy Sheets

Vanna White

     Isn't that like, the most convincing commercial you've ever seen? Dontcha just want to take a sheet all over the place now? Stefanie introduced me to these little guys and to the sheet-load of possibilities that they possess. We bought them and found ourselves taking sheets in the most peculiar settings. I can't say much for how well the energy sheets worked, but it was a lot of fun making sheet-puns. They tasted like sheet, and I still felt tired afterwards, and they aren't approved by the FDA, but there's just something special about being able to say that you've taken a sheet in the Walmart parking lot. Fun times indeed!

Day 356: Horned Melon

   The horned melon, also know as the blowfish fruit is one freaky looking guy. At first glance, you'd swear that you were starring down a wild Pokemon from the grassy marshes of Pallet town. It's orange and round, yet green and spiky (just weird all over). Once you slice though it's exotic exterior, you are greeted with neon green guts and seeds. The meat of the fruit had a jello-like consistency and tasted really familiar, but I couldn't put my finger on it. It was like, kind of cucumber-ish, but at the same time, it was something else. The taste wasn't very apparent, because the texture was all I could think about. It was all slimy, just like the basil seed drink from way back when. Both tasted pretty good, but looked funky and felt funkier.

Day 355: Be Ordained A Minister

     Talk about broadening my horizons eh? This is gonna look so good on my resume. I searched up a trustworthy-looking site that claimed that they would ordain me for free within a matter of minutes. All I had to do was fill in some personal info and click the send button. Then the next thing I know, I am brought to a page that congratulates me on becoming a minister. It was seriously as easy as that. Click here if you would like to become a priest in like 30 seconds too. Apparently, I can now preform weddings and probably even name babies. I'm not completely sure what the extent of my powers are, but I think there was some talk of me being able to turn water into wine. Soooooooooo you should have me entertain at your next wedding or cincuenta.

Day 354: Wrapping Practice

        This year's project is almost over and I've been have to become increasingly more creative to come up with new things for me to try lately. Christmas is farting distance away, and I have yet to discover Disney's representation of the holiday spirit. I feel like I've tried everything! I've hung up Christmas lights and I even went to Zoolights in hopes of catching this Christmas-crazed-illness that everyone around me seems to have.
     So here's my last ditch effort, I'm gonna work on my wrapping game. Unfortunately, I did my shopping online (and a little late), so my gifts won't be here in time for me to get my wrap practice in before Christmas (sorry bout that dear gift receivers). Although I was fresh out of presents to wrap, I did have an abundance of old empty boxes laying around. I decided that I would construct something (a sweet robot) out of them, and do my best at wrapping my work. If done right, people from all over should be able to tell that there is a robot-shaped object under the wrapping paper. If done wrong, then I will know that I'm just as good at wrapping as I was last year (win-win neutral situation).
     So I made my lil' robot friend and quickly began cutting paper and taking measurements as my sister and dad discussed how much of a weirdo I was. My roll of wrapping paper was near it's end so I had to use it sparingly, and the design on the wrapping doesn't face the same direction in some areas. But I'm pleasantly surprised with my wrapping job. Take a look for yourself and tell me whatcha think.

Kota isn't impressed.

Day 353: Become More Optimistic

     I think I'm an optimist. I try to find the silver lining and I look out for the good things in life. I think that optimism is a skill, and one that can always be sharpened. Yeah, sure, being a 'glass is half-full' kind of person is fine for some folks, but not me. I want to be a "this glass is overflowing with liquid gold!' kind of guy. So I looked up some tips on becoming more positive. I found a list of steps online that I am using to up my optimism levels. Here's a link to the site with the steps. Most of the steps seemed to relate to being more open with yourself and distancing yourself from negative vibes. So I guess that means to be more honest with yourself, and to stay away from all of those negative Nancys. Here's a couple of the steps;
     1)Admit your faults- I'm afraid to fail, and that makes me uncomfortable
     2)appreciate your friends- Yup
     3)avoid negative vibes- gotcha
     4)Listen to positive music- I just finished creating my 'Positive-vibes' playlist on my iPod. It's got all of my  fluffiest and most sunshine and daisy sounding songs on it.
     5)Smile- =)
     6)Make goals- I've got too many to list.

So far, things are looking good, but with the help of these steps, hopefully things will be looking phenomenal.

Day 352: Urban Snowboarding

     Fun times are guaranteed when you're doing something stupid and dangerous. Mouse called me up and asked if I would like to go urban snowboarding with him and his room mate and I couldn't have said yes fast enough. From what I know, urban snowboarding is when you get towed by some vehicle (a Subaru) and get totally rad off the urban elements around you (the slim streets in Mouse's neighborhood). I rode this thing called a snow-skate; it's the size of a skateboard, but it's made for shredding in the snow. It's got a small steering board under it and is advertised as "still the best way to injure yourself" from the site that I snagged the snow-skate photo from. I watched, and filmed, as Jeremy demonstrated how to ride. I remember being hesitant about my turn because of how fast Mouse was driving, but my turn had arrived, so I laced the rope around my glove and hunkered down on the board. My first go went better than I thought it would. I leaned back as far as possible and hung on to the rope for dear life as the Subaru towed me though suburbia. I had some tumbles, and a lot of close calls (man those parked cars seem to just jump outta nowhere), but I also had some pretty saweet runs too. But winter still sucks.

Day 351: Black Licorice

Cat shaped licorice

     Black licorice has always been easy for me to avoid. It seems to be one of the few foods I've come across that is used exclusively to gauge how gross something is. It's like, there's seaweed-gross, then there's fruitcake-gross, and (somewhere in that ballpark) then there is black licorice-gross. After trying it I can't say that it is worse than the seaweed or the fruitcake, but it was far from good too. I couldn't find many redeeming qualities about black licorice while surfing the web either. An article I found on Webmd.com said that eating too much black licorice can lead to abnormal heart rhythms. And the guys on the Yahoo-answers forum used an excessive amount of exclamation marks when typing out their anti-licorice-rants. It's just a crappy tasting (I don't think it counts as candy) food, and everybody knows it. It looks like black licorice, it smells like black licorice, and worst of all, it tastes like black licorice.

Day 350: Mind Reading

I get bored

     Mind reading? What a bunch of bologna right? With all of these Chis Angel weirdos running around making magical claims about the supernatural, it's hard to tell who the fakers are. Paranormal occurrences seem to be happening all around us, it's just a shame that nobody can prove it. That's why -although I'm a total skeptic- I decided to put one particularly suspicious claim to the test. I wanted to find out if I could read minds. To help me find out, I adopted the exercise from one of the opening scenes of Ghostbusters.
     I made 60 flash cards, all of them had either a square, triangle, circle, or star drawn on them. There were 15 flash cards for each shape. Then I tossed them into a bucket and had my brother pick out each card one at a time while I guessed (er, I mean answered telepathically) each one. I hung up a blanket between us to ensure that I couldn't see any of my brother's cards. Sean patiently plucked out each card as I guessed. Once all the cards were picked, we went over my answers and found that I can read my brother's thoughts about as well as I can read my own. I ended up getting 15 of the 60 cards right, which is exactly where the law of probability said I'd land. With a 1 in 4 chance of guessing the right shape, a score of 25% sounds about right.
     So it seemed obvious that I was merely guessing and not relying on any mystic mind reading abilities. But I wanted to be sure that it wasn't a fluke. That's why I constructed a tin foil that Sean would wear as we repeated the test. He'd pick a card at random like normal, and I'd write down my guess, but Wikipedia tells me that tin foil hats block brain wave activity. This means, that if I was using any mind reading talents, they'd be dulled down by Sean's hat. If I did worse on the second test, it would back up the notion that a tin foil hat would interfere with my mind reading, thus solidifying the possibility of mind reading in the first place.

     So we went through with the experiment again, and then we went about grading it as well. And as it turns out, I did better on the second test. I actually got a higher score (26%) on the one that I was supposed to bomb. And I know that the two scores were too ridiculously close to make a claim, but results are results!
     In the end, I've decided that I don't have any mind reading capabilities (dang!), and that my scores were left up to chance. It only took me 60 flash cards, a few yards of tin foil and forty minutes to establish that I can't read minds.

=(

Day 349: Skin Absorption Test

     For reasons I'm not sure of, I was watching a infomercial for a product called Shower Shock on YouTube. It was a bar of soap that was infused with caffeine, so you could take a shower and get your daily java-fix at the same time. The caffeine would be absorbed through your skin as you bathed, then it you make it's way into your bloodstream and to the rest of your body. Apparently the stuff really works (although not all that well. Skeptics claim that it would take a full two hours of soap lathering to get the same amount of caffeine from the two cups of Joe that the product promises). In the end, I figured that the soap was a waste of money. But fortunately, I learned that the human skin is all spongy and stuff, which got me thinking, "What else can my skin absorb?". What I found was a bottle of Superfruit vitamins. All I wanted to do, was to see if my skin could successfully absorb the contents of the capsule. So I crushed the pill, then I spread it out evenly across my arm, and secured the vitamin down with a generous amount of scotch tape. Then I just let the crushed remains lay on my arm for about an hour or so. Once it was time to take the tape off, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my skin was free from vitamin crumbs. The whole area on my arm was clear in fact. So I guess that's one way to take a pill, it takes over an hour, but at least you don't have to deal with that plastic pill taste in your mouth.

Day 348: Lucid Dreaming

     A while ago, a friend told me about lucid dreaming. He explained it to me as 'daydreaming at night'. It's a phenomenon that happens when you're asleep, and you're dreaming, but you consciously know that you are sleeping. So basically, you're free to do anything within your own dream. You can jump over Jupiter, or you can eat Oprah (well, that's just what I'd do), really whatever. Who wouldn't want the freedom to fly, or the ability to shoot spam out of your eye sockets?
     So I checked out this website and read about some tips and strategies that help people have their own lucid dreams. Now, I'm told that the process may take a couple of days for me to get into the swing of things, so I didn't get discouraged when I didn't dream lucidly the first night. All I could do was take the website's advice, and hope for the best. The main things to look out for are; to constantly question your state of consciousnesses, record your dreams regularly, and to have a constant sleep schedule. I haven't had any luck yet, but these guys did guaranteed (one that was later disclaimed) that I would have a lucid dream within 7 days. So I guess I'll just keep with the program and see what happens.

Day 347: Eat A Ghost Pepper

     The ghost pepper, also known as the Bhut Jolokia chili pepper (or one of the worst mistakes of my entire life), has been certified by the Guinness Book of World Records to be the hottest pepper in the world. It's over 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce and I'm pretty sure that It's used as an instrument of torture in some areas of the world. I guess it's only fair that I squeeze a challenge like this into my project. I mean, what self pain inflicting project would be complete without an evening of 3rd degree heartburn and a morning of molten diarrhea? Oh and the vomiting, I mustn't forget about the vomiting. As far as I'm concerned, this one may just take the cake for worst challenge so far.

     Before I ate the pepper, I tried a seed to test the waters, and if it wasn't for Kevin and David's excellent peer pressuring skills, the challenge would have ended there. I felt the heat, and I wasn't looking forward to fully engulfing myself in it. Kevin offered to split the pepper in half with me which made me feel a little better, but not much. I wasn't ready to voluntarily put myself through that much pain and misery. And then after about a half hour of me siking myself up, I walked into the kitchen and grabbed my half of the pepper, and ate it. Kevin followed. I tried my best to get the pepper down my throat and away from my tongue as soon as possible, but it was clear that things weren't going to work that way. I felt a hint of what could have been Hell on the back of my tongue. Out of instinct, I started running to each end of Kevin's house. From the kitchen, to the front door and back, all I could do was pace. Each breath I took tasted like Summer in Arizona, and it was only getting worse. I downed glasses of water and shoveled handfuls of sugar to put out the fire but nothing seemed to help. Eventually, I found myself on Kevin's back deck, drooling uncontrollably. By then I could talk normally and even breathe a little, but things were far from good. Everything ached. My head hurt, my hands were clamy, I was covered with beads of sweat, and I felt like I had been sucking on a hair dryer. Everything sucked. Things weren't getting much better when I started puking either. So there you go. There's my Jackass tribute challenge. The one where I totally knew that all of this was coming my way and that it was all preventable. All I had to do was say the word, and I could have thought up a new challenge for me to try. But like I said, what good is a such an extensive project if I don't get to experience all sides of it. I want to experience the shittiest of the shit, and I think I did a pretty good job of that tonight.

Day 346: Anxiety Reducing Diet

     I've been feeling really strange that past couple of days. It's like I'm super wound up for no reason. I have been feeling really anxious and I have no idea why. I assume that it's because of all that terrible Christmas music I keep hearing around town, but ya never know. Actually, I think that it could have a lot to do with my new vegetarian lifestyle. I had no choice but to ask the all-mighty Google what I should do, and it led me to a site that promised to calm my nerves through diet. The site claimed that a diet that was rich in carbohydrates and B6 vitamins would promote healthy serotonin production. Now, I have no clue if this is actually true, but I figured that it was worth a shot. The guy that posted this claim also listed some ingredients that would fall under the carb-calming diet. It was obvious that I should take some of his advice if I wanted to feel better. But what was even more obvious, was that I should take all of this guy's advice if I wanted to feel really good. So I wrote down all of the foods listed in his post and headed to the store to pick up some feel good food. As far as the high-carb things go, I got; Whole-wheat pasta, oatmeal, popcorn, bagels, tortillas, and rice cakes. Then I picked up a banana and a package of raisins for my B6 vitamin intake. From there, I prepared a high carb culinary creation (tootin' the ol' horn). I call it, Carbo-Diem. It was a bagel sandwich with a rice cake patty and lather of oatmeal, raisins and chopped up banana, that was garnished with tortilla and a spaghetti stick toothpick. Just for kicks, I had a side of fresh popcorn. It was a good meal, it filled me up and I even felt better afterwards. Maybe I should munch on those nasty rice cakes more often.

Day 345: Gator Pear

     You'd think that I would have ran up my produce points by now in this project, but I struck some luck as I glanced through the fruit and veggie isle today. I found this thing called a gator pear (or chayote squash, really whatever) that looked interesting enough to be a challenge. From an angle, it looked like a face with puckering lips, which was a true selling point for me. It's freaky looks didn't stop me from feeling apatized, so I took it home and made an impressive smelling stir fry out of it. Unfortunately, it only smelt good, the taste was a different story. It wasn't bad necessarily, it just wasn't good either. If it means anything, my cooked gator pear was way better than just the raw thing. So that's that, another produce challenge that ended about the same as every other produce challenge I've tried so far. Shame.

Day 334: Read The Tabloids

     I used to think that everyone shared my opinion on gossip magazines and tabloids. That it was common knowledge that those publications were complete rubbish and newsstands only carried them to please the occasional crazy-cat-lady that would walk by. But in my short time as a cashier at Target I found that there was quite the demand for magazines that advertised pseudoscientific weight loss diets and scandalous celebrity drama than. As it turns out, the horoscope crowd is pretty big. So I thought I'd try it out (Well, Stefanie thought of it really). I picked up a fresh edition of Sun magazine and brought it to the my second puzzle party in two days (cause apparently, I just couldn't get enough puzzle) to gloss over. The Sun is a publication that hits from all angles. Their journalistic integrity remains intact as they cover such controversial issues like; "I Have an Alien in my Fridge!" and "We Prefer Hot Dogs to People". It was clear that this was some scholarly material. I thumbed through the pages and found a couple of articles that I particularly enjoyed. One was about the reincarnation of Albert Einstein, who happened to be a boy from Ohio, and another one was about "The Mini Monet", a 9 year old boy who sold $200,000 worth of art in thirty minutes.

     I can't say that it wasn't entertaining reading it. I can't even say that I didn't like it. To be honest, although I couldn't summon any amount of trust on the credibility of the magazine, I still found it wildly entertaining. I enjoyed reading about the guy's frozen alien cadaver more than I thought I would, and I couldn't seem to stop reading about that couple that decided to adopt 14 wild skunks. It was way more interesting than the things I should be interested in (politics and such). Maybe tabloids aren't so bad after all. Maybe I should check these out more often.

Day 343: Invent A Holiday

     So I recently made up my own word for the project, and that got me thinking, "why stop there?". That's just the tip of the iceberg. So that's why I've taken on the task of creating my very own holiday. Here's what you need to know:
     What is it?
          *National (well not yet) "Get Out and Try It" day, otherwise known as "GOTI-Day". The idea is to designate the day to pursuing that special something that you've always wanted to do. Spend the day working on what you enjoy, and what makes you happy. It's all about autonomy, because I can tell you from experience, the only way to find motivation, is to find something you actually care about. However you want to spend GOTI-Day is totally up to you, because you do what you want, and that makes you want to do it more (yeah?)
     When is it?
          *Ideally I'd like this to be an everyday thing, but I guess I'll have to settle for just one day. I decided to go with March 8th, (which is my birthday). I chose this day for a couple reasons. See, March is still a couple months away, which is enough time for me to try to get the GOTI word out to the public and start my holiday off right. And I chose my birthday for the holiday because I feel like every year on my birthday I look back on what I've done and what I wish I had done better, and I always feel like I come up short. If "Get Out and Try It" day is on my birthday, I'll have no choice but to make that day totally kickass by doing something like bull ridding or skydiving (the sky's the limit really). As long as you're doing what you like, you're doing nothing wrong. Get the word out about GOTI-Day!

We should totally make shirts

Day 342: Complete A 1000 Piece Puzzle

Probably my most hated, yet most addictive challenge yet

     Not just any puzzle, we're talking about a 1,000 piece puzzle here. Kalin and I bought it and took it over to the local ihop for a leisurely puzzle-party. We dumped the pieces over our table and wasted no time in flipping up all the upside-down pieces. Things looked good at first, it seemed like I had found a challenge that was cheap and pain-free, and I was enjoying a generous stack of french toast while I did it, what could go wrong?  And to be honest, things were good...for the first 4 hours. See, I guess I overestimated my puzzling abilities. I thought that this was going to be a piece of cake (or french toast, whatever you like), but it turns out that that was far from true. A thousand pieces is quite a lot once you think about it, and they've all got to fit in their perfectly custom little spots. And it didn't help that the landscape in the puzzle was that of a deep blue tropical ocean filled with turtles and baby blue, that's wayyyyy too much blue for me. But whatever, a challenge is a challenge right? So we kept at it and made some (heavy emphasis on "some") progress. I fandangled (more new words!) with the sailboat as Kalin pieced the boarder together.
     But 4 hours slowly turned into 5 hours and all we had to show for it were a couple of sore backs, two tummy's full of cheap coffee, and a sad excuse for a turtle puzzle. I had to call Mouse to help us out. Even though it was almost 2 in the morning and we had maybe 10% of the puzzle complete, he just seems like he'd be good at puzzles. Eventually he arrived and it seemed like we were going to catch our second wind (but it turned out to just be gas from all that coffee). For a good while, we were the only one's in there. The waitress would come around every so often to refill our coffee and talk about turtles with us. We were there for so long that we started to drift into that weird state of mind where everything becomes hysterical because you're so tired. Sooner or later, we were going to have to throw in the towel, we just decided that the five and a half hour mark was as good a time as any. It was really a really disappointing feeling when we wrecked our progress by scooping all the pieces back into the the box so we could go, but we had to leave sometime. We were all too slap happy to function normally, so it was time to end it. But it's not all over, I have decided to restart the challenge on the hardwood floors of my bedroom. This time, it's not for the project. No, this time, it's personal. I'm going to complete this stupid turtle puzzle if it's the death of me.

Day 341: Invent A Word

     Did you ever read the book Frindle way back in Elementary school? It's about this kid that decides to start calling pens "frindles" and all hell breaks loose in his class because of it. I don't really remember if I even liked the book of not, I've forgotten most of the story. All I remember is that I thought it was totally cool that this kid started this movement from making up a new word. He made something big from doing something small. So I decided that I was going to get in on this. I wanted to make up a word. So here's my word, "medeyum". If you've gotten your hands on one of my business cards, or you know my email, or you've ever heard of my scheme to start a skateboard company, then this word will probably sound pretty familiar. See, I made this word up years ago, but it wasn't until today that I've made it official and came up with a definition. Here's my crack at defining a word.
     
     medeyum /ˈmēdēəm/ v.  creating something new out of an old medium, seeing potential in one's familiar environment.

     Waddya think? Are you going to start using this word left and right so I can finally live out my Elementary school dreams of starting a revolution through vocabulary?

Better take note.

Day 340: Visit ZooLights

The coolest!

     Ya know how I said that I hate Christmas, but I'm forcing myself to get into the spirit this season? Well, I felt like zoo lights were a perfect way to get me closer to, the spirit. Zoolights, is a seasonal event that the Denver (and maybe others) zoo holds around Christmas time. The zoo gets coated with lights that are in the shape of the many different animals that occupy it. My crappy camera doesn't even come close to doing the zoolights justice. It seemed like there were millions of bright little dots from every direction, twas pretty cool. So the point of it all is to bundle up, grab some coffee, and set off safari-style into the bright lights of the zoo. Now you can't really see any real animals, But it was still fun. My mom and brother and I wondered up and down the unlit exhibits as we sipped on our Starbucks. It was a good ol' fashioned bonding moment. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, maybe there's some hope for my Christmas spirit after all.