apropos of anything

The second beginning: January 1, 2008

Trying this again to see how far I get the second time around. Some of the unfinished items on the first list I am carrying over to the second, but there’s plenty of new things as well.

1. Take my mother to Seattle.
2. Do umrah.
3. Take a photography class.
4. Write a collection of short stories.
5. See a show at the Center for Puppetry Arts.
6. Exercise three times a week. Ideally, at least one of those times should be a pilates or yoga class.
7. Support a political candidate by getting involved in the campaign. [Completed October 2008 with the Obama campaign.]
8. Maintain a prayer journal. Update it once a week in the hopes of getting to the point where an authentic prayer is more natural than a hurried prayer.
9. Visit ADAMS Center.
10. Become familiar enough with the Quran to be able to quote verses on command.
11. Attend a political rally of some kind.
12. Submit something to Tastespotting.
13. Volunteer at least two hours every week.
14. Go to the Atlanta Dogwood Festival.
15. Get promoted.
16. Wake up for tahajjud twice a month.
17. Continue building an investment portfolio.
18. Step outside my comfort zone.
19. Clean out my clothes closet and donate anything I haven’t worn in a year to charity. [Completed June 13, 2009. Packed up four "trash" bags' worth of clothes and shoes and took it to Goodwill. Did not use actual trash bags.]
20. Call my dad’s relatives once a month.
21. Donate blood (if I qualify).
22. Pick three occasions and give handmade gifts.
23. Re-read the Prydain Chronicles.
24. Climb Kennesaw mountain.
25. Take a girl friend who professes to dislike baseball to a Braves game.
26. Recycle. [Every month since January 2008. Completed and also still in progress. Yay!]
27. Visit Leta in San Francisco again.
28. Get rid of 101 things I have but don’t need.
29. Keep my desk clean.
30. Make at least one prayer a week in the masjid.
31. Attend a show at the Fox.
32. Coach an Odyssey of the Mind team.
33. Take MARTA to work once a week. If that isn’t possible, at least once a month.
34. Go to India and see the Taj Mahal and my parents’ family villages (gaos).
35. Call my aunts (on my mom’s side, the ones who live in the States) once a week.
36. Tile the lower part of my kitchen walls so they aren’t stained with spaghetti sauce splatters. And also so the next time my cooking splatters, I can just wipe off the stain.
37. Visit Dubai. [Completed May 2008 on my way to India for Aamir and Mansoor's shaadi shopping.]
38. Take regular tennis lessons. You know, the kind where I go every week and actually learn something. After all, that expensive racket can’t continue to collect dust in my catch-all closet.
39. Clean out my catch-all closet.
40. Buy and send all my various presents (birthdays, Eids, anniversaries) on time. And by “on time,” I mean so they arrive on the appropriate day, not that I send them off on the day of the event.
41. Attend a show on Broadway.
42. Attend every taraweeh prayer I am allowed during the month of Ramadan.
43. Have a barbeque.
44. Picnic in Central Park. [Completed June 27, 2009 with Sameera and Maleeha. It doesn't get better than yummy food with awesome friends, although I should have trusted them when they suggested I avoid Magnolia Bakery.]
45. Mail a secret to PostSecret.
46. See a show at the Georgia Shakespeare Festival.
47. Find a halaqa. Attend regularly.
48. Bake and decorate a wedding cake, just for the fun of it.
49. Switch all my bulbs to CFLs.
50. Learn Arabic.
51. Participate in some kind of march (e.g. peace rally, protesting an amendment, etc.)
52. See a baseball game in a ballpark I haven’t been to yet.
53. Work on a Habitat for Humanity house.
54. Finish reading the entire Quran — in Arabic and English both — during the month of Ramadan. And make sure to read regularly when NOT in the month of Ramadan.
55. See a movie at Screen on the Green.
56. See a live Falcons game. Or any live football game for that matter.
57. Regularly go to bed at a decent hour and wake up at a decent hour, especially on weekends.
58. Make Sunday brunch once a month — pancakes and muffins and omelets, mmm.
59. Go to Australia.
60. Meet a blogger whose site I read regularly but who I don’t know in person.
61. Take a cooking class for something fun and unimportant — pastries or appetizers or something.
62. Accept that it is okay to make mistakes every now and then.
63. Memorize ten more Quranic surahs.
64. Avoid television and radio during the entire month of Ramadan.
65. Learn to make pasta.
66. Attend a show at the Alliance.
67. Buy a high quality camera.
68. Go to Europe and do all the touristy things.
69. Spend a day at Stone Mountain and stay for the light show afterwards, regardless of how redneck it is or how much traffic there will be afterwards.
70. Participate in NaNoWriMo and actually finish the 50,000 words.
71. Learn to be more patient.
72. Spend a couple of days in Gatlinburg in the summer again. I’m okay skipping the $20 nap, though!
73. Go swimming. (Due to various clothing-related and gender-related issues, I have not been able to go swimming in years, though I love it so.)
74. Crew for the Breast Cancer 3-Day.
75. Participate in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure. [Completed May 9, 2009. Volunteered. Next year, iA, I'll run it.]
76. Babysit for a friend so she can have an afternoon for herself.
77. Drink 8 glasses of water every day.
78. Get TiVo.
79. Watch a movie at the Fox in the summertime.
80. Learn how to put henna on people’s hands, notably mine.
81. Donate to the Clarkston masjid: clothes, food, household goods.
82. Stay up until at least two a.m. on all the possible Lailatul Qadr nights. [Completed September 2008, including a lovely Qiyam-ul-Lail in Augusta on the 25th night.]
83. Have a picnic at Piedmont Park.
84. Go horseback riding.
85. Learn to make Indian-style bread (naan, parathay, all of it!)
86. Sponsor a child in Afghanistan or Iraq or some other impoverished country.
87. Try nine new Atlanta restaurants. [In progress: MF Sushi (yum). NAVA (yick — take my advice and please don't go). Aja (eh). One Midtown Kitchen (overly flirty waiters, unremarkable food). DiPaolo's (yum). Rathbun's (kind of thought it was overrated... but the sides were amazing). West Egg Cafe (excellent for lunch).]
88. Write a letter to myself to be opened ten years later.
89. Take a painting class. Or a pottery class. Or both.
90. Go see a hockey game. [Completed December 10, 2008: Thrashers vs. Rangers, with Geoff and Lauren. The Rangers won in overtime.]
91. Get an area rug for the living room floor.
92. See another Cubs game at Wrigley Field.
93. Clean my car and KEEP IT CLEAN.
94. Go back to Wired and Fired and make something cute and fun.
95. Make a quilt!
96. Vote in ALL the elections, not just the final presidential one. The primaries, the 2008 election, all of it.
97. Go somewhere to see the fireworks on the 4th of July. [Completed July 4, 2009. Saw the D.C. National Mall fireworks from a boat on the Potomac.]
98. Get CPR certified.
99. Donate to the Georgia Tech Alumni Association.
100. Carve a jack-o’lantern. And it can smile if it wants to!
101. Get 8 hours of sleep a night.

The beginning: November 16, 2004

I got it from Jessica, who got it from Jason, who got it from Gwen, who got it from triplux. The idea is to come up with a list of 101 specific, achieveable tasks for the next 1001 days. Everything must be reasonable, and at least some should require some amount of effort.

I’ll be updating as I accomplish each one, possibly with notes about how it all turned out. (If I have any commentary, the word “completed” will be clickable.) 1001 days is about three years… insha’Allah I’ll get through all 101 items! The list is in random order:

1. Go to hajj. [Completed January 26, 2005. This was one of the most amazing trips of my life.]
2. Finish reading The History of God by Karen Armstrong. This is one difficult book to read, y’all.
3. Take a photography class.
4. Write a collection of short stories.
5. Finish decorating my dining room. [Completed November 22, 2006. Description forthcoming!]
6. Landscape my backyard plot.
7. Join a political action committee.
8. Be the primary cook for my mother’s annual Thanksgiving dinner. [Completed November 24, 2006. Kind of. She did the turkey, but I did everything else, plus the presentation, so I'm going to count this one.]
9. Keep my house clean. [Completed summer 2006. A little help never hurt anyone!]
10. Become familiar enough with the Quran to be able to quote verses on command.
11. Exercise every day for 3 months. And then exercise regularly after that.
12. Write Mandi. Regularly. [In progress as of March 11, 2005. I've written her, so all that remains is to be regular about it.]
13. Volunteer at least two hours every week.
14. Go to the Atlanta Dogwood Festival. [Completed April 9, 2006.]
15. Get promoted. [Completed February 10, 2005. Hooray!]
16. Make Spencer’s bhangra CD. [Completed December 3, 2004.]
17. Start an investment portfolio.
18. Decorate my living dining room. [Completed November 23, 2006.]
19. Clean out my clothes closet and donate anything I haven’t worn in a year to charity. [Completed June 10, 2007.]
20. Call my dad’s relatives once a month.
21. Learn to make pie crust. [Completed October 21, 2005.]
22. Wear makeup regularly and well — yay pretty pink sparkly eyeshadow! [I consider running through two tubs of mascara a sign that I have done this. Perhaps not every day, but more often, and well enough that nobody's taken me aside and politely explained I'm doing my best Bozo impersonation.]
23. Go see The Incredibles. [Completed November 20, 2004. This is a great movie!]
24. Climb Kennesaw mountain. [Completed April 3, 2006.]
25. Take Fatima to a Braves game. [Completed May 3, 2005. Description forthcoming!]
26. Comment on strangers’ blogs without worrying about what they’ll think of me. [Completed December 28, 2004. Description forthcoming!]
27. Go to San Francisco again. [Completed April 20, 2007.]
28. Learn to make biryani. [Completed April 15, 2006. Description forthcoming!]
29. Get published. (Okay, so this one is probably more a pipe dream, but hey, we’re supposed to think big, aren’t we?) [As of July 2007, I have a (horribly edited) hajj article in the 2007 Nov/Dec issue of Muslim Girl Magazine. While I'll never write for them again after the hack job they did on my piece, I think I can cross this item off the list.]
30. Buy some clothes I like and are cute and do not make me look like I am 45… but are still totally and completely Islamic and hijabi and professional. (Yeah, this is also probably a pipe dream. Sue me.) [Completed July 24, 2005. Description forthcoming!]
31. Attend a show at the Fox. [Completed August 10, 2006. Description forthcoming!]
32. Coach an Odyssey of the Mind team.
33. Write Damaris. [Completed March 9, 2005. Now I just have to keep it up!]
34. Go to India and see the Taj Mahal and my parents’ family villages (gaos).
35. Call my aunts (on my mom’s side, the ones who live in the States) once a week.
36. Tile the lower part of my kitchen walls so they aren’t stained with spaghetti sauce splatters. And also so the next time my cooking splatters, I can just wipe off the stain.
37. Reduce my credit card bill by half each month. [Until September, at which point I flew somewhere every weekend for five straight weeks, I did this through all of 2006, so I'm counting it.]
38. Take regular tennis lessons. You know, the kind where I go every week and actually learn something. After all, that expensive racket can’t continue to collect dust in my catch-all closet.
39. Clean out my catch-all closet.
40. Buy and send all my various presents (birthdays, Eids, anniversaries) on time. And by “on time,” I mean so they arrive on the appropriate day, not that I send them off on the day of the event.
41. Attend a show on Broadway.
42. Attend every taraweeh prayer I am allowed during the month of Ramadan. [Completed Ramadan 2006. I am giving myself credit for this for doing two consecutive years of only missing one night. Insha'Allah, next year will be the year I actually do it, but I definitely tried very hard these past two years.]
43. The ones that I am not allowed, offer to babysit for a friend so she can go without worrying about the kids. [Completed Ramadan 2006, when I watched Ibo so Maryam could participate in Qiyam-ul-Lail.]
44. Subscribe to the New Yorker. And then actually read it regularly instead of letting it pile up so it looks pretty and intellectual in my magazine bin.
45. Host the Evans Girls holiday party (or, to quote Mary, “Winter Gathering”) again. [Completed April 15, 2006. Description forthcoming!]
46. Contribute in some way to a global volunteer project. The least contribution would be to send money, and the most would be to send myself. We’ll see.
47. Shift my important e-mail over to Gmail and away from Bellsouth. [Completed February 27, 2007.]
48. Bake and decorate a wedding cake, just for the fun of it.
49. Double the amount of money I give to charity every year. [Completed October 19, 2006.]
50. Learn Arabic.
51. Participate in some kind of march (e.g. peace rally, protesting an amendment, etc.)
52. Be nice to Ken and Ivan. … okay, yeah, that won’t happen, but it looks good on the list! [Completed October 22, 2006. Ha! I did it this year, during Ramadan. Even they will agree.]
53. Work on a Habitat for Humanity house.
54. Finish reading the entire Quran — in Arabic and English both — during the month of Ramadan. And make sure to read regularly when NOT in the month of Ramadan.
55. See a movie at Screen on the Green. [Completed June 22, 2006.]
56. See a live Falcons game. Or any live football game for that matter.
57. Regularly go to bed at a decent hour and wake up at a decent hour, especially on weekends.
58. Make Sunday brunch every week — pancakes and muffins and omelets, mmm. [Completed during the summer of 2007.]
59. Go to Australia.
60. Say each of my five prayers on time every day. Something I should already be doing anyway. [Completed January 2007, with a little help from Imam Magid.]
61. Take a cooking class for something fun and unimportant — pastries or appetizers or something.
62. Read more in general, making sure my reading material is a nice mix of styles and genres. Read regularly to be more informed and also for fun. And most importantly, start reading for good writing again. [Completed in 2006. I've read a lot, and I think I've satisfied this requirement. Details forthcoming!]
63. Memorize ten more Quranic surahs.
64. Move into a bigger house. Maybe.
65. STOP OBSESSING SO MUCH.
66. Attend a show at the Alliance.
67. Get another abaya. [Completed January 14, 2005. And not just one, either!]
68. Go to Europe and do all the touristy things.
69. Spend a day at Stone Mountain and stay for the light show afterwards, regardless of how redneck it is or how much traffic there will be afterwards.
70. Learn to forgive. And I mean really, truly, wholeheartedly forgive without holding onto the least bit of resentment even when the subject of my forgiveness isn’t entirely worthy of it. [Completed Ramadan 2006, with a little bit of help from Hamza Yusuf.]
71. Learn to be more patient.
72. Re-read the Anne of Green Gables series. [Completed May 11, 2005. Thoughts forthcoming!]
73. Go swimming. (Due to various clothing-related and gender-related issues, I have not been able to go swimming in years, though I love it so.)
74. Participate in the Breast Cancer 3-Day (or the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer). [Completed August 12, 2007. Description forthcoming!]
75. Spend a couple of days in Gatlinburg in the summer again. I’m okay skipping the $20 nap, though!
76. See the third Star Wars movie even though I kind of don’t want to. [Completed May 21, 2005. Description forthcoming!]
77. Drink 8 glasses of water every day.
78. Get TiVo.
79. FINALLY organize that family vacation we’ve been discussing for years. This is going to have to be in the later part of the 1001 days, as I am going to be hurting for vacation days next year.
80. Learn how to put henna on people’s hands, notably mine.
81. Go geocaching since I never got to before.
82. Stay up until at least two a.m. on all the possible Lailatul Qadr nights. [Completed Ramadan 2007.]
83. Have a picnic at Piedmont Park. [Completed June 22, 2006. Details forthcoming, but the short version is that we did it before Screen on the Green this year!]
84. Go horseback riding.
85. Learn to make Indian-style bread (naan, parathay, all of it!)
86. Sponsor a child in Afghanistan or Iraq or some other impoverished country.
87. Influence political action on the part of Muslims in my community and on the part of non-Muslims in my community. Influence political action that is tolerant and open-minded and geared towards a stronger America, not a more bigoted one.
88. Grow roses.
89. Take a painting class. Or a pottery class. Or both.
90. Go to a NASCAR race… but only if the NASCAR guys themselves take me.
91. Get an area rug for the living room floor.
92. See another Cubs game at Wrigley Field. [Completed May 10, 2007. Pictures coming soon!]
93. Clean my car and KEEP IT CLEAN.
94. Go back to Wired and Fired and make something cute and fun.
95. Make a quilt! (I’ll pause now so you can all work out your hysterical laughter.)
96. Vote in ALL the elections, not just the final presidential one. The primaries, the 2006 election, all of it.
97. Go somewhere to see the fireworks on the 4th of July. I’ve skipped them the last couple of years… [Completed July 4, 2005. Description forthcoming!]
98. Have all the boys (Aamir, Mansoor, and Aasif, not a random sampling, thanks very much) over for dinner at the same time, once every month. Not doable anymore since Aamir’s in Chicago and Aasif’s in Athens. Here’s the replacement: Visit Sohail bhaijan. [Completed September 17, 2006.]
99. Donate to the Georgia Tech Alumni Association.
100. Carve a jack-o’lantern. And it can smile if it wants to!
101. Get 8 hours of sleep a night.