How can I expect to achieve goals this year such as volunteering, starting a garden, or.. I dunno, LEARNING SPANISH (well, starting to learn Spanish, not be fluent or anything), if I can’t even make it through Brewsters Millions?

We’ve started it 3 times, and each time Riki and I have both fallen asleep at the same part, about a third of the way through, you know, the part where John Candy makes his 80th terrible joke. No disrespect to John C., may he rest in peace and all that. I know it’s a family film, he had to do what he had to do.

This weekend Brewster, you’re mine! If there is one thing I do, it’s finishing something that I set out to do, or publicly declared on a blog that I would do.

That’s not entirely true. But I won’t give up, I’ll fight my way through it!

According to Chowhound, the veggie hot-dog at Hot Doug’s is not vegan!

wtf am I gonna do? I was going to go there and eat for #42. Should I switch it to a different restaurant? Go on a mission to find a good vegan dog somwhere else? Oh, the heartache this blog causes.

I’ve already broken one food rule, in case you didn’t notice. For problem #41 I said I would bike to Veggie Bite on the south side with Amy… and then the Veggie Bite opened in Wicker Park (remember I was so excited?)

It was gross. Some of it was fine, and it was vegan and fast food and I’ll probably buy one of everything if I’m hungover or having a bad day some time in the future, but it was still gross. I’m not biking 25 miles one way for gross.

Curse you Doug, curse you Veggie Bite!

Don’t let the good looks fool you. Although… this photo is triggering some pleasant memories for me that involve the fries. Those weren’t half bad.

Let’s just knock the food category out of the way. Not having any full categories defined is haunting me.

44) Plant a mini-herb garden.

Legal herbs only, bro! Groan.. sorry, sorry.

45) Plant a mini back-deck vegetable garden

Yes, this could be combined with #44, but I’m doing the herb garden as a separate beast, because I imagine each will have a different set of challenges. I’ve been doing some research online about vegetables I could plant on the back deck, which is pretty small, you can only fit 4-5 adults out there at a time, and that’s not even terribly comfortable.

So far, I think I’ll try to grow: red peppers, jalepeno peppers… Um….uhhh…. Maybe zuchinni? I think I read that those are easy to grow. Dammit! We’ll see.

46) Vegan pizza party and movie night.

Sounds fun, right? Maybe we’ll watch Brewster’s Millions then have a pillow fight.

47) Host a fancy-pants dinner party

This is an idea from my friend Injung, and I love it. This would be a several course, sit down, place cards and everything kind of dinner party. I’ll even force the guests to dress nice. Riki and I don’t even have a proper table and chairs set, so I’ll have to think about logistics of this one a bit more.

48) Make this

Have you ever seen anything so absolutely perfect or beautiful in your whole life? My god.

49) Something that is in the works, I want to see if it happens before I post about it…

YES!!! Food is done! And I like that it’s not all about me stuffing my face. I mean, it mostly is, but not the herb garden one.

First of all, I want to apologize for neglecting you, the loyal reader, and also you, 99 Blog. I’m sorry I haven’t posted in over a week. I have no excuse, and am here on bended knee asking you to take me back. I’m so sorry. I love you.

Now that that’s out of the way, lets move on to what you’ve all been waiting a whole week for - the You Tell me What to do vote. It was a tight race, this one, with 26 people fighting to change the face of this blog forever.

Ok, so it wasn’t really a tight race at all. You all knew karaoke would win, and it did. I even went to Live Band Karaoke last weekend just to get used to the idea of it. Riki wanted me to go ahead and sing and get it over with, but that would have been against the rules since the voting wasn’t over. These problems are all about the rules.

And, here it is: Problem #60 Sing Karaoke in front of a bunch of people

Just so you guys know, I can’t sing at all, and am a little shaken at the thought of getting up in front of the leather jacket bro-crowd at the Pontiac to sing. I will more than likely need 7 vodka sodas to get me ready for this one.

Thanks to everyone who voted, and double thanks for not making me organize a g-damned snowball fight. I would have been swearing under my breath like crazy if I had to do that.

I am a little sad though, that Barack Obama didn’t win.

PS - For anyone keeping tabs, I rode my bike twice last week, didn’t go to yoga at all, (see the right side bar for up to the minute progress) and made vegan chili for Problem #43.  But it was kind of ugly and not very photogenic, so I spared you that one.

As promised yesterday, updates!

- I have baseball practice this Saturday! Hooray for Get Healthy’s Problem #22!

I’m going to count it as “complete” after my first practice, because lord knows I need to check something off this godforsaken list. But I’ll update you as I go! With pictures even!

I am nervous for this though, since I haven’t played baseball or softball in a million billion years. This summer, look for me to be warming a bench at a baseball diamond near you.

- I have two new problems to add to the aforementioned Get Healthy category… Are you ready? Are you ready? Good, because I’m not.

1) Problem #24: Run the Cincinnati Flying Pig half-Marathon with Michelle and Anne on May 4th. Why am I doing this?

For one, I really like Pigs. I think they might be my favorite animal. For two, Michelle mentioned it to me last week, and I thought “you know, this will really be the kick in the pants I need to get running again.”

And so I agreed, not thinking about how May is really close, and how I don’t really like to run too much, and this means I have to get up early to train, and I really hate that, etc. etc.

I should also say that I ran the 2004 Chicago Marathon, and when I heard the words half-marathon, I thought, “Oh yes, I can do that! I did a full one!” But again, I wasn’t thinking how much work it was, and how, although I was glad I did it, it was a great life experience, etc. etc., I vowed to never do it again. Now I am realizing that even half of the pain and suffering I felt that day is still a shit load of pain and suffering.

Dammit! Dammit I say! But, I agreed, so there it is.

2) Speaking of pigs, which I love, did you guys see this article on pig-brain disease? Why hello, here is another good reason to not eat meat. So gross!

3) Another Problem to add to Get Healthy - Problem #25: Do the Danskin Chicagoland Womens Triathalon. This one also involves Michelle, she’s all in to doing sporty, torturous things like triathlons, and she said she’d kill my cat Smew and poison Riki if I don’t do it, so you see, I have to. But this one is 159 days away, and that’s a lot of days. So I’ll procrastinate until it’s 9 days away, then I’ll be swearing the gods above, swearing to the Michelle above, and be scrambling to get my ass in shape.

I think the rest of my problems/goals from here on out will be to take some really sweet naps.

Tomorrow’s post: I’ll put up reader-submitted goals like I said I would do today, yesterday. I really will, really.

And also to Julio: The problems won’t win! I shake my fist at you now!

I need to step it up.

I have not ridden my bike to work once this week, not once! It has been sooo cold, I just couldn’t. I heard the forecast this morning on NPR - it was something like this:

“Do not go outside, or you will die! If bare skin hits the air, death! If you ride your bike, you will die, but in a more slow and painful way than the other circumstances!”

So you see, I just couldn’t. This means I have 3 make-up days ahead of me. Oh, and I forgot to mention that when I was walking to the train this morning I saw about 70 people on bikes. You fool! You baby! Change your diaper and get on your bike!

This weather makes me want to add the following problems to my list:

1) Never leave the house again, and especially never change out of these sweet zebra print pajamas.

2) Never have to go to work again, which means never having to ride my bike to work again. In order to do this, I first need to:

3) Find a bag of money in the bushes. Like in No Country for Old Men, but without the 70s tracking device, and without that creep hunting me down.

Ok, but I do have a real new problem, and I’m really excited about it. I don’t really know where it fits, but for now, I’ll put it under Get Smart.

#32) Visit and animal sanctuary with Amy, and pet animals, and think about how I’m glad I don’t eat them.

I met Amy almost a year ago, in a way that is embarassing for me. Basically, I kept seeing her around town on the most amazing pink bike ever, and I secretly was so jealous, but also wanted to meet her, but I didn’t want to seem like a creep. One day, I came across her bike on flickr, and sent her a message that was something like this:

“Hi, you dont know me, but I know where you live, and work, and how you hate spagetti, and always dreamed of being a ballerina dancer, anyway, I like your bike, do you want to ride bikes with me one day?”

To make this a little shorter, we did meet up, and with a few other amazing bike riding ladies that we had never met before, and they ended up being the coolest bunch of girls I could ever hope to meet, and we all became BFF’s, FandE.

God, where is this going?! So, Amy is vegan, and I had been vegetarian for over 12 years, and hanging out with her got me thinking. She made amazing cupcakes that were vegan, Check. Earwax has an amazing chocolate peanut butter vegan smoothie, check check, I visted Peta.org and met my meat (well, dairy). Check check check check check and check.

I decided to go for it, and I’m so glad I did. I feel great, physically, and morally, and I’m learning to cook! So Amy suggested we go to a sanctuary as part of my problems, so we will. Because that’s what vegans do.

That and meet up in the park and play with those sticks that have the rubber balls on the end and get baked.

What a perv.

But wait - before I continue, let me say that my Dad sent me an email in response to my parent disclaimer from this post. It went something like this:

Dear Jessi, You are the coolest, smartest person in the world, etc. etc. Also, Loved your “balls” photos. You really don’t think you
have to “apologize to your parents” for “balls jokes”, do you?! I’m all about the balls jokes! Love, Dad.

The last part was true at least. So now you know.

Anyway - back to the matter at hand. Even though I haven’t offically opened up the “You tell me what to do” category for reader submissions, Aaron left a suggestion as a comment that I liked so much, I decided to make it official. So here it is:

You tell me what to do category, #69: (In his words)

Record a hip-hop record (at least 4 songs) with Riki and make a myspace music page for it.

Riki and I used to live with Aaron, so he knows what we can do. He knows. Stay tuned, this will be a fun one.

Last June, as I mentioned earlier in this mess of a blog, I was in a cycling accident, broke my collarbone and later had surgery to fuse the bones together with a titanium plate. For the first two weeks I was a mess, sitting on the couch with nothing to do but watch Heroes, take Vicodin, and feel sorry for myself.

Now, despite the insane mood swings and general hatred of life it brought on, vicodin was a lifesaver, except for one horrible incident. During that first week’s drug haze, I somehow, someway, managed to throw away my brand new fancy glasses that I had just ponied up like $500 for. I know for sure that I threw them away because I’m constantly knocking things into the trash in the bathroom on accident; make up, hair product etc. When I realized they were missing it was too late, and all that was left was me, cold and alone with a broken heart, a broken collarbone, and my Pearl vision glasses left over from my glory years in the 90s.

That brings us to this, a brand new problem in the Random category: #91 Get new glasses. Have respect the new glasses. Wear the new glasses always, and never lose them again.