Sarah's Mission 101

969 Days to Go

2007-09-02T17:19:00.000-07:00

Last Week's Priority Goals

~~Hit the 6,000-word mark in my screenplay.~~
Complete both freelance editing projects on my current plate.
~~Finish "Catcher in the Rye."~~
~~Catalog movies.~~
Visit the farmers' market.
~~Foodblog recipe from last weekend.~~

Last Week's Secondary Goals

~~Write a blog post.~~
Organize office.
Meal plan.
Another 101 recipe.

I actually am sitting close to 10,000 words on my screenplay as of Sunday afternoon, so things are moving along quite nicely.

I managed to get one of my freelance projects done, but I still need to finish the one that's been sitting on my plate for probably three or four weeks now. I've been wanting to write my own stuff so much lately that I have had nearly zero motivation to edit someone else's. But I need to get down to business on this. No excuses this week! I managed to give one night over to my freelance work last week and still make great progress on my own writing, so I can do it again this week!

I now have pretty much our entire media library catalogued (thank you, Google Docs). This was a good step because now I know I've got several DVDs I want to sell which means extra cash in my pocket, which is always nice.

I got my fourth recipe foodblogged. Go check it out.

And onto next weeks' goals:

This Week's Priority Goals

Hit the 14,000-word mark in my screenplay.
Complete my remaining freelance editing project.
Meal plan.
Visit the farmers' market.
Status Update with Jordan
101 Recipe No. 5

This Week's Secondary Goals

Organize office.
Finish (or come close to finishing) LOTR: Return of the King.

971 Days to Go

2007-08-25T12:55:00.000-07:00

Last Week's Priority Goals

~~Get 1,000 words written for new screenplay.~~
Consolidate U.S. Bank accounts.
~~Write two more profiles from e-mail interviews.~~
Read "The Catcher in the Rye."
~~Write a blog post.~~
~~Complete another recipe from my 101 Recipes List~~.
~~Schedule a hot stone massage for my stay at a very nice hotel/spa/casino in Vegas at the end of September (spa appointments must be made a month in advance).~~

Last Week's Secondary Goals

~~Practice my violin.~~
~~Catalog books.~~
Organize office.

I actually managed to get to nearly 3,000 words in my screenplay last week, and I should hit 6,000 today with no problem. I'm really working on adopting Jerry Seinfeld's chain method, and it's done a good job keeping motivated to write this week (even on Tuesday when I'd already worked a total of 14 hours between my "real" job and freelance).

I'd also nearly finished The Catcher in the Rye last week, but I've been so swamped this week that I literally finished it about 10 minutes ago. So I'm a few days behind on my reading schedule, but I should have no trouble making that up in the next several months. Next up is Part III of The Lord of the Rings, a.k.a. The Return of the King.

I'm tabling getting my U.S. bank accounts consolidated for the moment. In practical terms, I've done it since nearly all our money is at ING now. It's just a matter of actually getting them closed. But since keeping them open is not hurting anything, I'm going to move that down on my list of priorities.

Oh, and the really exciting goal accomplished from last week is that I have officially scheduled my hot stone massage at the Red Rock Hotel, Spa and Casino in Las Vegas! It's going to be pricey at $160 for 50 minutes, but I figure I'm going to be getting the best of the best in Vegas, right? The optimist in me is thinking I'll be able to get up $160 in the casino, thus making the experience free, but the realist in me is planning on being out $160 but with very relaxed muscles.

I also invested in a Moleskine notebook this week, which has been awesome. So, despite not posting this week's goals, I did at least get some written down. You know it's been a crazy week when you can't even get your goals posted until Friday, but here they are finally, straight from Tuesday's Moleskine entry.

This Week's Priority Goals

Hit the 6,000-word mark in my screenplay.
Complete both freelance editing projects on my current plate.
Finish "Catcher in the Rye."
Catalog movies.
Visit the farmers' market.
Foodblog recipe from last weekend.

This Week's Secondary Goals

Write a blog post.
Organize office.
Meal plan.
Another 101 recipe.

984 Days to Go

2007-08-18T17:34:00.000-07:00

Last Week's Goals

Get to the 4000-word mark in my 2007 ScriptFrenzy screenplay. (Not done, but other creative progress made.)
Write two more profiles from e-mail interviews for my in-progress article. (Not done. No excuses.)
Consolidate our U.S. Bank accounts. (Not done. My half day went to more important things, like hanging out with my mom and my sisters.)
Finish reading LOTR: The Two Towers. (Completed!)
Have a status update with Jordan. (Completed!)
Write two blog posts at my regular blog. (Completed!)

Other Accomplishments

Jordan and I spent the afternoon reading and chatting at a coffee shop, thus fulfilling Month No. 1 for No. 16 on the Creativity section of my list.
I volunteered at the soup kitchen again, and this time my youngest sister, Kate, came along for the ride.
This isn't on my list, but I've started helping my mom and one of her friends coach a soccer team of 4- to 5-year-old girls. This, as I'm sure you can imagine, has been an adventure. Kate's helping with that, too.
I did some research and outlining for a different screenplay that's taken over my brain than what I had originally intended for my belated 2007 ScriptFrenzy script. So, now I have two screenplays I want to write. I think I'll concentrate on the one that's taken over my brain for now and try to get some actual scenes written this week.
I vacuumed. To those to whom this seems trivial, I can only defend myself by pointing out that you had not seen the carpet.

Priority Goals for This Week

Get 1,000 words written for new screenplay.
Consolidate U.S. Bank accounts.
Write two more profiles from e-mail interviews.
Read "The Catcher in the Rye."
Write a blog post.
Complete another recipe from my 101 Recipes List.
Schedule a hot stone massage for my stay at a very nice hotel/spa/casino in Vegas at the end of September (spa appointments must be made a month in advance).

Secondary Goals for This Week

Practice my violin.
Catalog books.
Organize office.

991 Days to Go

2007-08-11T19:50:00.000-07:00

I feel like I didn't really get much accomplished this past week as far as 101 progress, but I was unusually busy, so I suppose that's some consolation.

We started attending a new church last Sunday. The music was great (which is no surprise, considering the phenomenally talented Kirt Mosier [a.k.a. orchestra director at Lee's Summit West High School] is the worship minister), and the sermon was pretty good. But the thing that impressed me most was the invitation for anyone who was interested to go volunteer at a soup kitchen in Kansas City on Monday. I'll admit it was hesitant because I (1) was new to the church, (2) would be going by myself with a bunch of people I didn't know, and (3) already commited to seeing some old friends Monday night. But I'd been asking God for an opportunity like this for some time now, and I knew I needed to go, despite being fairly far outside my comfort zone. Plus I kept telling myself I'd get to cross something off my 101 list, which I realize is selfish, but sometimes we need a little something to get us over the hump. So, I went. There were a ton of volunteers there this past Monday, and it was a lighter than usual crowd, so I didn't feel like I got to contribute as much as I would have liked. However, the church is taking a group down every Monday for the foreseeable future, so I should have plenty of opportunities to help out. At some point I'd like to take the camera with me and document the event, but I figure I better get a little more experience there first.

I just posted my first mission101 foodblog over at this site's sister blog, so go check it out. That meal coupled with lunch out with Jordan's parents last Sunday makes me 1 for 33 for having dinner with the families once a month.

I transferred most of my paycheck this month to my Electric Orange account, which means I should have a few extra bucks at the end of the month thanks to the interest I'll be accruing. And free money rocks. :-) I also balanced our budget two weeks in a row, and I should have time tomorrow to balance it for this week.

I'm planning on devoting more time this week to catch up on my Creativity and Organization tasks. Here are my goals for this week:

Get to the 4000-word mark in my 2007 ScriptFrenzy screenplay.
Write two more profiles from e-mail interviews for my in-progress article.
Consolidate our U.S. Bank accounts.
Finish reading LOTR: The Two Towers.
Have a status update with Jordan.
Write two blog posts at my regular blog.

My Husband Rocks

2007-08-01T19:16:00.000-07:00

I can cross off one more item on my list thanks to my super-awesome husband. He bought me a one-year subscription to www.apstylebook.com, meaning I basically have an online, up-to-date, searchable AP Stylebook at my fingertips any time I'm at a computer.

Also, check out my new blog post at formerlyditty.blogspot.com. That makes 65 more blog posts to go in the next 1,000 days.

Day One: August 1, 2007

2007-08-01T08:47:00.000-07:00

The countdown has begun...

I've already crossed two items off my list.

Under the God section (see sidebar), we've decided to try out a new church. I recently found out that I cannot be a member at our current church because I was baptized as an infant (and do not feel led to be baptized again). While that would not been the deciding factor for whether or not we stayed, the fact that we cannot be involved in any ministries other than volunteering for Kindness Outreach was unfortunately the proverbial final straw. We're not leaving on bad terms or anything (at least not on our end). We simply feel that we need to be at a church where we can give back. So we're moving on. I'm excited about trying out the new church this weekend; it'll be nice to be able to really focus on God while at church and not have the membership issue hanging over my head.

Secondly, under the Culture/Food/Wine section, you can note that I've crossed off "Find a French pen pal and converse regularly." I signed up at Polyglot about a month ago and was almost immediately connected with not one, but TWO pen pals, with whom I've been conversing ever since. Obviously, if our regular correspondence falls by the wayside, I'll have to un-cross this, but for now, it feels good to be 1.98 percent through my mission.

Cheers,
Sarah

The Recipes

2007-07-29T14:28:00.000-07:00

I've got 71 recipes up at our Mission 101 Recipes Foodblog. Go check them out, and feel free to leave suggestions!

Coming up the first week of August will be Suprêmes de Volaille à l'Écossaise avec Pointes d'Asperges au Beurre (which is the fancy and French way of saying "Chicken Breasts with Diced Aromatic Vegetables and Cream served with Buttered Asparagus Tips") from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

My 101 Books

2007-07-22T01:20:00.000-07:00

I've only got about 94 books so far, and these are very much subject to change. The ones in purple are also part of my 24 Books in One Year challenge. Suggestions, as always, are welcome.


	Title	Author
	Fahrenheit 451	Ray Bradbury
	LOTR: The Two Towers	JRR Tolkien
	Catcher in the Rye	JD Salinger
	LOTR: Return of the King	JRR Tolkien
	Grapes of Wrath	John Steinbeck
	1984	George Orwell
	A Christmas Carol	Charles Dickens
	Little Women	Louisa May Alcott
	Le Petit Prince	Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
	Animal Farm	George Orwell
	The Nanny Diaries	Emma Mclaughlin and Nicola Kraus
	Lolita	Vladimir Nabokov
	About a Boy	Nick Hornby
	The Wives of Henry VIII	Antonia Fraser
	The Screwtape Letters	CS Lewis
	Citizen Girl	Emma Mclaughlin and Nicola Kraus
	All Quiet on the Western Front	EM Remarque
	The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich	Tim Ferriss
	Wuthering Heights	Emily Brontë


	A Clockwork Orange	Anthony Burgess
	Memoirs of a Geisha	Arthur Golden
	Night	Elie Weisel
	Middlesex: A Novel	Jeffrey Eugenides
	Tess of the D'urbevilles	Thomas Hardy
	Water for Elephants: A Novel	Sara Gruen
	They Don’t Teach Corporate in College: A Twenty-Something’s Guide to the Business World	Alexandra Levit
	A Wrinkle in Time	Madeleine L'Engle
	Notes From Underground	Fyodor Dostoevsky
	The Complete Brothers Grimm Fairy Tales	The Brothers Grimm
	Notre Dame de Paris	Victor Hugo
	The Dollhouse Murders	Betty Ren Wright
	Emma	Jane Austen
	Eragon	Christopher Paolini
	Eldest	Christopher Paolini
	Inheritance	Christopher Paolini
	Cyrano de Bergerac	Edmond Rostand
	The Red Badge of Courage	Stephen Crane
	The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	Robert Louis Stevenson
	Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH	Robert C. O'Brien


	Racso and the Rats of NIMH	Jane Leslie Conly
	R-T, Margaret, and the Rats of NIMH	Jane Leslie Conly
	Slaughterhouse Five	Kurt Vonnegut
	The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald
	Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone	JK Rowling
	Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets	JK Rowling
	Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban	JK Rowling
	Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	JK Rowling
	Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix	JK Rowling
	Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince	JK Rowling
	Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows	JK Rowling
	The Scarlet Letter	Nathaniel Hawthorne
	Alice in Wonderland	Lewis Carroll
	The Wind in the Willows	Kenneth Graham
	Great Expectations	Charles Dickens
	The Time Traveller's Wife	Audrey Niffenegger
	David Copperfield	Charles Dickens
	Johnny Got His Gun	Dalton Trumbo
	The Color Purple	Alice Walker
	Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King	Antonia Fraser


	The Stolen Child: A Novel	Kevin Donohue
	The Great Divorce	CS Lewis
	The Chronicles of Narnia	CS Lewis
	The Raw Shark Texts	Steven Hall
	The Shining	Stephen King
	The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America	Erik Larson
	Thunderstruck	Erik Larson
	Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War	Nathaniel Philbrick
	Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl	Anne Frank
	Angela's Ashes: A Memoir	Frank McCourt
	The Metamorphosis	Franz Kafka
	Dracula	Bram Stoker
	Bunnicula	James Howe
	High Fidelity	Nick Hornby
	The Man in the Iron Mask	Alexandre Dumas
	Madame Bovary	Gustave Flaubert
	Frankenstein	Mary Shelley
	Charlie and the Chocolate Factory	Roald Dahl
	Toilers of the Sea	Victor Hugo
	One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest	Ken Kesey


	Of Mice and Men	John Steinbeck
	The Turn of the Screw	Henry James
	Breakfast at Tiffany's	Truman Capote
	The Picture of Dorian Gray	Oscar Wilde
	The Time Machine	HG Wells
	The Invisible Man	HG Wells
	A Study in Scarlet	Arthur Conan Doyle
	The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus	Joel Chandler Harris
	The Handmaid's Tale: A Novel	Margaret Atwood
	Grendel	John Gardner
	Never Let Me Go	Kazuo Ishiguro
	Peter Pan	JM Barrie
	Catch-22	Joseph Heller
	Warrior Soul: The Memoir of a Navy Seal	Chuck Pfarrer
	Made to Stick	Chip Heath & Dan heath

A Tentative List

2007-07-22T01:08:00.000-07:00

Here you have it: my list of 101 items to complete between Aug. 1, 2007, and April 28, 2010. Next up is my list of 101 books.

Finances

Balance budget at least twice a month (preferably weekly).
Have $32,000 in savings.
Open a Roth IRA.
Max out our Roth IRA at least one year.
Roll over whatever's left of my money from RxCCI (if we ever get it) into the Roth IRA or 401(k).
Write my will.
Open an Electric Orange checking account with ING.
Consolidate our U.S. Bank accounts.

Health

Be able to do a real push-up (instead of a modified one).
Run a 5K.
Continue working out at least 4x a week most weeks.
Start meal planning again and stick with it.

Organization

Catalog my books and movies.
Keep our bedroom clean for at least 30 days straight (0/30).
Organize my office.
Organize my computer files.
Organize my filing cabinet.
Get back into my routines for keeping my house presentable.

Family

Have dinner with our families once a month.
Eat at the dining room table at least once a week.
Get pregnant.
Have monthly "status updates" with Jordan.
Plan a family reunion.
Research and write out Stewart history (paternal grandmother's side).
Send my sister care packages while she's away at college.

Home Improvement

Create a reading nook in my office.
Get a fence.
Get the house painted.
Hang a birdfeeder.
Hang a birdhouse.
Get a birdbath.
Paint a room in my house.
Paint another room in my house.
Plant a vegetable garden.
Create a mudroom in the garage.
Create rockbed stream in backyard.

Creativity

Create one photo essay/collage a year.
Edit my 2005 NaNoNovel.
Edit my 2006 NaNoNovel.
Participate in 2007 NaNoWriMo.
Edit my 2007 NaNoNovel.
Finish what should have been my 2007 ScriptFrenzy screenplay.
Participate in 2008 ScriptFrenzy.
Participate in 2008 NaNoWriMo.
Edit my 2008 NaNoNovel.
Participate in 2009 ScriptFrenzy.
Participate in 2009 NaNoWriMo.
Edit my 2009 NaNoNovel.
Finish knitting the blanket I started in college.
Foodblog the 101 recipes Jordan and I cook at sarahs101recipes.blogspot.com.
Take a self-portrait.
Spend one morning or afternoon a month reading or writing in a coffee shop.
Write two blog posts a month.

Adventure

Go camping.
Go canoeing.
Go hiking.
Go rock climbing.
Go on a group vacation somewhere.
Go to a haunted house.
Go to Roaring River.
Learn how to flyfish.
Learn how to drive a stick-shift.
Learn how to shoot a gun.
Take a self-defense class.
Try golfing again.

Culture/Food/Wine

Eat at an Irish (American) pub.
Find a French pen pal and converse regularly.
Go to a museum exhibit.
Go to an art exhibit.
Go to a wine tasting.
Tour a vineyard/winery.
Go to Oktoberfest.
Go to the St. Patrick's Day Parade.
Join a book club.
Participate in Shutdown Day.
Read 101 books.
Visit the farmer's market at least once every two weeks during the months it is open.
Vote.
Cook a combined 101 new (and potentially challenging) recipes with Jordan.
Practice my violin at least once a month.
Play my violin in public at least once.

Community Service

Help teach someone to read.
Volunteer at a homeless shelter or soup kitchen.
Donate blood (or attempt to) three times.
Donate $5 to charity for every item on this list not completed.

God

Get to the point where I am reading Scripture daily.
Decide whether or not to stay at our current church.
Stay involved in a small group, regardless of where we end up going to church.
Get plugged into an outreach/service ministry, wherever we end up going to church.

Self

Take a bath in our jacuzzi at least once every three months.
Get a plant at work (and keep it alive).
Get a hot stone massage.
Create a second 101 list.

Business

Get business cards printed.
Revamp Web site.
Get something published.
Get a new client.
Buy a Chicago Manual of Style.
Buy an updated Associated Press Stylebook.
Write at least five articles (for sale or not).
Go to some sort of freelancing or writers' conference.

Creating the List

2007-06-20T20:34:00.001-07:00

I have a couple of friends who have taken on the Mission 101 challenge and thus have inspired me to do the same. The idea is to complete 101 predetermined tasks in 1001 days. So, now that I've decided to do this (since it's in the same vein as my 24 Books in One Year goal), I have to actually come up with a list. Consider this my call for suggestions.

Here are some ideas that come to mind quickly.

Go camping.
Go canoeing.
Read 101 books (borrowed from Jon and Rachel).
Finish knitting the blanket I've been working on since college.
Perhaps watch 101 movies? I can't imagine that would be too difficult!
NaNoWriMo 2007, 2008 and 2009.
Edit my previously written novels.
Finish my screenplay and actually participate in ScriptFrenzy in 2008 & 2009.

What do you think I should do in the next 1001 days? This is your opportunity to contribute to my life for the next 2.75 years, so let's hear your ideas!