As it turns out, I had a perfect Saturday this Saturday. The best part was, it all happened organically, as in, I didn’t plan for it to be the perfect Saturday. It just sort of happened, which I think added to the perfection of it all.

The day started by sleeping in until 9 a.m. There was a leisurely breakfast with coffee and the DVR. From there, I made a batch of scones, just for the heck of it. They were delicious, by the way.

Then, I went to the spa for my first ever full body massage. I am in love with the spa. I’m in love with the goofy new age music, with the goofy waterfall sound effects, all of it, because it smells so good there, there’s no cat hair, and everyone is so quiet. It’s heavenly. The massage was exactly what I wanted, and the therapist was careful to ask me exactly what I wanted to achieve from the experience. Really, it was better than I hoped it would be, and I left feeling like a well-energized noodle.

A well-energized noodle that can cross #79 off the list, I might add.

From there, I went home, read a magazine, took a nap, and woke up just in time to go out to dinner with Mr. Martini. A bowl of ice cream and Dexter on Netflix rounded out a fantastic day.

I think the best part of the day was that I could see how great it was while it was happening. I looked up at Mr. Martini and one point, and said, “Wow, this is really a great day.” He was happy, since he had given me the gift certificate for the massage over a year ago and I finally used it, and enjoyed it so much.

I could go on and on, but I think I already have. It was a great, great day, and I think it help me through the workweek this week.

Hello. I’m a well-energized noodle, who had a really good day.

I am no expert at this particular task, but I did find discover a few tricks that made the process much, much easier. I figured I’d share these tricks in case you, like me, have never, ever, ever organized your digital photos in the entire time you’ve had a digital camera.

Did you catch that? I have never, ever, ever organized my digital photos. Ever. So that, my friends, is a lot of photos to go through. In fact, I believe that there are years-worth of photos that were lost on previous defunct and now recycled computers that I’ll never see again. I’m trying not to think about that.

Here are my suggestions if you, like me, have thousands of digital photos that you’ve never really sifted through before:

1. Find Duplicate Files

This is HUGE. I didn’t realize it, but I discovered that since I wasn’t clearing photos from my camera card in between imports, I was basically saving the same photos to my computer over and over and over again. That’s a lot of duplicates. Rather than deleting them all by hand, I downloaded a free duplicate file finder to do the work for me (I used this one for my PC). I ran this program on just my photos and chose to delete just the duplicates, leaving the “original” (or just one copy, in my case) safe. By doing just this step, I freed up about 3.5 GB of duplicate files. THREE POINT FIVE GIGABYTES. This was way easier than trying to delete them one by one by one. Augh.

2. Find an organization system that works for you.

Personally, I fell in love with a trial version of Adobe Lightroom, which I can’t say enough about. When I transferred the photos from my PC to my Mac, I used Lightroom to organize them. It placed them into folders for me, so I didn’t have to manually drag and drop all of the photos by date or category. It also has a keyword and search system that is fast and simple to use. Love it, love it, love it.

3. MAKE FRIENDS WITH YOUR DELETE KEY.

Because I’m doing the 365 project, I sometimes have dozens of versions of the same shot, and I’ve been keeping them all. Why? I have no idea. But during this process, I made an effort to be vigilant and delete as many of these multiples as possible. This cleared up a lot of space, and now when I look at my photos, I focus on the good shots, rather than the 15 shots that are just so-so.

If you’re hesitant to delete these extra photos just in case, my friend B. made the following suggestion: Put those extras in a separate folder, and date them. If you don’t open or view those extra photos for a month, delete the folder. Simple!

I’m so glad I took them time to do this, and to back up all of these photos to an external hard drive. And with that, I can cross #69 off of my list!

Next week – a massage. I’m so happy about this, I can barely stand it.

I crossed #8 – Bake Bread off of my 101 in 1001 list!

Isn’t it beautiful? It was delicious, too, and not that hard to bake. Full details are on my crafty blog, but I had to share that I did indeed get started on the rest of the 101 in 1001 list. In fact, I’ve gone through the rest of the list, and planned ahead on most of the rest of the items, assigning them to different months throughout the year, to make sure everything gets done. Yay, organization!

Yes,  the list is on it’s way to completion! I must admit, I feel like a rock star. Another reason I feel like a rock star?

Because I got a “Blog Rock Star” award from Ms. Quirky at Quirky is a Compliment!

I’m supposed to list all of the ways in which I am a rock start, but really, I’m so consumed with the whole bread thing that I’m having trouble thinking of any. OK, here are a few:

1. I have no trouble packing up and moving. That is to say, I packed up and moved to Boston on my own, then moved to Ohio to go to grad school, where I met Mr. M. From Ohio, he and I moved to Chicago (with no jobs! no prospects! luckily it worked out for us, but do not follow our example!), and then we packed up and moved to Louisville six years later. I do believe we have wanderlust, but I do believe we’ll be staying put in Louisville for a long, long time.

2. I have an uncanny ability to spot and avoid dog poop on sidewalks. You may think this is trivial, but trust me, everyone should have this rock start talent.

3. I can follow the directions of even the most convoluted, poorly translated assembly instructions, ever. I am an flat-pack furniture building savant.

4. I bake a mean loaf of bread. (Yes, I’m still incredibly proud of that, but you’re right, enough about the bread already.)

Thanks again for the award, Ms. Quirky! Hug those kitties for me, and rock on with your rockin’ self!

(Yeah, that sounded silly. I know. Move along.)

I did manage to mark a few things off the list, though:
2. Buy a car
5. Bake something from scratch
15. Take a sewing class
24. Donate books
25. Clean out closets (moving forces you to clean)
26. Clean out basement space (see above, re: moving)
27. Lose 10 pounds
36. Observation deck of the Sears Tower
39. Visit Chicago’s Chinatown
41. Attend 2009 Family Reunion
47. Purchase Laptop
48. Purchase Apple iTouch
49. Purchase digital camera with image stabilization
51. Purchase good pedometer
53. Knit myself a sweater
54. Knit Mr. Martini hat & scarf set (OK, just a scarf, he claims he doesn’t want a hat)
55. Finish or frog all current knitting WIPs
58. Sew pillows for living room
62. Make a photo light box
70. Reorganize all Flickr photos and sets
71. Organize all MP3s
73. Recycle old computers & monitors (FYI, Louisville has a FANTASTIC consumer electronics recycling program!)
78. Get a facial
83. Eat an Indian meal
86. Do a cartwheel on July 30 2009
88. Go to a concert
92. Donate knitted items to charity
97. Take a photography class
98. Cook holiday meal
100. Bet on a horse race at Churchill Downs
101.  Get married

31 out of 101. That’s it. That’s just over a quarter. That means that there are 70 items still left to be completed.

Gulp.

In reviewing the list again, there are 20 items listed that just aren’t going to happen. That I don’t even want to attempt, or completely missed the boat on, location/time-wise. Remember, I wrote this list when I lived in Chicago, so the Chicago related items especially are just not going to happen at this point. There are also some that I don’t want to move forward with, for various reasons (change in priorities, change in tastes, budgeting issues, etc.). I’m not going to fret about those.

But that does leave 50 items. Which is just about how many weeks I have left to complete this list, give or take.

That’s when I thought: I wonder if I can complete one thing a week for the rest of the year, or until my mid-December due date?

I wonder if that’s possible. It might be fun to try!

I’ve decided that this will be my focus for 2010. No major goals, no major resolutions, but a focus on the 101 in 1001 list, which is filled with a variety of activities that vary from good for me to stuff I never thought I’d do to stuff that I’ve never let myself do before.

You can check out the 101 in 1001 page to see the entire list, including the items that I have left to do. It is one varied list, and I kind of love that.

I’ll try to update my progress every Tuesday, so that gives me the weekend to start/finish/go crazy.

I already have an idea of what I want to do this weekend. This weekly challenge is going to be daunting, but just thinking about pacing myself and getting to do a lot of these things that are going to be fun is really getting me excited to get started.

It’s going to be a busy 2010! Bring it on!

#2. Buy a car.

Mr. Martini and I moved to Louisville on a Saturday. On Sunday, we tried to go car shopping but the dealerships were closed. We had to get our rental car back by 5 pm on Monday, so we didn’t have much time to do a lot of comparison shopping and test-driving. I’m sure the sales guy could smell that desperation a mile away, but I think we got a good deal on a decent car that gets amazing gas mileage:

#5. Bake something from scratch.

When I wrote that, I had grand ideas about breads or cakes or pies. Instead, I baked cookies. But they were delicious:

#24: Donate Books.

We donated at least 8 paper boxes of books to Open Books Ltd. right before we moved. For those of you in the Chicago area, I cannot recommend these folks highly enough. They came right to our apartment, they carried them to the car, and I feel good knowing that our donation is helping a literacy program in Chicago. They are a great, great service. And, if you’re not in Chicago, they’ll still take your books! Check out the website for details.

#27: Lose 10 pounds.

I’m proud to say that I have completed the first of four of these items from the Obligatory Healthy Section of my list. I am officially down about 13 pounds from my highest weight ever, which is what I was measuring when I started this list. I’d love, love, love to be able to get down another 10 before my family reunion in August and strike off another of these before then. I’m trying my hardest – but that’s an entry for another day.

#58: Sew pillows for living room.

Done! Actually, this is the second set I made, and I really like them:

After those successes, I have to make note of my first major failure. It’s one that cannot be done, because I specified a particular date to do it, and it just didn’t happen.

#85: Cartwheel on July 30 2008 – FAIL!

I was determined to do a cartwheel on each of my birthdays during this 1001 day period, but missed the first one completely. I even allowed myself a grace period of a week, but just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Why? Because I had a job interview scheduled a mere 4 days after my birthday, and figured I didn’t want to wear a cast to it. Because it would be JUST MY LUCK to break my wrist doing a cartwheel right before a job interview.

This year, I think I’ll have a better shot. I’ll be at the beach a few days after my birthday, so the soft sand may make for a softer landing. Or at least I hope so.

Phew! That’s enough updating for one day. I’m going to update the 101 in 1001 page with these updates, as well as a few others, if you’re interested in the minutiae of the list. I have a LOT to do in the next year and a half, by the looks of it. Yowza.

I know! I’ll pause to give you time to recover.

This is really more of a big deal to me, as I am a big schlub who hates to go out anywhere on weeknights, and even on weekends gets grumpy if we’re out past nine. Yes, I’m a bundle of fun.

But Mr. Martini’s co-worker invited us to go out and see a couple of bands playing at The Hideout, and they were bluegrass bands, and it sounded fun, so we went. And had a great time.

We saw two bands – the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders Stringband, and the Hackensaw Boys. The first were 4 women, who sat and played some (I guess) traditional bluegrass. They were great, and I really enjoyed them. Bonus – two of the band members were celebrating birthdays, and someone brought them a HUGE cake, which they cut and shared with the audience. Nice!

By the time the Hackensaw Boys got on stage, I was getting a little tired. They played a lot of super-fast-paced bluegrass, so fast-paced I kind of swung from energized to just plain exhausted by it. They had a pretty long set, and we couldn’t stay for all of it. But check me out! I went out! To a concert! I saw people play live music, on a weeknight!

Full disclosure – I have the day off today, so it wasn’t that big of a sacrifice. But still!

I won’t lie – I had a blast. The music did get repetitive toward the end, but for me it was just going out, standing in a room full of people, listening to live music, drinking an Old Style from a can – the whole experience of the evening. I looked around at the room at one point, and thought – wow, who are these people that do this? Then I realized that I was there with them, so in actuality, I was one of those people that does this. Me. And that was very, very cool.

Even cooler was the fact that the bar was not filled with smoke, and that when I got home I wasn’t reeking of cigarettes. I know a lot of people don’t agree with the crazy no-smoking bans in bars and restaurants, I won’t lie – I (along with my asthma) LOVE them. It made the whole evening SO much more enjoyable.

The best part of this is that, just three days in, I can cross something off of my 101 in 1001 list. I swear I didn’t know about this event until after I posted this list – in all honesty, I thought this task would be one that would be harder to complete. I posted the list on Tuesday, Wednesday we got the invite, and Thursday we saw the band. What are the odds my teeth will magically straighten (#67) just because I published this list?

I’m going to try my hardest to take pictures of each item from the list as I complete them, so here’s my crappy camera phone picture from last night. With this photo, I claim this item complete!

88. Go to a concert – Completed 3/20/08 at the Hideout in Chicago:

One down, 100 to go!

I’ve been seeing “101 in 1001″ lists since I started blogging about 4 years ago. I remember Dancing Brave had one, and a few other people did, too. I kind of forgot about them, but then they started reappearing in recent months – I’ve seen more and more of them. In fact, just today I discovered a huge list of 101 in 1001 lists going back to around 2004 (when I first saw them, huh). They seem to be very popular things to create on New Years. I had no idea!

I don’t have a great track record with my public to do lists (I couldn’t complete my 25 in 2005 list, or my 26 in 2006 list, and I couldn’t even make a 27 in 2007 list, and 28 in 2008 wasn’t even a twinkle in my eye). I think that’s why I’ve resisted this challenge for so long.

Then I thought, “Maybe making the list would kill a little time on a slow afternoon.”

A week later, after many, many tweaks and false starts and rejected items, I actually came up with a challenging list that feasibly could be done in 1001 days.

I honestly don’t expect to mark every single thing off of this list. There are some constraints – time, money, the universe bending to my will – that will most likely make some of these tasks impossible.

I also included 5 “Freebies” – I was getting burnt out, and knew that at some point in the future I’d come up with a great idea to add to the list. Or I’d do something outrageous and therefore list-worthy. So these give me a little flexiblity for the 2 and a half year journey.

Sweet jebus. I don’t even know what I’m having for dinner tonight, but I’m thinking that I’ll be able to complete 101 tasks over a 2+ year timespan? I must be crazy.

Oh, who am I kidding. This is going to be fun.

Full list is here. I’ve got some work to do.