16 Things To Do This Summer

I'm deviating from my normal post-naming method because this post is mostly a list. It is still the Fifty Sixth Post, it's just going incognito.
While taking my daily stroll around my development, I was struck by the temptation to run through sprinklers. This is, I believe, a typical summer activity, but I couldn't let go of the idea. My list of things to do this summer began thus:
1. Run through someone else's sprinklers.
2. Get the paper route three blocks up if that stupid guy ever returns my calls.
3. Start the job at the concessions stand.
4. Go to San Francisco with my family.
5. Save $3,000 so that I have a shot at not bankrupting myself in England.
6. Tutor the (understandably) crabby 13-year-old for money, I hope.

This is hardly a practical list for other people. Most other people are not getting a job at a local baseball team's concessions stand, going to England in the fall, or going to San Francisco with my family.
Because I am going to be bored and lonely this summer, even when my jobs start up, I decided to google some lists of things to do in the summer, then make my own list.
Most of them are stupid, teenage-specific, regional, or for large groups. As I am not stupid, teenaged (turned 20 last September), in the regions specified, or a large group, I saw immediate flaws in my plan. However, I have sifted the chaff from the wheat (or, perhaps, collected the diamonds from the dog poop) and created this list for you single twenty-somethings just off college with all your friends far off and neither steady job nor car in a small-ish town. The list is designed by (and therefore for) a lonely introvert. Half the things are there to get me out of the house and around people so that my family and I don't hate one another and so that I have to take a bath sometime.

The List of 16 Regionally Unspecific Things To Do By Yourself During Any Summer For 20-Somethings
1. Read x books. "x" will take on any number assigned to it, so set your own value for x. For me, x=20 new books. You lot might get a list from me sometime. First up: Tess of the D'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy), Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë), and Guards! Guards! (Terry Pratchett). Do mix "classic literature" with more recent, light-hearted selections. It keeps things fun. You should also consider re-reading some old favourites to ease the mental strain of reading new books that you may or may not like. Try to turn in old books that you don't like anymore at a second-hand book store for store credit, or just use the library. Personally, I like to have books that I've read on my own shelf. It looks more impressive. Also, second hand books give your books that well-read look, are fairly cheap, and sometimes have cool old covers. My only problem is that I like all the paperbacks that I have and the main source of my book-trading doesn't take hardcovers.
2. Learn a new language. I plan to continue with German, hopefully aided by my friend who will be interning over there.
3. Do Something to earn money. Yard sale (recruit your mom or other more experienced female and offer her a percentage), lemonade stand (recruit a small friend or relative and offer it some free lemonade, or maybe a percentage if they get pushy), car wash (may require too much recruiting for a single, friendless person. Call upon siblings if you must.), paper route... (Except for the paper route, all are good for social interaction.)
4. Finish a project. I have a scarf and three bags that are in the works as we speak that have not been touched since... September. And another scarf that I started last week. Oh, and that half-done crochet owl...
5. Go swimming. Cliché, I know, but with no pool membership, no friends in the US with a pool, and no local pool anywhere near me, I still plan on being fully submerged at least one time this summer. This counts for at least a week of social interaction due to the traumatizing effect of being in a swim suit in public and in a pool or body of water that probably includes shrieking children.
6. Go to a farmer's market. Another cliché one, but they are the source of many delights. Fresh vegetables in larger quantities and variety than I can grow at home? Yes, please. Also, helping local farmers is apparently a big deal. (Also, social interaction! Good for up to three days, depending on how violent the other shoppers are.)
7. Ride a bike Somewhere. If you, like me, are currently... in the market for a bike, as it were, then find a cheap old one. That's my plan, anyway. It is my intention to ride a bike to work at the concession stand because I feel lame driving the car that I might not have three minutes, but I don't like walking alone at night. If you are too broke to get a bike, steal your brother's for the afternoon. If he actually uses his bike, or doesn't have one, then walk, scooter, or (maybe) rollerblade. Get yourself to an ice cream place (it's okay if that is McDonald's. I won't judge, and ice cream is ice cream.) or the 7 Eleven (a good 10-minute drive into a sketchy area of town for me) for a Slurpee (®/©/™/whatever). Only rollerblade Somewhere if you want to bring a bag of shoes, or if you have a decent walk-up espresso place nearby (Dutch Bros. springs to mind, or one of those cool local affairs). This also gets you social interaction, hopefully only enough for one day. McDonald's might push it to two and a half.
8. Overuse parenthetical phrases. (Done!)
9. Flag down the ice cream truck instead of just swearing at it for interrupting your nap. It won't make the music go away faster, but you'll at least get overpriced ice cream for your trouble.
10. Plant Something. I'm working on several bonsai, but those aren't the most instantly gratifying plants ever. Getting to a store for seeds or plant supplies will suffice for at least one day of social interaction, while the following time spent with a plant will help calm your nerves after that traumatizing event.
11. Watch the back episodes of your favourite TV show. I have no hopes of finishing even the new series of Doctor Who this summer, and I can't seem to find the old series on DVD. Let me know if you have any hints on where I can find the complete original series for cheaper than it ought to be.
12. Make a gourmet version of something normal. Lemonade, ice tea, pizza, tomato and cheese sandwich, ice cream, whatever. If you don't have something snobby in your mom's cookbooks, try google. For instance, I made fancy kebab-y things today instead of having... something else, like the three-day-old chili that's slowly going bad in the fridge. This fancy cooking thing generally requires going to the grocery store, which is enough social interaction for at least two days. Alternatively, if you are exceptionally clever, willing to plan ahead, and able to accept defeat, you can go to the farmer's market and get fresh (no really, fresh) ingredients for your fancy-schmancy meal. Drawback: sometimes, that one thing that you need is not there. Deal with it and get everything else, plus some strawberries.
13. Clean my room. This one is personal. I also need to clean the garage, a task at which I failed last summer. This has the added benefit of temporarily stopping my mom nagging me to clean my room and contribute to the household. In mom's defence, she doesn't nag that much unless I'm really pissy for some reason. It's possible that I'm perceiving nagging where there is none.
14. Go yard sale-ing. If nothing else, this can give you a sense of relief about all the crap that's not at your house. It can also serve as your weekly dose of social interaction. I know I swear off people for at least three days after a yard sale, depending on how early I got there.
15. Run through someone else's sprinklers. I guess I just really like the idea of an adult doing that by him- or herself.
16. Become ambidextrous. If you're right-handed (like me), learn to write with (or just use) your left hand. If you're a lefty, you're probably not too bad at a few things with your right. This is useful mainly in the area of crime-committing. Using the opposite hand can throw the cops off your scent. I suppose you could also use this skill to impress your friends, write on the back of spiral notebook or binder pages,  and have some insurance for when you break your dominant arm doing something stupid.

Fifty Third Post

As we approach finals week, I find myself less and less inclined to do homework. Rather, I have taken to watching Doctor Who, both the old and new series somewhat simultaneously.
The old series is kind of hilarious. It's got intriguing plotlines and terrible costumes, effects, and fight choreographers. I'm in 1964, and it's in black and white. William Hartnell is the first Doctor, and in this season, he and his 15-year-old granddaughter Susan (I have yet to figure that one out) are trying to return two british schoolteachers, Ian and Barbara, back to London, 1964. Unfortunately, the Tardis is rather broken. Instead of returning them, it drifts aimlessly through space-time, dropping them in unfortunate places about the universe. I'm almost done with the first season, though, and I have high hopes for their safe return.
The villains are... Well, they're more to be pitied than mocked, since they have such terrible costumes. The Daleks, of which I know only through nerd culture references, are introduced early on, although I doubt that they are intended to be a far-reaching series villain. At one point, the group runs across a race of rubber suit-wearing villains with odd headdresses, and that same story arc also features a brain with eyes that lives in a jar. The villains grow more sophisticated as the series continues, and in the second-to-last story arc (I cheated and looked at the descriptions for the next couple episodes to see when the story arc ended), the villains are actually humans trying to kill off an alien race.
I mentioned that I'm also watching the new series, which is only four or five... maybe six seasons along now, as opposed to the 20-odd seasons that the original series boasts. It picks up where the original series left off, featuring the ninth Doctor (played by Christopher Eccleston). He's nothing like the first, which is to be expected. It did throw me off, however, when I watched an episode with an energetic middle-aged action-hero man who saves London from an invasion of animated plastic with the help of a 19-year-old London girl (Rose Tyler, a long-running companion, according to the infographics that keep popping up in my RSS feed) before watching an episode with two suspicious teachers and a cranky old man living in a telephone box in a junkyard (and nothing much else happened).
It was less than promising. However, even in the 20th century, they didn't make 20-odd seasons of a TV show if there was no interest. With any luck, the series would get better. Plus, I keep hearing about a guy with a scarf... the fourth Doctor, I think. I want to make a similar scarf, but I'm not going to until I've seen at least three episodes with him wearing the scarf. Imagine the awkward, nerd-cred destroying conversation with a true believer:
True Believer (TB): "...I like your scarf."
Me: "Thanks."
TB: "Make it yourself?"
Me: "Uh, yeah. It's my Doctor Who scarf."
TB: (excited and suspicious, and justifiably so) "You've seen the original series?"
Me: "Well, some of it..."
TB: "Have you seen the episode with the fourth Doctor when he... (describes episode)?"
Me: "Erm, no. I'm still in the first Doctor's seasons."
TB: "..." (hopes crushed)
Me: (forever labeled as poser)

So yeah, I'm going to wait, no matter how much I want that incredibly long, incredibly stripey nerd culture icon.
I do feel, however, that I have seen enough episodes to qualify for a Tardis mug, found on thinkgeek.com (what a wonderful site!).
Here's some photoshopped fun from the wedding in England (or is it photoshopped? Hmm?).

Also, I realised how crotchety I'm getting when I reread the bit about "even in the 20th century". I'm not sure if that makes me elitist against the 20th century or what, because it really wasn't that long ago. Besides, I spent a pretty solid half of my life in the 1990s. Of course, I watched things like Zoom, Other PBSkids Shows, Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, Sesame Street, Barney, Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy, The Price is Right, MacGyver, Hercules, and Xena: Warrior Princess. I may have also caught a couple episodes of a show with Superman in it, since I have odd memories of phone booths and underwear right before a meeting to which the guy with glasses was late. I was under the impression for a few weeks that when one wanted to dress business casual, superhero costumes were in order. I was also convinced that any trouble I found myself in could be solved by having MacGyver around. Hercules or Xena would also be suitable alternatives.
In retrospect, I'm really not sure why my parents let me watch these shows. Anyway, I now pick my own shows, half of which are for the shirtless men that inhabit the strange world of TV land. It's not like I get any attractive men without shirts at college, and a girl has her needs.
That sounded weird, so it's time for bed. Goodnight, world.

Thirteenth Post

For anyone who believes in unlucky numbers, this could almost be considered an unlucky post. I'm typing at 01:20, I do have class in the morning-ish, and I also have a five-page paper to write and email before 16:00 on tuesday.

The good news is, nothing particularly exciting happened to me since the last post. I did homework instead of attending a dance that my dorm put on. I did laundry and had to run the dryer cycle twice. I ordered books online for spring term. That was painful, even getting them used on amazon...

Speaking of which, I would urge all of you university students reading this to sign up for a seller account with Amazon.com so that you can get rid of now-useless textbooks without being ripped off by your school bookstore. I sold my old calculus book for a much better price than the bookstore would have given me, I think. Hope. Pray... It's handy, in any case, even if amazon does rip you off on shipping. Also, you can give other poor students a hand and offer them used books for decent prices. (Also-also, you can sell random junk that you don't want for money. It's a good deal.)

I've also heard good things of Chegg.com, for anyone who wants to rent books. I sell my lit books to the campus bookstore during our "sell back" time for a great deal more than they cost me online, but that's just my own little racket. It doesn't exactly work for science and math books.

In other news, I'm crocheting a scarf. It's a very boring scarf. Five feet of white single crochet with no variation. It is, however, a good waste of time. I did that for most of the evening rather than doing homework. There is a bonus feature included with a white single-crochet scarf- the stitches rather resemble storm troopers.

Yes, I did just make a Star Wars reference. Sorry. This was supposed to be a boring blog, but that one will just have to stay.