Move into my very own apartment

Well, even though I am less than 4 miles from home, I am now out of the house! Because it really is a ridiculously small world, my mom's first apartment in San Francisco when she came here 35 years ago was the same one and same--she lived in the unit directly above me! Even the landlady is the same! Quite the circle of life and proof to the argument that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
I am slowly starting to get used to having my own place and starting to feel less like I am playing pretend and more like a legitimate adult. The downside will be shopping for food (right now there is a only a case of Blue Moon and a pint of ice cream in the fridge...) and actually having to cook on a regular basis, but I feel there are infinitely more worthy things to complain about. I still plan on coming home to do laundry and pouching toiletry and some food supplies (because they are FREE), but I feel these are things that most young adults who have good relationships with their families and live close enough to home do.
While I still have some knick-knacks to pick up for my apartment, it is coming together quite nicely and I look forward to having people over for game nights (I have no t.v.) and cooking dinners (that way, I can shirk doing so!) Pleased with myself am I indeed =)

Do 50 sit-ups and 20 push ups everyday for one month

I have been quite the lazy mofo, setting foot in a gym to exercise a whooping 3 times in past 6 months. I embarked upon this goal to help tighten up my abs, tone up my arms and inject some self-discipline into my life through daily repetition of the same task. While I can do 50 sit-ups in my sleep, doing them daily has noticeably tightened my stomach. I have pitiful upper body strength, and have an irrational fear of ending up like this:

if I engage in more than minimal strengthening exercises, but, I figured 20 push ups probably wouldn't get me there. It was a sad struggle at first, but then became almost easier than doing the sit-ups. My arms feel stronger and look a little less wobbly. I plan to try and maintain these exercises on at least a tri-weekly basis, as they really only take less than 2 minutes before I hop into bed. Next stop, getting into some semblance of an exercise routine!

Read one full newspaper article daily for one month

This goal was actually a throw back my youthful potential, the time before I squandered my attention span and developed an unsettling addiction to instant gratification. I used to read the newspaper daily and then stopped, advanced adolescence and crippling indolence taking a mighty toll on my aspirations to be a well-informed and voracious reader.

I made this a goal to help combat my growing impatience with reading articles that required turning or clicking over to the next page. News snippets and headlines had become my sources of information, my depth of understanding of matters consequently plummeting to shocking shallows. While the ready availability of information makes news instantly accessible, it also led to my glossing over details and making snap decisions based on my own preconceived notions, not allowing for developed counter-arguments to ruminate, nor for anything more than superfluous analysis of relevant information. This only helped increase my self-induced ADD and further my path to becoming Jack of all trades, Master of none.

I allowed myself to read any article, so long as I read the entire thing. I started off on easy, entertainment/gossip nonsense, then worked my way up to financial, scientific and political articles. I found my ability to focus on the task at hand increased and was surprised by how much I actually enjoyed and comprehended what I was reading. It was also an excellent self-discipline exercise to do something consistently, for an extended period of time. While I haven't necessarily kept up with this practice daily, I do now read articles from start to finish.

Get a Blackberry, or similar device

I finally succumbed to the scorn and dismissal of others for having a phone without internet/photo/color capabilities and got a Blackberry Tour. (Though NOT T-Mobile, VERIZON. But, now is not the time to discuss my predilection for brand loyalty.) I will miss my cradle charger and being able to toss my phone into bags with reckless abandon, but I do enjoy having a mini computer at my beck and command. I'm sure it helps that I don't associate my Blackberry with employment, more pretending to be all grown up. However, they do say fake it till you make it...

Read "Factotum"

This book is a fairly quick read that chronicles the misadventures of Henry Chinaski, a chronic alcoholic who stumbles in and out of shitty jobs across America during WWII. He is an aspiring writer with zero life aspirations aside from nursing the bottle to help bear the cross of his existence. The writing is succinct and though Henry's trials are repetitive and predictable, Charles Bukowski maintains the reader's interest with enough humor to add variation. This is definitely not a novel you feel you've wasted your time reading, provided you find the storyline appealing.

Some memorable quotes:

"Her triangle of cunt hair was hidden by her dangling, bouncing stomach."

"I was given instructions by a toothless elf with a film over his left eye."

"[Y]oung Mexican girls with beautiful skin and dark eyes; they wore tight bluejeans and tight sweaters and gaudy earrings.... In fifteen years they'd weigh 185 pounds and it would be their daughters who were beautiful."

"Because I had claimed two years of college on my application, I got the job as Coconut Man."

Help out at Glide one day

As part of first-year orientation for law school, we had the option of volunteering with different community services around the city. I chose Glide, obviously. We helped prepare 1200 bagged lunches for the residents of the Tenderloin in the bowels of Glide Memorial Church. After donning ever fashionable plastic aprons, gloves and hairnets, my team made smoked turkey sandwiches. I was a little disappointed that we didn't get to interact with the TL inhabitants more, save one lady who was having a full-blown conversation with her dog, but it was 9 to 10:30 am on a Saturday and most probably hadn't come to from their stupors yet. When leaving one did ask the girls what we were doing and when someone said "volunteering" he replied, "Well siiiign me up!" I certainly wouldn't mind doing this again.

In Progress: Go camping at least once a year

My oldest friend Marissa and I went camping in Hendy Woods with her friend. The weather was perfect, the drive sinuous and enjoyable. We got to the park a tad early, so we decided to stroll about Mendocino first, a quaint and charming town with a refined 1800's California feel to it. There are paths through the coastal flowers that meander along the bluffs overlooking the awesomeness of the Pacific Ocean. Blue sky met blue, blue sea and all was harmony.

After pizza at a joint where a frazzled mother of three all but accused us of stealing the $20 she almost immediately found in her own purse, we headed off to set up camp. Leave it to us (well I'll let the fault lie solely on Marissa here) to book a Disabled site. They let us keep it because it was after 5pm (but not after reselling it to us!) The people next to us would've been shoe-ins for first place at a trailer trash contest, flaccid, obese, stringy-haired members of an unbranched family tree and all. After taking pictures by our disabled sign and pitching tent, we hiked to and through the Ed Hendy Redwood Grove taking special pictures along the way. There is something almost sacred about tipping through throngs of ancient trees, humbled by the respect and grace they silently command.

Dinner consisted of S'mores and a sad attempt at a single can of vegetarian chili, spoons ripped and crackheadedly fashioned from a paper bag. We had to a remind a father, who was giving his poor offspring a haphazard ride on his shoulders whilst holding a cup of wine, not to traipse through our campsite--the paved path to the bathroom was for facilitating our wheelchair accessibility...

We awoke to the sound of a Mexican soap opera blaring from our neighbors who apparently can channel some barrio too. All they needed were some doo-rags, gold teeth and a rice cooker and all races could've been offended! Because my mind is oft my enemy, I forgot a sleeping pad and my own corpulence was apparently poor compensation. Next time! Post checking out we traveled down the road to Van Damme to trek their Fern Canyon and Pygmy Forest hikes. (The canyon had a Jurassic Park feel to it, the "pygmy" forest was a disappoint, as there were NOT any midget anythings to be found...) The ride back home was pleasant and the camping trip was a wonderful way to unwind before the madness that will be law school. I always forget how much I love camping, not showering, hiking, making fires, wondering through the wilderness, playing with sticks, wielding Swiss army knives, waking up happy. I am DEFINITELY looking forward to accomplishing this goal :)