Extra Credit

Making sure I get the attempted item count right!

#71 - Ride one of the CTA lines from one end to another (except brown, orange, purple, or yellow)

Thank you, Ashley Russell, for number 52!

Yesterday, 12/30, we rode the red line from end to end! Ashley rode from 95th to Belmont, met me, we went up to Howard, back to 95th, and then he left me to do the rest on my own. Thank you for the good company to get this last one cross off the list!

Soooo happy!

I forgot a couple fails....

Chris Krone taught me the rules of cricket and Lindsay Kulla tried so very hard to get me in on a game :)

Rachel Felson tried to get me rolfed.

I went to 2 UM away games but didn't make a 3rd. Laura Masters & Theresa Chen for basketball at NU. Laura Masters, Nicki Proulx, Chris Zann, Holly Munk, Nicole Green, Chris Krone, and Casey Jordan for football at NU.

Laura Masters & I registered for the Bucktown 5k. She went. I didn't.

Brent Belt & I were going to go on the Weird Chicago (ghost / gangster) tour this week but I put it off until the new year.

Thanks, homies!

#8 - continued again

I'm sure there are a few more but I'm out of bracelets for now :)

#8 - continued

I wanted to make sure I at least tagged everyone who made the list!

#8 - Tell everyone I love I love them

This one was really important to me. I don't think you can ever really tell people you care about that you care about them enough. And sometimes they're gone before you can fix it. Plus, they just deserve to know.

I wanted to do this personal to each person I really wanted to tell. So some people got a visit. Some people got a letter. Some people got a conversation. Some were spur of the moment.

I wanted to add something to it though, so I ordered 50 silicone bands (thanks for the idea, Casey Jordan) as little love-you tokens. I had them printed with "Enjoy the Struggle." 

 

I used that for 3 reasons.

1. Printing bands with "I Love You," while appropriate seemed a little weird for people to wear around.

2 & 3 are both because of Rachel Townsend. I first met Rachel when she was the student teacher for my aerobics class when I was a senior in high school. When I graduated, she took a full-time position at my high school and coached cross country and soccer. The girls loved her. She coined the phrase "Enjoy the Struggle" for the cross country team to remind them that the challenge and the hurt made them stronger and they should enjoy that growth. I find it such an inspirational saying. Especially after the last couple years where I have had lots of frustrations. It reminds me to keep in mind that I'm becoming a better me by surviving these things. Rachel entered my life again when I started working for Kidsport, a summer camp put on by the Michigan PE department. She was the Assistant Director. The kids loved her. And then again, when I started student teaching at Pioneer High School and her husband, a former UM football player, was one of the PE teachers there. I was weirdly connected to her in so many ways even though she & I were never close. She was always such an inspiration though. Smiling and strong and loving and pretty and fit. Things girls want to be.


In the fall of 2003, my grandma died. It was really tough. I never felt like I told her I loved her enough nor spent enough time with her near the end because it was so hard to see her sick.

When my family was on our way the funeral, which was just a graveside visit, I had to stop at work at Saline Community Education. I was out of it but I noticed people were talking about something that had happened. I didn't comprehend it until I checked my voicemail and there was a voicemail saying that Rachel Townsend had died suddenly.

Rachel and a friend had the goal of running marathons and qualifying for Boston. They came to Chicago for the 2003 race. Rachel ran her heart out and qualified for Boston. But then dropped dead in the chute. She didn't even make it to the hospital. She had a freak heart defect that no one knew about. And it never would have mattered if she hadn't pushed herself to such a tough goal.

Her service was the opposite of my grandmother's. My grandma's was small, just our small family.

Rachel was in my high school gym with people I knew from high school, college, UM athletics, my PE classes, and Kidsport. It was surreal. I knew each speaker personally except her sister: my cross country coach, my track coach, my favorite PE teacher, a former cross country teammate, and finally her husband showed a slide show of the weekend.

Since then, I write Enjoy the Struggle on my running shoes and sometimes other things. And I keep her in mind, especially when I run. That when things get tough, we get tougher.

I put it on my bracelets to remind me to Enjoy the Struggle and to remind me that I have some wonderful people who will always support me through my struggles and I will support them and help them get stronger. I also chose that because Rachel went so suddenly and I would never want any of the people I love to not know that I love them. And how much.

So all of you out there, I love you. Thank you for
your support.











Enjoy the Struggle.

#67 - Learn to hockey stop on my new skates

Yes, I can hockey stop. I grew up with a pond behind our house. And my neighbor / bestie Evelyn's dad used to build us a rink in the front or back yard sometimes. We played all the time. But I was a girl, so I had figure skates. But after a few years, I didn't want figure skates. I wanted hockey skates. So I stole my brother's. Naturally. He's a jerk. He didn't deserve them. So I learned to hockey stop on skates that were like 3 times too big for me.

When I was in college, I started playing intramural women's ice hockey. And I loved it. I only had my own skates, stick, helmet, and gloves, so I had to borrow the rest. Eventually I realized I wasn't skating very fast because I was still using my brother's skates and they were 3 times too big for me. Clunky.

So for my birthday or Christmas I asked my parents for skates. They got me a gift certificate and I got a nice pair of hockey skates that actually fit me. I could skate sooooooo fast. It was awesome.

But oh no, I couldn't stop. I don't know if it's because I learned to stop on the wrong part of my foot or I was just scared or what. But I couldn't stop quickly anymore. I could on skis. I could on the old skates. But not the new ones.

On Christmas Eve this year, I stopped over at the Warner's to see Evelyn and Brian Sommariva, and Brian, serendipitously is the assistant coach for the Plymouth Whalers. He offered to work with me. So the next day, we went to the rink, with little one-year-old Leo.

Leo got his first taste of walking / running / flying around in his dad's arms on ice, Evelyn was back on skates for the first time in a long time, and Brian assigned me a couple drills until I got it. It didn't take that long. I think pushing the goal around just got rid of my fear and then I was fine. I just need to get my skates sharpened and a little more practice and I'll be back to my original form :)

#32 - Start a calligraphy business

I've been doing calligraphy since my freshman year of high school. I used to do it mostly as gifts with watercolor backgrounds. I've also done the mailing envelopes for several weddings, mostly as my gift to the new couple. I have done one for pay. I also did a Valentine's picture frame for pay once, with the couple's song written on the mat.

My brother tried to help me out by starting a website: www.megankrone.com. However, there's nothing on it.

So then Cara Lamerato mentioned how she sells wine cork place holders on etsy.com, so I did some research and got myself an etsy account. I haven't sold any yet, but I just put it up in the last week and invested a good $.20 for the listing, so I'm counting it for my starting a business. I just hope I get some hits :) Check me out at mkcalligraphy at etsy.com!

#28 - Win an award or scholarship

I had counted this item as undoable at this point in the year, but then... magic. Victors Valiant (a.k.a. Carl Jr. a.k.a. One Man Army a.k.a. Kitten Mittons a.k.a. Spooning Leads to Forking a.k.a. Francisco) won yet another trivia tournament at Waterhouse and qualified for the Whaddayaknow Team Trivia Tournament of Champions II - The Sequel at Joe's on Weed on Dec 3, 2011.

Side note: Our first Tournament of Champions showing was less than great. In fact, we sucked. It was miserable.

Because of that, we weren't expecting much of take 2.

We kinda tanked the first round, only getting 2 questions right out of 6.

We did well in the picture round; thankfully we have some music experts.

We then did pretty well in the 3rd round but bet some big bucks on some questions we got wrong.

We did really well in the ID round, where we listed things that were a color + a living thing.

Zann knew the escalating clues question right away but we waited for the 2nd clue instead of submitting our answer right away, so we only got 15 of 20 points.

Then Trivia Dan read the standings before going into the final 2 questions. I was pretty sure he just forgot about us, and I was slightly offended after all of the lovely years and times we've spent with Dan. But, no, he didn't forget us. We were tied for first.

Huh.

The first final question was about geography. We argued a bit. The trivia people argued a bit. Teams were not happy with the question. There was a lot of discussion about whether or not you could drive to Mexico and Canada from a couple states, especially Michigan, which has a water border, so it doesn't really border Canada but you can drive to Canada from Michigan.

Anyways, we got it right. 12 points.

The next question was trickier. Naming 5 movies. Exactly. No extra guesses. We decided to let the other teams get both questions right to beat us. It was very scary.

It was worse when Dan read the answers and we would have gotten it right.

He then read the top 12. We knew we were at least top 8. He also mentioned there was a tie in the top 12.

At that point, I assumed we tied the other 1st place team for 2nd or 3rd.

Nope.

We tied for 1st.

The tie breaker was the team that got the year closest to the year of Marlon Brando's birth.

Zann & Ditmar both guessed the same year.

We wrote it down.

Dan then announced that one team had gotten the answer right on with a guess of 1926.

We started to celebrate.

Then Dan said, "No, wait, he was born in 1924."

Then he said, "But the same team was still closest."

That was us!

We won!

$1000 cash!

And we had a lovely time playing drinking games at Sully's.