Summer Goals

I think an important thing to do at the beginning of summer is to set some goals.  They don't have to be outlandish--just a list of some things that will keep you away from Farmville for a good amount of the warm season.  A summer can easily be wasted.  Here are some things I hope to achieve by the end of the summer (which for the sake of simplicity I will call September 1st).

(Side note: Just Googled "First Day of Fall," which officially is September 22nd.  But I will still stick with September 1st because who feels like it's still summer in the middle of September?  Stupid 20 years of academic calendar brainwashing). 

Anyway, here is what I hope to achieve by the end of the summer:

1. Read 30 books.
Perhaps it's the residue of having 2 intense semesters of English Grad School, but I really wanna read pleasure books.  So far this summer I've read 5, although 2 were comic books (The Oatmeal) and 1 was completely pictures (The Arrival--which I highly recommend).  Even though I've been checking out books from the library with the fervor of, well, a librarian, I want to make sure I stick with this goal before fall comes around and graduate school once again sucks my soul.  On my "To Read" list so far for this summer is: An Abundance of Katherines, Paper Towns, Lord of the Rings *First time!  Can you believe it?*, Watership Down, Hamlet, Candide, everything by C. S. Lewis, finish Les Miserables, Nothing to Envy, A Room of One's Own, and The Omnivore's Dilemma.

2. Eat a salad made from my garden. 
If this is too ambitious, (depending on what actually grows), at the very least I want to eat something I've grown.  Even if it's a bean.  My garden this summer is teaching me the beauty of working with the earth and the simplicity of food.  To some extent gardening isn't that hard.  I put a seed in the ground and cover it with dirt.  It rains.  A few weeks later a plant is popping up.  In other regards, gardening is quite a challenge.  Why are our bell peppers stunted?  Why is some squirrel-thing only attacking ONE tomato plant out of every plant in the garden?

3. Teach Milton to jump over something.  
As a new member of the Minnesota Rabbit Companion Society, I've signed up to take an Agility Class near the end of the summer.  Rabbits are very trainable, and this class helps you teach your rabbit to do impressive feats like go through tunnels and jump over progressively taller things.  Now, while my Milton is litter trained and mostly comes when beckoned, he has a deeply independent spirit and isn't persuaded by treats.  The only thing he'll come running for is a banana, but even then he'll only take a couple bites before hopping away.  It's my understanding that rabbit agility training heavily centers around incentive-based learning.  So...we'll see how well this works.

4. Learn one new song on the piano really well. 
For the past 7 years of my  life, my piano playing has been quite minimal.  First it was because I was getting really good at the trumpet and needed to make choices.  Then it was because I was working three jobs in college and taking 18 credits a semester to get out in three years.  And then it was because life.  But even though my keyboard has been gathering dust, I still know a thing or two and would like to learn a new tune, so I don't sit down and play Maple Leaf Rag for the 5,000th time (the last song I went to state for before I stopped playing). 

5. Be able to name and locate 100 countries.

I forgot to mark Iceland and New Zealand in green on this map.

I've had verious versions of this goal for a while.  I really really want to be more conscious of the rest of the world.  For starters, that means being able to identify the rest of the world.  The map to the right demonstrates how many countries I can currently name and locate in green--about 55-60 on average.  While I consider that to be pretty good, there are (apparently) 136 other countries out there that I do not have down--a lot that I probably don't even realize exist. I will probably pass on obscure island nations for the summer and try to focus on Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East.