100 or 12 Things I want to do before I die

No more dog food, please.

          Our dog turned 13 last week and I think has decided that life is too short to eat dog food.  I have to agree. I am thinking  the same thing about drinking green tea. But this isn’t about the 100 things that I don’t want to do before I die, it is about the several that come to mind that I do hope to do.

            Of course there are things I want to eat, but those are too numerous to list so I won’t include them. Ditto places to visit. And a million people give or take a couple that I want to see and spend time with. But here is the first shot at my list and hope it inspires you to think of your own.

100 things I want to do before I die

*Drive a red Vespa somewhere in Europe.

*See Scott perform his superman stunts on the Pilates ball.

*Take Julie Jones and Beth Anderson to Regents park in the summer.

Fulfilled the wish to go sailing.

*Take my niece on a history tour of England.

*Spend a weekend with Ben, Becky and my brother and a recorder to record all the funny one-liners.

*See the dance performance of my friend in Boulder.

*See my friend Mr. P in a play.

*See New York City with Dwight and Sue.

*Attend a real ball in a real evening dress with Doug in a real tuxedo, in fact, you can even forget the ball, that part might ruin it, I’ll just take the pretty dress and my man in a tux at a lovely private place.

*Try all the pastries at Café Central, and at Cupcake Wien, that interest me.

*Make Fakhri guacamole.

*Make Laz hot chocolate.

Mattress surfing, low brow, high fun

*Give Ryan a tour of Siberia (no really, not in the gulag sort of way, but because he wants to see it.

*Pass German 1. (third time's a charm I hear)

*Finish my book

*Go mattress surfing with my Stoner family

*Cook Hungarian Goulash over an open fire in my brother’s backyard with my Lewis family

Ok that is what came to mind. And writing this was an enlightening and fun activity. Let me know what you would add and why. Maybe my next list will be a few I don’t want to do, besides not eating dog food.

I can't decide but I think not

Cryptograms

Cryptograms

I think this means we have positive birds and negative birds in Austria from 1950

Don’t you love all the cryptic symbols that are used instead of words?  I need a Google Translate for symbols.

The most memorable experience translating pictures was in a bathroom in some village in Poland. We stumbled into a very small café, only to find out it had been a favorite of Steven Spielberg during the filming of Schindler’s List.  What this meant practically was a small place to eat bursting with customers.  Small wonder it was a favorite, I can’t remember having much to chose from. But the bigger dilemma came when we tried to use the bathroom.

Each restroom was one passenger and unoccupied, the only empty seats in the house.  On one door was a square and on the other a circle. Now I think I would have chosen a triangle for myself, but that wasn’t an option. I searched my intelligence and experience for any help. Anthropology in Mexico! The ancient columns, carved before blue prints and written explanations, were said to represent female soldiers because they were round, not square.  Polish Restroom Anthropology as it turns out, says that the female is a square.  I think.  What I do remember is that I guessed wrong.  No problem going in, but an embarrassing one coming  out.

So, with a history of making guesses as to the cryptograms across Europe, we studied the train map.  This diagram lets you know what type of train you will be taking and which cars are first class.  Or more importantly for me, which cars are for hoi polloi, us plebeians, the unwashed masses, or in the case of Austria, pretty well washed and in Eastern Europe well-oiled by Friday afternoon. 

The train diagram had extra information. The first of the second class cars was without any extra explanation.  The second one had the profile of a person, with three concentric circles coming from their face, and a finger in front of her mouth.  Either it meant, “Be prepared to sing, ‘This little light of mine’,” “Check your breath,” or “No talking. “ All the snorers and shhshh-ers would be in there, not fun!

The next car had a seat with a cross on top, which could mean, Christians, or  disaster victims or handicapped.  Probably either way, no dancing in that car.

The last car had a sign that said kino.  Sounds good on a long train ride, however, although it was a word, a description was in the key.  A kino- cinema in both Slovak and German, for children, three hours listening to Disney in German. 

Needless to say, the normal car was pretty well occupied.  But thankfully, the bathrooms didn’t have a square and a circle on them or any other cryptogram, but instead German, and English, something I can feed into Google Translate if necessary.