Day Zero Project #33: Say yes to everything for one day.

Whoever made this goal most likely had the intention to use it as a way to open themselves up to the endless possibilities of life that our typical safe selves would never do. After all, it's easiest to say "No," but no great adventure has been undertaken without an initial hesitant "Yes."

How much would our lives be different if it was always a "No"? What if my wife would have said "No" when I asked her out in October of 1997. What would my life be like if I would have said "No" to leaving Iowa, or if I said "No" again when the time came to move to Florida?

What if I would have said "No" to doing a list of other people's goals? Then I wouldn't be doing all this weird stuff, you wouldn't be reading it, and we'd both have a little more free time to show for it.

Perhaps not the best example on that last one, but you get the idea.

All that said, saying "Yes" to literally everything is the pursuit of the young. I know what I like and I seem to have a growing appreciation for avoiding things that will kill me as I get older. So rather than approach this goal with eyes wide open, I did my best to schedule this for a day when no one would ask anything of me.

And this was simply because I know the people around me and if I was to answer everything in the affirmative I'd end up shopping with my wife and buying too much stuff and then hanging out with my friends having too many drinks and a hangover that lasts 24 times as long as it took me to drink the alcohol in the first place.

For the most part I managed to avoid all human contact and made it a full 24 hours without offering a single "No" to the world.

For the full day the only things that I had to do that I didn't really want to were:

1)  Walk to the grocery store even though my allergies were acting up and the mere thought of being outside made me want to curl up into a little ball and cry for a bit.

2) Watch as Kate bought more tea even though we have a full pantry full of way too many types of tea. It sort of hurt to agree to more tea as I'm a bit of a minimalist when it comes to stuff in my house.

3) And the most painful, I had to eat one of these little Nutella snacks:

Does anyone even like Nutella? I was hungry and it certainly wasn't what I wanted, but my wife suggested that I eat it and I was in no position to decline, so it was adventure time!

And if eating a snack you don't want to eat is the worse thing that happens, then I'd say that the day was successful.

Day Zero Project #31: Pick fruit from the tree and make pie.

Last weekend we had to go to Fort Lonesome in Lithia, FL to pick a bunch of strawberries to make organic jam, so in the hippie version of killing two birds with one stone I made sure to make my way over to their orchards and pick some oranges from their trees in order to make this pie.

Oranges...on a tree!

Yes, oranges are not the ideal fruit for making a pie. If it was summer, I could probably find some peaches or something. If I still lived in Iowa or Connecticut, I could have found some apples. But I live in Florida and it's March, so oranges are my option.

Yours truly, picking fruit off a tree.

Cutting up oranges and throwing them into a flaky crust seemed incredibly unappealing. Plus I remember something from a few years ago when I tried to fry some oranges and it basically sucked all the flavor right out of them. So, I was left with taking those oranges, juicing them and baking them into a meringue-style pie.

While this was a good, and most likely tasty, plan, I did overlook the fact that it would be hard work. I had to juice oranges. I had to boil a mixture of those oranges and a whole bunch of other stuff until it turned into a weird, thick delicious concoction. Then I had to make meringue, which is surprisingly difficult considering it's just a few different basic ingredients.

Anyway, I did all that (and did it well, if I might say so) and then baked it for awhile and it came out tasting quite good. Here's my picture-by-picture rundown of the process:

Get some oranges

 

Turn those oranges into orange juice

Cook those with sugar until thick and put in a crust

Beat eggs for 40 years until you have meringue

Bake it for awhile until it looks awesome

Eat it.

Day Zero Project #34: Make organic strawberry jam.

The first thing that a person has to do before making organic strawberry jam is to track down some organic strawberries. Preferably not ones from Whole Foods that are going to set you back about $34/pound. Lucky for me, I happen to live in Florida and, extra lucky for me, it happens to be strawberry season.

With that in mind, we packed up the car and headed to Lithia, FL to a little organic farm called Fort Lonesome.

And how do I know for sure that this place grew organic strawberries? Just look at this sign. Hippies = much higher portion of organic goodness. And 300% more patchouli smell. Also, they say they are organic and they seemed like trustworthy people, so I'll go with it.

So after a quick walk through the onsite trail, we came across the strawberry fields where we'd be doing all of our work.

I picked a bunch of strawberries.

 

My wife picked a bunch of strawberries.

 

And pretty soon we had a two whole bunches of strawberries. Which is a good thing because I needed about two pounds just to make a little bit of jam and I needed another four pounds or so just to snack on during the car ride home, because they were delicious.

When we got home I set about taking all of those beautiful, red berries and destroying them through a series of steps showcasing my ineptitude in making jams. If you want to make your own jam at home, here's my secret: copy someone else. What do I know about making jam? Nothing.

But this person at RookieMag.com does, so go here and use their recipe.

Basically, clean your strawberries and throw them into your blender:

Then you turn that on and hope you have a blender strong enough to turn that into strawberry liquid. Don't drink it. It's good stuff, but then what will you make your jam with?

Take that liquid, add a whole bunch of sugar, some lemon juice and boil that FOREVER, stirring it often. And by forever, I mean 45 minutes. It seems like a really long time but put some Mouth of the Architect on your iPod and it's only like 3 songs. It'll fly by.

After that's thickened up a bit, we'll dump it into a sterilized Ball jar This liquid-ish mix is good stuff but, again, I encourage you to restrain from eating it. We are trying to make jam here and we're so close. You will end up with something that looks like this that you will refrigerate until it cools and magically turns into jam.

And what to do with this delicious concoction? It's certainly too fancy to be wasted on PB&J sandwiches. A fine jam likes this deserves a fine dessert. How about some mascarpone cheese with chocolate mint and a balsamic reduction? Yep, that'll do.

Also, ignore the advice I just gave. Is there anything better than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?

No. No there isn't.

Day Zero Project #64: Make a list of 20 things I like about myself.

This was one of those goals that when I was looking through the list originally I put into the category of "Too easy, I'll just put that off and do it anytime I'm bored." And, yes, it was easy in the sense that I didn't have to buy anything and I didn't have to go anywhere, but you know what? Complimenting one's self is not the most easy thing in the world.

I quickly wrote down about 8 things that I liked about myself and then had to really struggle to come up with some stuff. Maybe I'm just harder on myself than most, but I have a feeling that most people would have a hard time with a list like this.

And that's the point, right? We should all like a million things about ourselves, not just 20. But you gotta start somewhere, I did right here. So read my 20 things if you feel like it but, more importantly, sit down and make your own list. You'll feel good about how cool you are.

My list, in no particular order, except the first one because that's pretty important.

1. I'm a good husband - At least I think I am, you'd have to ask my wife for the official results, but I feel like I do okay most of the time.

2.  I'm smart - I'm a pretty intelligent guy and I'm not humble about that at all. Sometimes I'm just a little overconfident in my smartness level, but that's part of my winning charm.

3. I can read faster than almost anyone - This is sort of a weird thing to like about myself, but this skill lets me read a ton of books, which is something I enjoy immensely.

4. Great music sense - The music I listen to is better than the music you listen to. And since I probably spend more hours listening to music than doing any other single thing except sleeping, this is a very good thing to like about myself.

5. I'm always up for a good adventure - I'm not necessarily a good adventurer, but anytime someone wants to try something crazy, I'm always down. Even if it means I'll likely die because you shouldn't let pesky things like inability to swim get in the way of a good time.

6. I'm addicted to lists - And why do I love this about myself? Half the fun stuff I do has something to do with completing a list. It's the reason I'm even typing this right now.

7. I'm incredibly dorky - Which sounds like a bad thing, but if it makes me who I am, I may as well embrace it. Who's ready to read some comic books!

8. I'm always willing to try new things - This sort of ties in with the adventure stuff up above, but 20 things is hard to come up with and it's slightly different, so I'll count it.

9. My beard growing ability - Yeah, sometimes it's a hassle to have a 5 o'clock shadow by 2pm every day, but it's a whole lot better than not being able to grow a beard. It's nice to have that ability to be a hipster if I want to. Plus my wife loves facial hair, so that works out, too.

10. Not quite Morimoto, but not bad - That's right, one of my many secret talents (outside of sarcasm) is that I am pretty good in the ole kitchen. Someday I'll quit the 9-5 grind, open a restaurant and blow everyone's mind. Or, more likely, I'll just keep cooking for me and my wife... Either one works.

11. I'm creative - Hard to quantify what that means. For me, it means coming up with crazy ideas all of the time that no one understands. Some say that means I'm odd, but I just claim it's a sign of genius.

12. I'm skinny-ish - I'm not necessarily as skinny as I'd like, but my wife says she'll leave me if I am much smaller, so I'll be good with where I am.

13. I'm not doing so bad - Compared to where I came from and how I grew up I am doing much better than I ever would have expected I would as a kid. First in the family to go to college, moved out, good job, happy life, etc etc.

14. I'm above-average at stupid games no one cares about - Show me a game that is best played at a tailgate or with a beer in hand and I'm better than most.

15. I'm funny-ish - At least to myself. Which is the important part.

16. I'm a pretty fun uncle - I get to see all of my neices and nephews about 1/100 of the time that I wish that I could (half a country's worth of distance will do that), but when I am around I think I can put in a claim for coolest uncle.

17. I barely watch TV - See my above posts about reading and music and adventures and lists and all that. I don't own a TV and we barely watch any on the computer, which is good because there's a whole lot of things that need to get done in a very short time while we are on this planet.

18. I'm absolutely horrible at pop culture trivia - Seriously, don't watch TV for a while, don't read any news and see what happens. I just figured out who Justin Beiber was like 3 months ago and I'm still not sure that I could pick someone like Drake out if I passed him on the street. And this is a great thing, unless I'm on your team for bar trivia. Then I'm useless.

19. I'm ultra-competitive - I hate losing, which is a bit of a problem because I'm not very good at most things. But you can be pretty sure that I'm going to try harder to do well at anything because losing is the worst. Seriously... I never want to lose at anything again.

20. As I grow older I seem to appreciate my neighborhood - Doing things "local" is a big buzz word amongst hipsters and socially consiouse suburbanites, but many people don't do much about that. Myself included, but over the past few years of living in a more urban area we've been able to support the same small businesses regularly and it's really raised awareness of the importance of supporting your neighborhood businesses. Or, more importantly, come to my neighborhood (Downtown St. Pete) and support those businesses!

Day Zero Project #41: Kiss someone at midnight on New Year's.

Me and Katie have a tradition for New Year's Eve. And that tradition is to fall asleep long before the ball ever drops. This particular custom wasn't intentional, but more a product of the fact that we really like sleeping and we really dislike rowdy crowds. So it's always just worked out that we probably haven't kissed to ring in a New Year for quite a few years.

But, alas, this year we found ourselves in a cabin up in the mountains of Asheville with friends counting down from 10 as a big crystal ball dropped on TV. Not only were we awake enough to kiss, we also had champagne and countdowns and Miley Cyrus on the TV just like a good American should.

I don't have a picture of this kiss as "selfies" are not something that I'm into and I think it kills the mood to tell someone to "Hold that kiss," while you reach for your phone to take a picture.

But, trust me, it happened. And it was cool because it happened in this place:

Day Zero Project #90: Take a picture with Santa.

I didn't really have the nerve or patience to wait in line at the mall to sit on the lap of a real Santa, so I was more than happy when we stumbled upon this guy while walking around Savannah.

Day Zero Project #26: Build a gingerbread house.

One would think that at some point during my 33 years on this planet I would have already built a gingerbread house. Perhaps as a child my family would have gathered around at Christmas and bonded over edible arts and crafts? Nope. There was a time when me and my wife decided we needed to invent traditions and one of them was going to be building a gingerbread house on my birthday (mid-December). We never even got around to do that once.

But, alas, this task showed up on my list of tasks to accomplish so a I purchased a gingerbread house kit in 2012 and proceeded to let it sit on my shelf for 13 months or so until this past week when I opened it up and decided to finally get it done.

In my head I had visions of making the most awesome gingerbread house of all time. It was going to make the ones on the box look like amateur hour. But here's the thing that no one tells you: making a gingerbread house is hard. Really hard. I don't know how to decorate at all. I don't even know how to line up the gingerbread so I have a house that is straight. But that's ok, I finally finished this after at least 10 years of talking about making one.

Gingerbread design is messy.

And I'm glad that we never decided to go through with our planned tradition because now that I've made one gingerbread house I can honestly say that I never want to do it again!

My house, complete with gingerbread cornhole set.