The Backstory: In 2010, I have set a goal for myself to experience one new thing per week, every week of the year. Each week, I try something I’ve never done before, and then I document my experience here, regardless of whether I succeed or fail. Read more here.
Week: 35
The Challenge/New Experience: Build a crystal radio (FAIL)
I had very high hopes for this week’s Challenge, Dear Reader. I found what I thought was a very simple tutorial online, and I read it over and thought, “Shoot, I could do that in a couple of hours!” By Week 35, you’d think I’d have learned that things are not always as simple as they seem.
I got started on this project on Saturday, and didn’t give up on it until yesterday, so I definitely feel like I put forth a pretty good effort. If successful, the little radio was supposed to pick up nearby AM stations, of which there are several. But the best I could manage was a tiny, brief, faint bit of static.
I even enlisted the help of my radio buddy Duke, who was very patient with all of my many questions, and very encouraging all along the way. He gave me a lot of good tips, and I tried all his suggestions, but we never quite got it working. I have already decided that I will be giving it another try in a month or so. I’ll post a follow-up once I get it working, and when I do I’ll try to post a little audio.
A few pictures are below, with some captions explaining the steps. I’m bummed it didn’t work, I had a really good feeling about this one. Back to the drawing board!
The Backstory: In 2010, I have set a goal for myself to experience one new thing per week, every week of the year. Each week, I try something I’ve never done before, and then I document my experience here, regardless of whether I succeed or fail. Read more here.
Week: 34
The Challenge/New Experience: Open a wine bottle with my shoe. (FAIL)
Several weeks back, maybe even a month or so back, my Mom sent me a link to a video of a man opening a wine bottle with a shoe, suggesting that I might give it a try as a New Thing of the Week some time. As I have never attempted to open a wine bottle with my shoe, it certainly qualifies. The narration is in French, and while my French is a little rusty, it’s mostly visual anyway — bang the bottle against a wall enough times and the cork just eases out on its own. Very easy.
Except, it’s not very easy. Maybe some of that French narration is explaining that this only works with certain types of wine, or certain types of bottles or corks. All I know is, I can’t get that cork to budge at all.
I decided to search out a few more videos, hopefully some in English. One of the first hits I found was this site, where the blogger was just as unsuccessful as I was.
It didn’t stop me from trying, of course, but it also didn’t stop me from failing. It was an excellent excuse to open up a nice bottle of Two Buck Chuck chardonnay, though.
The Backstory: In 2010, I have set a goal for myself to experience one new thing per week, every week of the year. Each week, I try something I’ve never done before, and then I document my experience here, regardless of whether I succeed or fail. Read more here.
Week: 33
The Challenge/New Experience: A Day in Pictures
Here’s another thing I’ve always wanted to do: to take a photographic record of one entire day, a day in the life of Stennie if you will. This might be a more interesting task if my life itself was more interesting. On the other hand, presumably if I had a more exciting life I would have less time to be taking pictures of it all the time.
There were some limitations to this. The workday, for example. I didn’t want to post pictures of co-workers without their consent, and I didn’t want to spend time going around and getting their consent either. There’s also confidential customer information, etc., which would clearly not be a good idea to share. Beyond that, much of my work day basically “looks” the same — here is my computer and I am working on it.
So the photographic record of my work day is on the sketchy side, but other than that — if you were me, here’s how your day would have looked on Wednesday, August 18th (NOTE: mouse-over the pictures to get a caption. Click on one to pop the photo out and get a “Next” option to scroll through):
The Backstory: In 2010, I have set a goal for myself to experience one new thing per week, every week of the year. Each week, I try something I’ve never done before, and then I document my experience here, regardless of whether I succeed or fail. Read more here.
Week: 32 (and a half)
The Challenge/New Experience: Learn to “Rock the Cradle” with a yo-yo.
So, technically the challenge is to learn one new thing per week, and this particular thing took me about a week and a half to learn. This is mostly due to the extreme difficulty of trying to use a yo-yo if you have cats around.
I’ve had several yo-yos during my lifetime, I’m sure I had them when I was a little kid and up through middle school. But I remember having two or three that I was quite fond of when I was in high school. That’s because in high school I had convinced myself that it was cool to be completely the opposite of cool, and so I played the harmonica, and listened to the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and played with a yo-yo.
I got pretty good at The Forward Pass (which I called “shotgun” because I didn’t know there was a name for it) and Around the World (although I only could do it once, not three times like the guy in the video). I always wanted to do Rock the Cradle but tended to bang myself in the head or get the string all twisted up when I tried it, so I gave up. We didn’t have the internets in my day, you know. You couldn’t just go and look up videos of yo-yo tricks. Just as well, because I never would have gotten any homework done.
So last week, and part of this week, I set about trying to master this trick, based on this Instructable. The cats, as mentioned above, got in the way of this a little bit. Both of them thought the yo-yo was a toy for them to play with, not for me to play with. I had to lock myself in the bedroom to practice. I finally got it down, so I present it for you here:
FYI: That was not the first take. That was actually the third take, although I tried to get it better several times. Because you have been so patient with me and my tardiness, I present: Outtakes!
The Backstory: In 2010, I have set a goal for myself to experience one new thing per week, every week of the year. Each week, I try something I’ve never done before, and then I document my experience here, regardless of whether I succeed or fail. Read more here.
Week: 32
I have made a poor showing this week, Dear Reader. Although I do have a New Thing that I’ve been attempting to master, I’ve failed at it. Of course I’ve failed at a few other things — rock candy, car stereo installation, etc. But this week I wasn’t even able to document my failure, so I’ve got nothin’. This week I leave you empty-handed, but next week I will be back with two New Things, how does that sound? Then I will be caught up.
To tide you over, here is brave Scout the Kitty getting to know Buster:
I know, I know. Three weeks ago, I said Buster and I were going to go it alone after the loss of Boo. I said Buster never liked Boo (he never liked Rimsey either) and he didn’t want a playmate.
But I’ve been watching Buster the last few weeks and he’s been pretty lonely. I’ve caught him looking for Boo on several occasions. He’s been extra talkative and clingy with me. So I reconsidered. Maybe, I thought, when the time is right, and I find just the right cat, we’ll go for it.
I’ll cut through the backstory here — the point is I adopted a five month old kitten on Monday. Her name is Scout (as a hat tip to Boo, we’re keeping the name in the To Kill a Mockingbird realm, and like her namesake she is feisty and tomboyish). She is white with black spots and looks like a Holstein cow. I have some still pictures but she’s very shy of the flash, so video turned out better:
My plan had been to keep her in the bedroom on her own for a week or so and see how she did, and then introduce her to the rest of the apartment, and Buster, after that. But in the last couple of days she’s had some quick meetings with Buster and they’ve turned out pretty well — a little hissing here and there, but mostly curious and interested rather than fighty. So tonight when she was crying in the bedroom by herself, I opened the door and let her wander out. Both cats seem to be taking it pretty well.
There has been only one thing that worried me about her since I brought her home Monday night. She wasn’t eating or drinking anything, and I couldn’t find any evidence that she was eliminating either. Happy and peppy and healthy-seeming otherwise, but just plain wouldn’t eat (last night she had a few bites of kibble), and if she was going to the bathroom it wasn’t in her box.
Tonight she made me very happy by downing a half-can of Fancy Feast, and after her excursion to the living room, with a tiny bit of prompting from me, she went into the litterbox and took the longest pee I have ever seen in my life. Longer, I think, than Tom Hanks’s in League of Their Own. Bless her heart. I think she was just plain stressed out from this big change. Now she’s the picture of relaxation. I guess tonight she finally felt comfortable in her new home.
It’s been a long time since I had a kitten around the house — ten years, in fact, since Buster first came home. Scout has lived all five months of her life in a medium-sized kennel with her brothers at the pet store. My apartment is the whole big wide world to her and there is much in it to discover.
Her chief fascinations right now is the television and the large mirror on my closet doors. She cannot grasp the concept of mirrors — to her, that is a whole other room she can’t get into, and some other white cat with black stripes. Oddly, she seems to recognize me in the mirror just fine. The television is another matter entirely, she is captivated by it and we haven’t even turned on Animal Planet or Winged Migration yet.
So, please help me in welcoming Scout to Stennieville. I’m sure you’ll be hearing a lot more about her from now on.
The Backstory: In 2010, I have set a goal for myself to experience one new thing per week, every week of the year. Each week, I try something I’ve never done before, and then I document my experience here, regardless of whether I succeed or fail. Read more here.
Week: 31
The Challenge/New Experience: Bake blueberry muffins from scratch.
All right. I know you guys must be thinking at this point, “Geez, Stennie, what have you done? You’ve never even baked blueberry muffins before?” Honestly, it’s like I suddenly discovered my kitchen when I reached the age of forty. I will tell you this now because it is the truth: Prior to this week, I have never even owned a muffin pan. So yes, this is a true first. They can’t all be the cigar box guitar, folks.
I got this recipe from Metafilter, in the comments at Metatalk in fact. Sometimes at Metatalk the conversation runs a little fiery, and then once everyone’s said their peace and it’s all run its course, people are all friends again and they start busting out the recipes. It’s an odd tradition. A user named fixedgear posted this Blueberry Muffins Recipe recently, so I snagged it. Pictures and taste test after the jump.
