#18 - Almost Got to Keep This Unit

When I donate blood, I am still struggling to find the right balance between not enough pre-hydration, which in the past meant my veins would be too flat to puncture, and too much pre-hydration, which has meant that I had to pee really bad. This time I was almost too close to flat veins, but they found one they could work with at the last minute. One more to go.

#50 - The Terror

When I planned to read books on things I didn't know about, I assumed that this would mean non-fiction books. One of my patients was reading "The Terror" by Dan Simmons and encouraged me to do the same. One one hand it is a novel about a group of 19th-century British explorers who are trying to find the fabled Northwest Passage over Canada who face an overwhelming combination of weather, poisonous rations, mechanical failures, incompetent leadership, and, oh yeah, a 10-foot Yeti-like creature stalks them through the frozen landscape. On the other hand it is a well-researched compendium of the state of Arctic exploration in the 1800's, from the politics of launching a mission to the day-to-day details of running an icebreaker. While the narrative was intensely engaging, I left the book with a level of knowledge about that world that I never expected. The HMS Terror was a real ship from that era that was lost during an attempt to find the Northwest Passage, so Dan Simmons took what was known about the ship and its crew and spun this detailed narrative that I was very satisfied to explore.

#98 - Exploring Old HBO Shows

I've been enjoying watching old shows that I own on DVD from the beginning - X-Files, Star Trek, Buffy, Lost, the new Battlestar Galactica among others. I watch them while I exercise on a treadmill in the basement. I'll watch one disc from one show, then start the next disc from another show, until I cycle back around. I realized I could employ the same method to test out TV shows available on DVD that I've never seen. I subscribe to Blockbuster Online Rentals which sends us 3 discs at a time through the mail, including individual discs from TV shows. I keep them as long as I want, then trade them in at the Blockbuster store down the road for another free rental. They mail them back for me and then send me the next mail order disc on my list. Using this method, I am working my way through the Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Deadwood - all award winning shows that I've heard about, but never seen because they aired on HBO. I really enjoy what I've seen so far and I look forward to trying this with other shows too - The West Wing, The 4400. Plus, it keeps me going back to the treadmill.

#7 - Christmas Letter in January

I added writing a yearly Christmas letter to my list because I have a bad habit of procrastinating this to the point of skipping it, and I've been averaging about every other year. I wrote our letter this year before Christmas, but life caught up to me and I got too busy to send it before Christmas. They all went out today, edited as more of a "Happy New Year" letter. Next year, I'll try to get it out in December.

#90 - Consolidating the Office

I've been in my current job for over 7 years and I have accumulated a lot of clutter in my office. Because of some rearranging in our suite, I had to move my office to a smaller one down the hall. This gave me the perfect excuse to get rid of a lot of the stuff I had not touched in years. I still need to clean out some files - it is very easy to file papers into obscurity. I know that 2/3 of my file drawer could be shredded and never missed. My goal now is to actively work to prevent recluttering of my more efficient workspace.

#38 - My Disaster Kit blog

I began preparing for disasters in preparation for the Y2K scare. The 9/11 attack, anthrax scare, Indonesian tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina devastation just reinforced my desire to prepare for unexpected disasters. I've put together small kits for short-term personal use, "bug-out" bags designed to keep us going for 72 hours outside the home, car kits to provide basic needs if we got stuck in the vehicles with help late in coming, shelter-in-place gear in case we get stuck in our house for a few weeks, and enough camping gear bundled up in one spot that I could grab if we needed to get way out of town for a little while. At least in theory I have. I have done lots of research and made lots of lists about what I want and need in these kits. They are not all complete though. I wonder if they'll ever be complete enough.

The problem with preparing for the unexpected future is that you are always trying to estimate the odds of certain scenarios (stuck in the house during a blizzard vs. stuck in the car during a multi-car pileup vs. terrorist attack) and your mind can quickly come up with worse scenarios that you aren't prepared for. This almost got the best of me during the Y2K scare. I almost quit an internship (that would have been devastating for my career) to move into a farm and prepare to raise our own food off the grid. Thankfully, that was too difficult to contemplate, so we stockpiled some food and water, found an alternate heat source that we never needed and hoped for the best. I panicked last year when I was trying to figure out how to seal off a room in our house per the Dept. of Homeland Security's Shelter-in-Place instructions in case of a chemical or airborne biological terrorist attack. I added this item to my 101 list to give myself another reason to complete these preparations to an acceptable level.

My brother and his 3 kids had to leave their home when an ice storm knocked out their power this winter. They were fine, but I sent him a few of the links to resources I had used for my preparations. I realized that a blog might help me organize my thoughts (like it has for this 101 in 1001 list) and get me motivated to complete my kits. I started posting to My Disaster Kit (http://mydisasterkit.blogspot.com/) recently and I plan to keep up with it to raise awareness about disaster preparedness and to help me get my own act together. Please check it out and comment on the posts I've got so far. I'd rather have a conversation than preach.