Day 147: Roy Hobbs

     My brother and I went to play some baseball. Well, by baseball I mean that he and I took turns batting while the other retrieved the ball. Neither of us are really into baseball so we had to make due out of what we had. As it turns out, we had an aluminum bat, an old ball and even a glove. We had everything we needed to have a good ol' fashioned American time. We were wacking the ball about for a while when I noticed that the ball was starting to deform. I don't know if it was my amazing strength or because the ball had been deserted in the backyard for years, but the structural integrity of the ball seemed to be ripping. From there my soul purpose was to completely obliterate the ball. I would wind up extra far and swing for the stars, each time hoping to see the guts of the baseball splatter across the open field. I wanted to pull what is referred to as a "Roy Hobbs", I guess its when you bust open a ball cause you wacked it so damn hard. Its from a movie called The Natural. Sean and I kept torturing the ball time and time again. The stitching would bust open a little more each time I would hit it, exposing it's stringy insides. A couple hits later I saw a chunk of it's innards flop out mid-flight. I went to inspect it in closer detail, and to my amazement, I had done it. I had knocked the skin off of the ball. There was still chunks of baseball clinging to the leather, but that totally counts in my book. I even kept the skin to remind myself of how much of a badass I am (or wish I am).

Day 146: Blood Sugar Test

     There was a sign by the entrance of the grocery store that advertised a free blood sugar test in the pharmacy inside. I instantly knew that I had my challenge for the day and so Cody and I entered to investigate. We found the pharmacy where we met a lanky nurse practitioner named John that sat with his legs rested on the small counter. I told him what my business was and he gave me the run down about how he was going to prick my finger and let me know what my blood sugar was. We stepped into a room that had most of the fixings of a familiar doctor office. It had the elevated bed with cookie sheet stretched across it, and it even had the jar of cotton balls. John wiped my finger with a swab and then pricked it with a gadget of some sort and announced some great news, "Kyle, you do not have diabetes".  I scored a 76. Needless to say, I was relieved. Its always a good feeling to continue to know that you don't have diabetes. I asked him if its common for someone to have diabetes and not realize it. He said that people are often in denial about having it, he says that subconsciously they know, but they might not want to admit it. From there, John offered me a band aid and briefed me about the process my body goes through when it uses sugar and insulin. John was a cool guy, he was super goofy and a little out there, but that just added to his cool. I'm glad I got to talk to him and got the chance to have him make me bleed.

Day 145: Haiku

     Lame challenge? Maybe. I knew that a haiku was a type of poem that was structured with a set amount of syllables but I didn't know exactly how many to use. As it turns out, its a poem with 3 lines, the first line has 5 syllables, then the second has 7, and the last line has 5 again. Heres a couple of ones that I came up with.

     This challenge is lame                                     Day one forty five
     but I procrastinated                                        I am making a Haiku
     So you're stuck with this                                   It is pretty rad

     Today I had fun                                             The sun beams burst bright
     I skateboarded all day long                            I feel summer approaching
     Now I want a snack                                      Powered by the sun

You know your life is in shambles when your writing haiku's.

Day 144: 7 Pound Burrito Challenge

     This was a bad idea. I attempted the 7 pound burrito challenge. Its a 20 dollar burrito that weighs 7 pounds. Its got like 12 eggs in it, a half pound of ham, and an ungodly amount of filling potatoes in it. This is like a real food challenge. Theres no time limit, but there is no bathroom breaks. Once the burrito reaches the table, you can't leave till its either gone, or till you admit defeat. I tried my darndest but it was pretty obvious that I wasn't going to make it very far. I surprised both Mouse and myself when I threw in the towel halfway through. I'm not saying that the throwing in of the towel is the surprising part, its the fact that I made it halfway through that shocked me. The waitress told me that most people don't even get like 1/4 of the way through. I consider it a victory because I cut the burrito in half at the start and told Mouse that I was aiming for 50%. So I may not of taken down the burrito challenge, but I walked away with something else, a thinner wallet and a thicker (and sicker) stomach.

Day 143: Starfruit

     You know the drill. I wait till the thin hours of the night to do a new thing for the day and I head over to the grocery store to pick up some exotic fruit of some sort. It may not be the best of challenges, but sure has saved my ass a couple of times before. Tonight was no different. I was wondering around King Soopers looking for the fruit when I stumbled upon this thing called a star fruit. And guess what, it looks looks just like a star...and it tastes just like a fruit. The taste was pretty watered down, but I kind of liked it. Mac and Mouse didn't feel the same way. I really wanted to make the starfruit desert thing that looked totally delicious but we didn't have the time/ingredients/motivation to make it. So like I said earlier, its not the best challenge, but it probably wont be the last time I rely on a crazy looking fruit of some sort to keep this project going.

Day 142: Sign Language

     I gotta set the scene for this one a little bit before I go into detail about the challenge. It's been pouring rain constantly for the last couple of days. We're talkin' Noah's ark style. So its been crappy and cold and rainy for a while. It's been so bad in fact, that Thorntonfest (its a little hometown festival) was canceled. The grassy fields that Thorntonfest is located on were completely flooded. So theres the setting for ya. My challenge for the day was to learn some basic sign language, because any outdoor activities weren't happening. I looked up videos of ASL (American sign language) and some basic phrases. Everything was going swell and I was right in the middle of mirroring the lady in the video as she gestured the phrase "more please" when the power went out. Everything shut off and I was left in a pitch black room. I decided that there was nothing more to do but go to sleep. I gave it a college try, but the stupid storm had to interferer with my signing. I learned a couple of phrases and wouldn't mind taking a class in it sometime. Stupid rain.

The lady in the video creeps me out, but the baby videos are where its at when trying to learn a language

Day 141: Juggling Tricks

     I've dabbled with juggling a couple times before. I taught myself how to do the basic cycle with only three balls. But today I was skating with Gerke and he taught me a new trick when we were at his house. Its hard to explain but its still pretty basic. All you do is do the normal cycle a couple of times and then toss a ball completely over the others in reverse order. Its some weird trickery (see, its sounds so stupid when I try to explain it). Hopefully I get good enough to juggle things that are on fire for this project.

The dudes in this video are insane, puts me to shame so hard:

Day 140: Survive an Apocalypse

     This one's a little out there, but to be fair, so is all the hype around this stupid 'End of the World' crap. The idea that some old religious nut (Harold Camping) is the only guy that knows when the world is going to end is completely absurd. The funny part is that this isn't the first time he has predicted this. I guess he did it before and guess what, it didn't happen. I don't have a problem with people having their own personal beliefs, opinions and ideas, I just think that this whole concept was just a tad far fetched. When people are quitting their jobs and abandoning their families because they want to get into heaven things start to resemble a panic attack more than a religious movement. Plus, if your the kind of guy that ditches his family cause he wants to get saved, he's probably not the kind of guy thats about to get saved in the first place. But hey, thats just me.

Day 139: Buy a car

     Yeah, I bought the car. I liked it and I'm going to need it for my new job in Boulder. I like it cause Its small, but its got room to haul stuff around. Thats what I'm looking for. I don't care about cosmetics, only about how practical it is. But to be honest, I dig how the car looks as well. As far as the specs go, its a 96 Subaru Outback Sport (red)...annnnnnnd thats about all I know about it. I told you already, I'm not a car guy. I know the miles, and the price I paid (both of which are higher than I'd like) and I figured out how to work the radio and even how to pop the trunk. I use my blinkers when I change lanes and I stop for pedestrians, shouldn't that be all thats expected of me? I don't care about timing belts and radiators.

Her name, is Fireball...or the Flaming Tomato 

Day 138: Test Drive

     I'm in the market for a trusty automobile. I've spent the last month and a half bumming rides off of friends and biking to get around cause my car can't pass the emissions test. It kind of sucks not having a car to just take you to where you want to go, but its actually been really nice not having to worry about gas or insurance for a change. So I heard about this Subaru Outback that was being sold through Mouse. I guess his dad's friend is a mechanic that is selling it. So Mouse and I went over to Joel's shop (ya know, the guy with the car) to talk brass tax and what have you. He was telling me about the vehicle and let me test drive it. I was terrified that I was going to stall the car right in front of him and have him think that I was some idiot. Luckily I didn't and I made sure to watch what I said around the mechanics. I didn't want anything stupid coming out of my mouth, but that was wishful thinking. Eventually, I followed the lead of the mechanics and Mouse as they shot the shit about cars. He told me that the car had only one owner, an obsessive old lady that apparently kept the car in pristine condition. She carried around a notebook that she used to log her mileage (she jotted down things like the date she filled up, weird). The car was lookin good and I was leaning towards it, but I couldn't let Joel know that. I had to play hard to get and act like I knew about cars so he wouldn't try to pull a fast one on me. It was a cool experience though.

The new car better bring more memories like these

Day 137: Paper Swan

     Yeah, I know that I've already done an origami challenge, but there is so much to learn about origami that theres no way I could cover it all in one day. So today I learned how to make the paper swan, a classic paper folding trick. Its for beginners so it should have been perfect for me, but I still had some trouble. If you do it right the wings are supposed to flap when you pull on it's tail. I only had a couple of successful swans but when ya look at the big picture, I think that it was a victory.

Day 136: Change My Car's Oil

Wheres the fun in this?

     I'm not what you would consider a 'car guy'. I don't know much about them, and I don't car to learn about them. This is the kind of mindset that has gotten this car into such bad shape. I want to get it in a better working condition, so I took some advice from a friend (Mouse) that knows more about cars than I would ever like to know, and I changed my oil.Oil changes are the most important thing you can do for your car, and apparently performing one is 'super easy', well thats what the online videos told me. But we were sprawled under my car last night fandangling with some bolt for way too long. It was cold, dirty, frustrating and really really boring. We eventually got the bolt, and drained the oil, replaced the bolt, and replaced the oil filter (which was even harder to screw off than the bolt). The point is, I learned how to change my oil, and how to change my air filter. I spent about $35 on the supplies for this project and I think that I'm just going to take the car to some mechanic next time for like $40. I don't care if it costs more, cause changing my oil wasn't very fun at all.

Day 135: Acorn Squash

     Sometimes I get the feeling that I waste too much time and money on this project. Today I bought an acorn squash, which looked a lot like a tiny green pumpkin. I hate pumpkin and I could guesstimate that I wasn't going to like it's look-a-like squash either. And guess what? I didn't like it...at all. I actually found myself hurling into the toilet at the Mac-shack shortly after eating it. I knew that I wasn't going to like it, and I knew that I didn't want to spend $2.47 on it, but the project called for it and I went along with it. The way I figure it, this isn't the first time this project has caused me to throw up, and I assume it wont be the last time either. Point is, I don't think that I like squash.
     Here's a couple of pic's of the cooking process

:

Day 134: Baked Potatoes

     Baked potatoes are definitely the lazy man's go-to recipe. I looked up a couple of videos on how to bake and this is what they said:

• Poke holes in potato
• place in hot oven
• sit on your ass for an hour
• soak in butter and ranch dressing
• eat

     So I did exactly that. I watched a couple episodes of Archer while my dinner cooked. Then I whipped up a batch of teriyaki rice and chowed down on this delicious challenge.

Day 133: Urine Test/ Shoot A Gun

     Today was a day of all days. I wish I did so many things everyday.
This is the condensed version of what I did: I got two hours of sleep and then woke up at 6 A.M. so I could get a ride to Boulder from Mouse. We enjoyed a couple of Chi Tea Lattes as we drove. He dropped me off at the Boulder skatepark and he left for work. It was just me, my skateboard, and my bike. I skated there for about two hours before heading to the Target there for my job interview. I changed into some more professional looking clothes and spent the next half hour interviewing for a cashiering job (which I got). They then said that I needed to take a drug test before I could start working. So I biked to this place about 5 miles away that studies cups of pee and decide whether or not that person has been on drugs. I peed in a cup and then some, gave it to the lady and went on my way. Heres a couple of pics that I snuck from the pee place.

     Then I met up with my friend Alex who lives in Boulder. We met up at the skatepark and skated there for a couple more hours before riding to his house. There we skated his box for a while as his room mate sold a vespa. Then we biked to the Lafayette skatepark (which is about 16 miles away) and we skated there for a couple hours. Some tricks were landed and some shit was eaten. Then we got a ride back by one of Alex's friends and his truck. Then we drove up one of the mountains of Boulder to shoot some guns. It was a 12 gauge shot gun that had a lot of kick to it. We shot some skateboards and some flying clay pigeons and I actually hit a couple of them. Then we got pulled over on the way back for passing on the shoulder of a highway. Then I biked to the Mac-shack (23 miles) in the dark and almost passed out on the way because I was so tired. I started seeing mirages and stopped at a Safeway to get a couple donuts to keep me going. I made it there and Mouse, Mac, Karen and I drove to Walmart to get a pizza and cookie dough. We watched the Hangover while the food cooked. I stayed long enough to get a couple slices and a couple cookies and then I biked home where I took a much needed shower and then passed out in my bed. So much happened, but the moral of this blog is that my new thing of the day would be that I had never taken a pee test, and I had never shot a gun before. Both of those things were activities that I had no intention of trying today. They kind of just fell into my lap. But it was a lot of fun. Today was a great day. 

I never know what I'm doing

Day 132: Tex Mex Bean Dip

    This stuff was so delicious...and veggie friendly. I made bean dip at Mouse's and Mac's place (I like to refer to it as either the Mac-shack, or the Mouse-pad). The dip was a layered bowl of refried beans, guacamole, a mayo and taco seasoning mix paste, cheese, tomatoes, and green onions. It was pretty cheap to make, it was really tasty, and it filled me up goooooooood. I'm totally going to be showcasing my culinary skills with this piece at the next pot-luck.

Day 131: Garden Burger

     Its crappy outside today. It's also Mouse's birthday and so to celebrate we took cover in a Ruby Tuesday's. It was me, Mac, Mouse, and his girl friend Karen enjoying a delicious lunch and celebrating Mouse's first 20 years. As it turns out, I'm the odd man out when it comes to consuming meat. Mouse, Mac and Karen are all vegetarians and were planning on getting the "garden burger". I guess its like a high quality Boca burger. I've had Boca burgers before and I thought they tasted a little funny and so I decided that (because I was sore from the bike ride challenge and I didn't feel like doing anything else) I would count this garden burger as my new thing. It was crappy weather, and it was a crappy challenge, how fitting. I ended up getting the Hawaiian Garden Burger which means that it had cooked pineapples on it. The three others also got garden burgers and we enjoyed our meal without killing a cow like civilized beings. It was actually really really delicious. The pineapple was great and the burger itself was definitely comparable to a normal burger.

Day 130: Take An All Day Bike Trip

     This is something that I've been wanting to do for quite some time (about 2 years). It was one of the funnest challenges so far and instead of me blabbering uncontrollably, I'm gonna just show some pictures from the trip and keep the blabbering to a minimum.
Heres the hard facts:

its about 24 miles from my house to the city of Boulder  

It took us about 2.5 hours to bike one way

We biked both ways

We biked all around Boulder during our visit

So we biked around 5 hours and over 50 miles for this challenge

I hope I don't forget this

I like it

Day 129: School

     I don't know if you guys remember, but Day 19 was my first day at Front Range Community College. I counted it as a challenge because I honestly wouldn't be in college without this project. A lot of my friends think that this project is a stupid waste of time. I get a lot of flag for putting myself in some of these situations (the waxing and the hot wing challenges are great examples). I didn't start this project just because I wanted to do a new thing every day. I started this because I wanted to put myself out there, I wanted to experience as much as I could. It didn't matter if it was the good or the bad or the ugly, I wanted to start experiencing my life, one day at a time. This whole thing is about improving myself and trying anything. Thats why I have devoted so much time and effort into this thing, I just want to see what life has to offer. Now I can say that I have experienced what completing a semester of college feels like, It feels pretty damn good. I got all B's which is alright, hopefully I'll get some A's next semester.

Day 19: College: http://aimforeclouds.blogspot.com/2011/01/day-19-college.html

Day 128: Police

     I've had my fair share of run-ins with the police with skateboarding and my terrible driving, but I had yet to call the police. Their duties are to protect and serve, and so far all I let them do was give me tickets and put me in handcuffs that one time for skating downtown (and then give me a ticket). Thats why, one day 128, I called the police. I did it cause I was at Kevin's house celebrating David's birthday and we kept hearing screams and yelling from the neighbors apartment. We all went quiet and listened to what was going on. There was a man sitting on the hood of a car that was parked in the lot in-front of the townhouse. He was mumbling angrily to himself and looked to be pretty drunk. He was wobbling around and cursing under his breath. A woman was standing with the front door half open yelling at him. She was saying a something that went a little like this "I fucking hate you, you piece of shit". I think that its safe to assume that these two are a husband and wife that don't have the best of relationships. The man suddenly stood up and charged at the woman and they took their commotion inside. thats where more screaming took place. We were all freaked out and didn't know what to do. We quietly talked it over on the back porch. The screaming stopped and and the husband stumbled onto his porch and began peeing off of it onto the bottom story of the town-home. That was pretty uncomfortable to say the least. As he urinated, I dialed 911, went inside, and told the lady what was going on. They sent an officer out  and the screaming stopped for the rest of the night. The strangest part of the whole incident was when the lady that was violently screaming about a half hour before asked us to quite down. She said that the police came to her door and she thought that the police went to the wrong address. She thought that the cop was trying to find us to talk to us about a noise complaint. I guess she didn't remember that she was screaming her head off just a half an hour before.