104. Get Rid of Our Home Landline

Awhile back we got rid of cable TV.  That has been going pretty well.  We use Netflix and Hulu for just about everything that we watch on TV.  The antenna in our attic works great. I do miss ESPN, but I get enough sports online to make up for it.  Plus saving around $35 a month helps to make it a little easier too.
The other day I was reading a blog post about getting a free phone line with free calling.  Melissa and I have talked about when we move we will most likely get rid of our land line. After investigating about the legitimacy of the blog post I found that there are a lot of people who are very fond of the OBi110 system used with GoogleVoice.  When using Google Voice you get a phone number for free (at least until 2013). I ordered the OBi on Saturday night from Amazon and had it at the house on Monday afternoon. All I had to do is plug the OBi110 system into our modem then run a line to our cordless phone base.  We now have a working phone that will call anywhere in the USA for free.  The only number it won't let us call is 911.  This is kind of a big deal but since we had talked about getting rid of our land line later this was a hurdle we were going to have to come to at some point.
The setup was really easy.  I used the directions given here and had a working phone in about 15 minutes.
So far (2 days in) there really haven't been any issues with phone quality.  It is great to now have the freedom to shop around for only an internet service provider rather than a bundle of phone + internet + TV. We did have to get a new phone number, but at a savings of about $25 a month I think we can do a little leg work to let everyone know that they need to change our phone number.

68. Watch 5 movies that I watched growing up

I have been keeping track of my progress here. I have enjoyed seeing some of the movies from the past.  It has been fun to go into the library and pick something out from years ago.  I am definitely going to keep searching out more movies to watch.  Some have been awful while others have been fun to see again.

1. Harry and the Hendersons - Two moments that I remembered from the movie that never let me down:
"Shoot it!"  Reply - "It's dead."  "Shoot it anyway!"
Harry sticking his head out the window making a siren noise to get traffic to move.
This is a good movie, and it was fun to watch, but it is probably best left in 1987.
2. Last Action Hero
3. Surf Ninjas
4. Honey, I Blew up the Kid! - We're headed to Las Vegas in a few weeks and I wanted to watch a few movies that were filmed there.  This is one I watched a lot growing up. First reason, I liked the first movie in the series.  Second reason, Keri Russell.  Third reason, we watched a lot of movies in the early 90s. This just happened to be one of them.
5. Toby Tyler - All I remembered from the movie was that it had something to do with the circus and Toby riding on a horse. I watched it quite a few times. growing up. I am pretty sure we watched it (and taped it) after seeing it on Sunday night's Disney Sunday Movie.
 I was a big fan of the Disney Sunday Movie growing up.  I remember watching the opening credits:

I always remember when I would watch the credits I would try to see how many of the movies that were included that I had seen.  I looked forward to that movie each week.
After the opening Michael Eisner would introduce the movie.  I think I remember him usually walking along a beach talking about the movie.  Same scene every week.
Just writing this it brings me back to a time that I happily remember. Between the Disney Sunday Movie and TGIF that was some great memorable programming.

30 goals down!

64. Watch 10 of the top 100 movies

I just finished my 10th movie from this list.  It is my 33rd out of the top 100.  I am thinking I will try to make it to about 50 by the end of my 1001 days.  I hadn't heard of a lot of those movies.  Some were great while others were not so great.

29 goals down!

Bowling and the Museum

I just noticed that I hadn't blogged about going bowling or going to the Children's Museum at Navy Pier.  Luckily Melissa blogged about them and saved me some time.
We had a lot of fun and hope to do both activities again in the near future.

28 goals down!

104. Meet Christopher Paul Curtis

I found out in December that one of my favorite "children's" authors, Christopher Paul Curtis would be coming to our school.  I was pretty excited.  He is the author of the book, "Bud, not Buddy." It is probably my favorite book out there. It is the first (and only) book to have won both the Newberry Award and the Coretta Scott King award. That is a pretty big deal.
If every guest author that our school had come visit was as engaging as Mr. Curtis I would enjoy our assemblies more. He was a fantastic storyteller.
Bud, not Buddy is about an African American boy named Bud who is out on his own in the 1930s and in search of his father. Each year I read the book to my students and each year they really get into it.

Danny Glover's brother?

Mr. Curtis is traveling around trying to get people excited about his new book, "The Mighty Miss Malone."  It is a book that runs parallel with "Bud, not Buddy" as far as the time frame, some of the setting and a couple of the characters. I really liked it.  It is hard for me sometimes to find books that I like to read that have girls as the lead character.

This wasn't a goal, but it was a big deal to me.

60. Get and solve a 6X6 Rubik’s cube

I got this for Christmas. It is pretty close to the 4x4 and 5x5 with a few more things to get caught up by. As Matt told me, it ups my nerd status having this thing, but I enjoy it.  My students at school think they are cool too.  That's enough for me.  I currently have about 5 or 6 of my students that can solve the regular cube with 4 or 5 that are fairly close to being able to solve it. 

Check out this collection.  Today at school I asked for everyone that had a cube to put theirs on the table in class.  There are 23 cubes there and I had 7 kids that told me that they left their cube at home.

This is a picture of me with Luke, one of my students.  He was one of the first to be able to solve the cube and he has been a big fan since he started. I am trying to show him how to solve some of the bigger ones. There are some complicated steps with them that either take a long time to teach, or I don't completely know how to explain.  So we aren't there quite yet.

Here it is solved. There have been some steps that took me awhile to get down.  After messing around a little bit with it I was able to scramble it around and get it right.  There are faster ways to get it solved than I did, but I did get it done.  I'm guessing if I scramble it up it would take me about 30 minutes of uninterrupted time to solve.

After I solved it, first I took a picture, then I started mixing it around in different patterns.

From start to finish for me I am guessing it will take me about a half hour of uninterrupted time.  The world record is under 2 minutes!  This guy is flying.



26 goals done!

20. Go Curling

I had the opportunity to go curling a little over a week ago with a bunch of friends from church.  My friend Tyler organized everything and did a fantastic job! Between organizing with the venue, the food, and putting teams and a schedule together I am sure it was quite a bit of work.

Curling is a sport that is a sensation about once every four years when the Olympics come around.  I caught on to the craze two years ago and have been interested in trying it ever since. 

Here is a view down on of the "sheets" or lanes as I would have called them before.  It is amazing how far the 42 pound stones can go with just an easy slide.

 Here are a few games in action.

I only added the picture below to point out the little white thing in my hand.  Instead of wearing the special shoes that they have for curling we just put our foot over the plastic piece and we were able to glide fairly easily.

The form and face of a true amateur!

Our team. Me, Andy, Ryan and Jay.  We had the hearts of champions, but we just couldn't play like them.  Maybe next time.

Fantastic time all around.  Great fun, great food, great memories. Hopefully we will do it again!

25 goals down!