12. Take Andrea to the ballet, a play/musical, and a symphony

A long time ago, I dated a girl who was very artsy. About every other month, we'd go out to dinner someplace fancy, then go to one of the above events. We didn't do any musicals, but we did do the other two. 

As a parent, kid-free time is at a huge premium. The last time we went out to just dinner was months ago. The last movie we saw together was Saving Mr. Banks. I just looked. 

That came out over two years ago. 

We need this.

So, why these activites?  We have a ballet company in Columbus.  They do an awesome Dracula every year.  My wife really likes The Nutcracker, so we may go see that too.

Plays are cheap to see in a community theater.  There's a high school nearby.  We'd really be supporting out community by going to that.

Also, I just looked up my town and realized there's a college here.  Their theater department can probably hook me up with this goal too.  (When I was at OU, they did a badass A Midsummer Night's Dream.  (Yes, I just described a Shakespeare comedy as badass.)

Musical is probably the same as the high school play, but some broadway musicals tour through Columbus, so there's a chance for that.

Also, in Columbus, we have The Columbus Symphony.  That'll definitely be a dress up event.

One other thing about this goal, they all have to be done within a year.  (Not necessarily the same calendar year, but once we go to a play, we have 364 days to go to a ballet, musical, and a symphony.)  

11. Plan a killer 40th birthday party

I've had some terrible birthdays. The point of this blog is solidify my feelings about certain things going forward, but know, some of them have been pretty terrible. 

Kind of weird, but I'm very good at planning parties. My undergrad was in public relations, and one of the big side effects of that major is knowing how to plan a get together. 

The problem is where to start. Will it be a theme party? (Star Wars would go over well with kids and adults.) Who is getting invited? 90% of my friends are my neighbors. I haven't really kept up with any of my college or high school friends. Will there be alcohol? (Probably.) What kind of food? Should that follow a theme? 

Lots of decisions. 

Realistically, I won't plan this one until a year before it happens. It gives me to years to not think about this goal until it really matters. The only problem with that, in the last year, every goal I haven't completed will matter.

10. Find something I have in common with Andrea

This one is a doozie.  I got married almost nine years ago.  We were both in different places in our lives and while our marriage worked then, I've realized over the years, we don't currently have much in common now.  (We don't dislike each other or anything. Our hobbies were going to movies and bar hopping. Both are difficult with kids. )

My wife has this thing where her eyes focus at different speeds and the fallout of it is she can't look at fast moving stuff on screen.  So, we can't play videogames together.  My other big hobby is reading, which isn't really a group thing.

We have kids together, but kids aren't really a hobby. We also have Netflix, but also not the same as going. We don't really watch stuff together. I'm not sure why.

About three years ago, we moved to the suburbs. I realized we throw great parties and any time we go to a neighbor's house for a party, we both have a blast. That's sort of the part of parties, but when we go, it feels fresh and new and exciting like we're dating again. 

So, I was about to mark this down as done for that, but I don't really like the idea of having alcohol in common. We don't just drink, we actually socialize and stuff, but I wanted to mark it done with something we don't need a gathering of 30 people to do. 

Well, the other hobby I have is running. Andrea runs too. We both started around the same time. The other thing is, we talk about it. We plan races together. We talk about them after we're done. We're going on a vacation this year where we're running a half marathon together. 

It's also somethin that's pretty constructive to do. So, based on that, it's marked as complete. 

Also, sorry if this post is weird or off kilter, I just had surgery. I'm a little groggy while Andrea is inside Giant Eagle getting my prescriptions and I'm still probably under the influence of the stuff I had in the hospital. Also, I usually do these on my computer and the Blogger app for the iPhone doesn't let you see what you just wrote unless you keep flipping around. 

Monthly update

One of the important things about having a to do list, is looking at your to do list. 

Every month, on the 24th, at 9:00 p.m., my phone tells me to review my Forty Before Forty List. It's a good way to make myself take stock and think about how much time I have left, and spend about four minutes a month planning for somethings I have three and a half years to accomplish. 

Anyway, I was going to post something about an actual goal, but in addition to the steps I'm doing toward each goal, I wanted to show what I do to keep it on my mind. 

Sorry if this is short, but I'm recovering from surgery and hurt really bad.

9. Write something that gets published

I lot of doing this was put forth with the idea I would create something lasting.  It's not terribly effective to start thinking about your legacy when you're 80.

Anyway, I work for an academic institution.  At some point, I'm going to get a graduate degree.  (It's sort of inevitable.  I don't really want one, but it's free and will advance my career and it's mostly free.)

Going back a ways, I have wanted to be a writer for years.  I really had the dream in college, and it's faded somewhat, but never really gone away.

I'm capable of writing pretty well.  I frequently get asked to edit co-worker's papers.  I should be able to produce something.

The thing is, I have no idea what to write.  Part of starting this blog was a slightly better way of codifying this goal.  It's a baby step.  Combining this with writing in my diary might beg me to focus my vision on something and possibly open some doors with whomever I write for.  This is a goal that'll take some follow up, but I think I can pull it off in the next 3-1/2 years.

Quick confession

When I started doing it, I had gotten the idea to pass along some knowledge or at least force myself to pay more attention to these goals. 

Something happened right after I wrote my first post. I found out I have cancer. 

I just had surgery, (like two hours ago,) and have a 99.5% chance of being cancer free now, but I felt like I was being disingenuous because I feel some extra urgency to do the things in this list. I really didn't want this to be an, "I have cancer," blog. I was shooting toward saying, "Check out all these ways I'm improving my life and you can too," then, "let me tell you about my cancer treatments. 

I am bummed because I can't run for a month. I'm not required to eat a ton of ice cream, but that may replace the running. 

8. Find something I have in common with Gabe

When I started kicking around the idea of doing this, I wanted to do something that gave my life meaning.  Not just to me, but to others.  Granted, I just wrote one of these about finding commonality with a five year old, but now I need to do it with a two year old.  

Granted, the process is basically the same, (except Gabe isn't nearly into Star Wars as much as his brother,) but my kids are really different than each other.  

The thing that makes this difficult, is Gabe is two.  I'm 36.  Will I have something in common with him by the time he's six?  When I was six, I could read, but found books without pictures unsporting, if not an outright betrayal.  

Gabe seems to like the Hulk and superheroes in general.  

The hardest part with him right now is he's knee deep in the Oedipal stage and getting him to do anything with me when his mom is around is really tough.  

I think he's going to be the intellectual kid of my two though.  He's really curious and works really hard to get past any barrier he encounters.  

Even if we don't actually have stuff we do, having a person you can talk to that thinks the way you do is a pretty good thing.  

7. Find something I have in common with Alexander

When I started kicking around the idea of this list, my older son was three. I love my son, and we talk, but we didn't really have much in common. My hobbies don't translate well into kid stuff.

I love to read. I love to play video games. I love to play board games.

My son is now still getting his head around reading. It'll be a while before he figures out what a genre is and even longer to see if we have any of the same ones in common.

There are some board games you can play with kids, but they're not really fun for adults.

He really got into Minecraft about a month ago, but he just really walks around and looks at stuff. He hasn't built anything. (He got me into it, and I'm thinking about recreating Castlevania.)

Still not something I can say we really have in common.

I was at a Halloween party a few months ago, and I got talking to one of my neighbors about the list, and she saw I hadn't checked this one and she said, "Star Wars." While it's true he loves Star Wars, I'm holding back on it until he comes up to me excited about something I normally get excited. Also, he's five.  It could just be a phase.  I don't want to really put all my eggs in this one basket until he's a little older and I can say we definitely have something I consider lifelong in common.

However, we're going to see the Force Awakens when it opens this Friday.

I'm not sure what it will take for me to believe I'll feel we really have something in common.  It's one of those things like love.  You sort of know it when you feel it.

6. Learn to sketch

(Leaning against a fence, chewing on a long piece of grass.)

Ever watch Dances With Wolves?  I did once.  It was a long movie I watched a long time ago.

(Walks toward the camera.)

Hi, I'm Michael Tighe.  I'm here to talk about how my insecurities led me to try to improve myself.  

So, in this movie, there's a guy who keeps a diary.  In the diary, he sometimes draws pictures like it ain't no thing.  He just busts them out all fancy like.  

When I first saw the movie, I was blown away by how long it was.  Also, I really wanted to be able to draw.  

Now to be honest, this is a goal I haven't really touched.  I bought myself a sketch pad, but making time to sit and practice is really hard.  

Also, I want to watch some videos on it, but also, it's making the time to do it.  

Before you walk away and think this whole post was a wash, let me point something out to you.  I said, "making the time," not, "finding the time."  

Here's another lesson I've learned from sitting and watching screens.  On the amazing show Leverage, there's an episode where you find out Elliot grows all his own food.  Another team member asks where he finds the time, and he says back something like, "you have to make the time."  

You live a lot of your life on autopilot.  You get up, shower, eat breakfast, drive to work, maybe skip some of these steps, and you don't really think about what you're doing while you're doing it.  If you don't have goals, or at least small plans, you're not going to get anything done other than probably land somewhere near your expected trajectory.  

I woke up today with the goal in mind to write a blog post, make some breakfast, feed my kids and make one of them lunch.  

My next goal is to write in my diary at some point today and clean the basement.  

None of those seem all that amazing, but without these goals, I would shove some waffles in the toaster, make my older son lunch, and play Minecraft for like nine hours.  

5. Read Appendix N, (or an updated version)

I used to read a lot.  (There was one summer where I'm pretty sure I did a book a day.)  I'm getting older and I have way more responsibilities than school-age me and reading is tough.

I do read the news every day, and I read a lot of articles related to my work, but actual books are getting rarer and rarer.  Even my favorite authors don't get looked at too much any more.

For a person that loves reading as much as I do, it's pretty pathetic.

So, I have a few reading based goals in my list.

The first is to read Appendix N.

What is Appendix N?  It starts with something nerdy, (which I'll admit, I totally am.)

A long time ago, a guy named Gary Gygax and his friend Dave Arneson invented a game called Dungeons & Dragons.  With sparing you the details of how it actually works, it's a game with three rulebooks.  (One for the player, and two for the referee.)  In the original Dungeon Master's Guide, (one of the books for the referee,) there were a bunch of appendices.  I never read the original, but I do know they went through at least the letter N.

Appendix N was just a suggested list of reading of fantasy authors Gary Gygax really liked and contributed to the stories he wrote.

Here's the original list.

They're up to the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons now and Appendix N is in The Player's Handbook and it's called Appendix E.  It also has a lot more books in it.  (57 authors, many of whom they cite, "the complete works.")

That's a ton of reading.

Granted, some of these books I've read, but it's still a lot to do.

To pair it down, I'm going to read at least the first book in every series they recommend, but except for H.P. Lovecraft, whom I've already read his complete works, I'm not really looking to add any author's complete works to my list of stuff I've read unless I really love what they write.

(So I just cut the list down from hundreds of books, (probably about 300,) to about 100, I'm going to cheat further.  (The cool thing about being older is nobody really cares if you cut corners as long as the finished work is up to par.  Being the arbiter of whether I'm letting myself gives me a good amount of leeway.)

I have a subscription to Audible.  For those of you that don't know, Audible is the world's leading source of audio entertainment.  (Aside from iTunes or Pandora I'm guessing.)

Every month, I get a credit for a free audiobook.  I'm doing the longest books through audible and reading the rest on my iPad.  If something is in the public domain, (i.e., free,) I do the iBooks version.

So far, I'm about 13 authors† in.  (About half of those were read ahead of time, so I've actually audiobooked about six so far.  I'm on the second book of Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy.  I really like him, so I'm, "reading," more.

Also, I still read faster than I listen, (even with Audible letting you listen at 3X speed,) but it's problematic reading an actual book in the car, (the one time of day I have a spare 20 minutes,) so I stick with it.

4. Own a new car I really like

This one is pretty awful, I'll admit, but there are underlying reasons for it that are at least a little less awful.  (I had originally written my underlying reasons were, "at least a little noble," but honestly, this one is pure selfishness.)

I've never bought myself a new car.

My car-owning history looks something like this:

1996:  I drove a 1991 Honda Accord my parents let me use when I got my license and they got a new car.
2001:  I got a new Acura Integra my parents got me as a graduation gift from college.
2004:  I drove an old Honda Civic I bought when the Integra was stolen.
2006:  I got my parents' old Buick.  (This was the car they bought to replace the Honda I got in 1996.)
2011:  I inherited my mom's old Camry.  (It was only chronologically old.  It still has very few miles on it.  She bought it right before her cancer became a lot more severe so she didn't put miles on it, and I only use it to drive about 100 miles a week.)

I've only ever bought one car in my life, and it was an emergency car I spent like $1,000 on.  (It's the Civic I bought in 2004.  That car didn't, as I remember it, have heat.)

Prior to marriage, my wife had never owned a new car.  She's on her second now.  (We got a Honda Element with our first kid, and a Toyota Sienna with our second.)

I really want a new car.  It's selfish, but I'm mostly ok with that.

Moreover, I want a new car I really really like.  It's going to be something I have to save for and get myself financially really in order for.

The new car I want is a Tesla.  Specifically, I want a Tesla Model S 85D.

I want a car that's fast, safe, reliable, and one that'll never make me stand outside a gas pump while it's cold out.

In New Jersey, (where I grew up,) it's illegal to pump your own gas.  I didn't learn how a gas pump worked until I was 19.  It was a little awkward the first time as my best friend's little sister had to walk me through the steps.

I really resent the time sink of getting gas.  I hate taking time out of whatever I'm doing otherwise to stop my car for 10 minutes and hang out in the cold, (or heat, I'm really a wuss when it comes to outdoor stuff,) and stare awkwardly at other people staring at my dirty car.

To do this, before I'm 40, I need to rearrange how I spend my money, (do it much less,) and how I earn.

Basically, I need to make sure the money I earn is enough where I can easily spend $100,000 on a car.

With my current job, I haven't hit the ceiling yet, but I'm slowly approaching it.  So, I'm looking at diversifying how I make money.

I bought a condo I'm going to rent out, which, if everything goes really well, I should be making a pure profit on in about six years.  I'll be over 40 by the time that happens, but in four years, I don' think I'll feel bad about dipping into what I make from it to buy a car.

3. Run a six-minute mile

See my last post for information about me and athleticism.  (I.e., there is very little to speak of.)

However, I want to see if I can run a six-minute mile.

I've never been a fast runner, and this is the standard for physical fitness, so I'm going to work on it.

When I started running, my mile time was about 15 minutes.  (That's also the same speed as a brisk walk.)

It took me about six months to get my speed down to about 12 minutes.

A few years later, my speed is about ten minutes.

If I can take a minute off my mile every year, I can do it.

However, there's something to be said about entropy.

I'm 36.  My body isn't really speeding up.  It's taken a lot of work to get where I am now, and it's going to be a lot of work to finish this one.

I run about two-to-three times a week.  I typically run somewhere between four and eight miles.

My body can tell if I haven't run and it tends to make me feel bad.

Yes, this is a short post, but it's very much a work in progress, and most of the other running stuff went into the post about running a marathon.

2. Run a marathon

This one is completed already, but it's my last one that's completed until number ten so we'll get to the work in progress one soon.

Let's do some background on me.

I have a medical condition called exercise-induced bronchospasm.  It's one of the two conditions commonly referred to as asthma.  95% of asthma cases are allergen caused, which means, if you come into contact with something you're allergic to, your throat closes.  My kind of asthma is caused by breathing heavy.  So, if I laugh really hard, have a sneezing fit, cough, or. wait for it... exercise, I can't breathe.

I spent my entire childhood, (really up to the age of 25,) thinking I was out of shape.  While I was out of shape, (unless you count squamous as a shape,) it was because any attempt at exercise on my part led me to getting super out of breath, making a weird whistling noise in my throat, and having to have a good sit down for like an hour.

One day at work, (I work in a hospital,) we were called to a code, and because our work elevators are slow, I took the stairs up seven flights.  When we got to the code, it ended up someone who had a seizure, (but was otherwise ok,) and I luckily didn't need to do chest compressions or anything.  (Those are tiring.)

However, one of the respiratory therapists said to me, "do you have your inhaler?"  (The sound I make when I'm mid asthma attack sounds like a cross between the velociraptors in Jurassic Park and a dying walrus.)

I asked her, "what for?

She said, "for your asthma."

I scoffed, (or probably would have done the equivalent if I wasn't having trouble with my air exchange,) and said, "I don't have asthma."

She scoffed back, (she really did, she could breathe just fine and didn't mind showing off,) and said, "Yes you do."

I asked my doctor about it, and I have an inhaler now.

Getting my inhaler was a magical experience.  The only thing I can really liken it to is the scene 20 minutes into every superhero movie where the hero is figuring out their powers.

Except my power was the ability to run 25 feet instead of around 10.

Still, 25 feet man, that's pretty amazing.  (Cue, "Chariots of Fire," theme.)

The biggest change I noticed was when I biked.  I had always been a biker and had slowly built up my ability to go long distances, but I wasn't very fast and at certain inclines I still had asthma attacks.

That was gone.

It was pretty freaking amazing.

Now for the second part, where everything gets bad again.  (Think the Empire Strikes Back kind of stuff.)

When I met my wife, she was a smoker.  Being the accommodating boyfriend, I became a smoker too.

I didn't smoke that often initially, but nursing school weirdly makes smokers out of people.  I don't know if it's still that way, but I smoked a lot in nursing school.  I managed to quit near the end of nursing school, then started up again sometime after Andrea started smoking again after our son was born.  (Model parent I am.)

I had been trying to quit for a while, and eventually managed to make it stick, (quitting smoking is really hard,) and about six month later I started running.

I'd never been a runner.  Years of being the kid that was too fat to breathe when I tried somewhat soured me to doing it.

I thought one day, "hey, I can probably try running."  I'm not sure why I thought that.  There was a race in Columbus, (actually two,) that if you signed up for both, they gave you a nice jacket.  I wanted a jacket, so I signed up.

Beginning running was awful.  With my inhaler, I could run approximately five houses.  (The place where I lived the houses were packed pretty closely together.)

Because I'm a tech junkie, I started using apps to track my running.  I tried a few, and settled on Run Keeper.  It's free, tracks a lot of stuff for you, and if you upgrade to the paid one, it does some stuff that's genuinely worth paying for.  It was pretty helpful in showing me what a fatass I was, but also showing my slight moves towards non-fatassness.  (As an aside, my spellcheck highlights, "fatass," but not, "non-fatassness.")

Then something magical happened.

A bunch of English people made a game.  It's called Zombies, Run!  It's a running app, it has a cool story, it uses your GPS, and it teaches you to run intervals.

The gist is, you're a survivor of the zombie apocalypse.  You're live in a colony of other survivors and need to go out and collect supplies.  While running, you listen to a radio drama kind of thing about what your mission is and where you're going to get supplies.  Between the radio drama stuff, the app plays your music.

Every so often, you'll hear a voice say something like, "picked up [some necessary item for the town.]"  Then other times, you'll hear a voice say, "zombies detected."  You need to run hard for about a minute.  In that time, if you can keep your pace up for a minute, you'll evade the zombies.  If you don't, the zombies catch you, and you have to throw your stuff at them to get away.

The app gave me a reason to run.  I wanted to find out what happened next in Abel Township and what Netrophil was up to.  The story is really good and it goes by seasons.  Each season has some kind of big bag and you end up being really integral to the story.  (The hippie chick from the last season is probably one of the best videogame bad guys I've seen, or I guess heard, in years.)

Also, the app syncs all your data to Run Keeper.

It got me running longer and longer distances.  I started running entire 5Ks.  (Instead of running some, and walking most.)  Then I started doing 10Ks.  (There aren't very many of these around for some reason.)  Then 15Ks.  (Those of you that live in the US, and aren't familiar with the metic system, 5 kilometers is 3.1 miles.  So, empirically, those are 3.1, 6.2, and 9.3 miles each.)

I ran my first half marathon on my 35th birthday.

It was pretty awesome.  Andrea met me after the race with the kids and we went to Target for a change of clothes, then out to meet my dad for lunch.

I ran three more half marathons in the next year.

Decided to run a marathon this year.  I started training, (basically just running longer distances,) and over a couple of months, I went from running typically 4-1/2 miles, to running 18-20.

Training for marathons is a bear.  You have to start thinking about things like hydration and electrolytes and nipple bleeding.

The first two of those I fixed by running with a bottle of Gatorade, drinking a good amount every three miles, and refilling it from peoples' sprinklers.  The second thing I fixed by running with a compression shirt.

I ran the Beat the Blerch Marathon.  (Most races have somewhat goofy names.  This one has a goofier name, but the story behind it is pretty cool.)

Also, in case you're not an avid runner, a marathon is 26.2 miles.  The first guy to run it was a Greek soldier.  He ran from Athens to Marathon, fought some Persians, ran back, said, "victory," and died.  A kind of cool additional fact, the Greek word for victory is, "shoe company."

Some other stuff about running and me:  I can't run on a treadmill. If I'm running outside, and I get bored, I'm typically a few miles from my house.  I have to run to get back.  If I'm running on a treadmill in the basement, I'm literally 20 feet from my PlayStation.  I've gotten off treadmills in 30 seconds because I got that bored that fast.  (I have a pretty awesome case of ADHD.)

I have way too much running equipment for a guy that's not really into running.  Taking stock of my crap one day made me realize I was a runner.  Also, having a conversation about, "hydration strategy," with my wife was another epiphany.

You'll hear a little more about this when I get to goal 10.

1. Make a solid piece of furniture by hand

This idea grew out of a few places.  First, I'm an avid gamer, (think boardgames, but I spend way too much time playing videogames too,) and many years ago, I saw a Geek Chic table and got really jealous.

Thinking I'd never get permission from my wife, I started thinking about how to build one.

The thing with woodworking is, it's pretty permanent.  Aside from couches in college towns, most furniture tends to stick around for a long time.  It gets passed down, or stored, or resold, or whatever. It never really goes away.

Part of having a list of things to accomplish is itself something I'm leaving behind, (at least if I'm telling lots of people about it.)

I did a lot of Googling for, "D&D table."  There are a lot of things out there, but none of them were the simple design I was looking for.  Also, any of the ones I did like didn't have plans.

I tried for a few months to make plans for the table; I even bought and cut wood once.  However, nothing seemed to work out right.

I'm not going to say I gave up, but I was looking for other kinds of furniture plans on line for something simpler I could build.

I knew I had a goal, but I didn't think this would be it.

The final nail in the coffin came when my wife asked me for another Dyson vacuum.  (We got one as a wedding gift, (her request,) then we got another one when they came out with the stick vacuum, and this specific one was a newer model of the stick vacuum.)  Jokingly, I told her we could get it, if I could get a Geek Chic table.

She agreed.

I have no idea why she thought it was an ok idea to spend $4,000 on a table in exchange for a $400 vacuum, but whatever.  There's a lesson here about negotiating.  The lesson I learned was to rely on blind luck, but there's probably something better.

So the big boardgame table was out.

About a year later, our younger son got a wooden train for his birthday.  We got the idea to buy a train table for him and this way we could get him more trains, then he could have them in the table and not on the floor.

I looked up train table and found some plans.  (Somewhat regrettably, these plans could easily be altered for a boardgame table, but no one advertises train tables as multi-use gaming tables.

So, I downloaded the plans, bought some wood, and got to it.

I did have the tools to build it, but, there's a caveat to that:  I had been doing smaller projects around the house that needed the tools for other things.  I had built a sandbox a few years earlier and got many of the tools then, and a few others here and there as other projects needed them.

It took me about two weeks to build the table.  I think most of that time was spent sanding.

Well, now my kids have a table for their Lego blocks.  They stay mostly off the floor, and as a dad, I've yet to step on a lego block.

The List

Before I turned 35, a web cartoonist I read mentioned something on Twitter about achieving one of his 30 before 30 goals.  Realizing I was a few years late to that train, I realized I needed something more ambitious.

So, I spent six months coming up with a list of 40 things I wanted to do before I turned 40.  Some things are really simple, some are not, but they're all worthwhile achievements.

Then, about six months ago, I heard about a podcast where two guys who are in their mid-twenties are working on purchasing Lamborghinis.  They're broadcasting, step by step, everything they're doing to get there.  They're already a little bit into the game, (they make about six figures a year now,) but they're talking about where they started, and what they have to do and change about their lives to make this possible.

Being an older guy, I realized I could also contribute something to society, (for free,) by explaining what I've done to achieve the goals I have, and show you the steps towards the goals I've achieved, and also show you what I'm doing to achieve the goals I haven't.

So, without further ado, here is the list:

1.  Make a solid piece of furniture by hand.  
2.  Run a marathon.
3.  Run a six-minute mile.
4.  Own a new car I really like.
5.  Read Appendix N, or an updated version.
6.  Learn to sketch.
7.  Find something I have in common with Alexander.
8.  Find something I have in common with Gabe.
9.  Write something that gets published.
10.  Find something I have in common with Andrea.
11.  Plan a killer 40th birthday party.
12.  Take Andrea to a ballet, a play, a musical, and a symphony.
13.  Learn to pick locks well.
14.  Become fluent in a foreign language.
15.  Drive to the west coast, or up and down the west coast.
16. Become proficient at a martial art.  
17.  Learn to fly a plane.
18.  Learn to ride a motorcycle.
19.  Coach a team.
20.  Volunteer on a regular basis somewhere.
21.  Become known to the members of a charitable organization.
22.  Make a will.
23.  Become proficient in an instrument.
24.  Plan a Disney vacation.
25.  Six-pack abs.
26.  Start work on 60 things to do before I turn 60, (focus on locations.)
27.  Triathlon.
28.  Figure out your career.
29.  Take Andrea to New England for the leaves.
30.  Read some Kurt Vonnegut.
31.  Read some Hemingway.
32.  Read that book by Proust.
33.  Wine country with Andrea.
34.  Make a habit of writing in my diary.
35.  Tough Mudder.
36.  Find out the original song for the Star Spangled Banner.
37.  Century bike ride.
38.  Court Street shuffle.
39.  Grow some plants.
40.  Get a sweet fish tank.

I plan on writing on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but I may do more often, (maybe toss in a Saturday,) if I get pretty far ahead.  I automatically have about 40 posts to write off the bat so we'll go from there.

Here's to new beginnings.