42. Get my driver's license

This wasn't too difficult a process.  Apparently there are a lot more hoops to jump through to get a license nowadays.  I was kind of alarmed when I took the driver's education class, because a lot of the other kids in the class did not appear to be paying attention at all, even a little.  It wasn't an encouraging thought that those idiots were soon going to be piloting thousands of pounds of metal along the streets I was trying to drive on. 

52. Take a tour of a concentration camp

I went to Manzanar, which was one of the ten camps where Japanese Americans were interned in the US during World War II.  It's very windy and dusty.  You can see Mt. Whitney from there, which is the highest mountain in the continental US.  It's very sharp and jagged, and there are a bunch of other jagged mountains right next to it, so it's hard to tell which one is which.  They all surround this big flat area where Manzanar sits.  It's pretty far out in the middle of nowhere.  The town we stayed in overnight was pretty small, and all the 18-wheelers had to pass down this road that was one lane each way right through the middle of town.  The only thing left at Manzanar is a big metal auditorium that now has the visitor center in it.  You can take a self-guide tour of the camp, but the only thing left is the occasional foundation.  There are little wooden signs stuck in the ground, but it mostly doesn't look like anything. 

291. Take a tour of a brewery

I visited the Takara Sake Brewery in Berkeley, California.  It was great, and they have a whole little museum full of old-timey sake making equipment.  I really liked this huge wooden barrel they had, with spigots in the side at different heights.  Their lychee-flavored sake is great!  You'd expect it to be something horrible-tasting, along the lines of watermelon-flavored vodka, but it's not; it tastes good, like real fruit.  I haven't tried all of their flavored sakes, but it's on my list of things to do.  I also liked their Nigori, which is unfiltered sake.  It's white and cloudy.   

120. Knit a sweater

There's my sweater.  It's lumpy and weird-looking, but I finished it.  Also, I would recommend buying lots of yarn before you start, and not some weird brand no one's ever heard of, and that you will never be able to find again.  One and a half sleeves and the back are one kind of yarn, and the rest of the dark green part is another, more easily available yarn.  It would've also been more helpful to have a big circular needle instead of straight needles.  Fitting an entire front of a sweater on one needle was a little cramped.

67. Go kayaking

I like kayaking.  It's much better than canoeing.  Kayaks just feel so much more stable than canoes, plus you get to sit down, rather than kneel in an uncomfortable position.  I always seem to end up turning the canoe backwards when I try to go down little rapids, too.  Kayak paddles are more comfortable, too.  I should build a wooden kayak; that would be spiffy.  And you can buy a kit with the pieces cut out already.  I wonder how well they fit, and how much adjusting you have to do. 

271. Travel somewhere by myself

I went to Victoria, British Columbia by myself.  It was pretty spiffy.  This is inside the Parliament building.  The stained glass window was in honor of Queen Victoria and sat in the basement for years and years until someone found it and decided to open the box. 

591. Try Tang

Tang is an orangish beverage made from powder.  It's smoother-tasting than orange juice, but not a good imitation of it.  I guess the main reason to drink it would be because astronauts drank it.  I saw a recipe for a cocktail called the Buzz Aldrin that contains Tang.  It didn't sound all that great, due to the fact that it contained Tang.  Astronaut ice cream is pretty interesting though; it squeaks when you chew it.  And I heard that the astronauts had liquid forms of salt and pepper, since powdered versions might fly around and get stuck in the circuit boards.  I guess they had the salt dissolved in water, and the pepper suspended in oil.  It would be kind of cool to have that on your dining room table.  All your guests would be confused.

545. Just SEE the Grand Canyon

We took a cross-country road trip the summer before I started sixth grade.  It was alright; we saw way too many Civil War battlefields for my taste, but it was pretty fun.  We stopped at the Grand Canyon one day at breakfast time and ate our donuts and juice.  The squirrels were getting very close to us, since people apparently feed them.  It was like that when I went to the Hoover Dam, too.  We had stopped at a scenic turnout overlooking the lake, and if you looked over the wall that kept people from falling into said lake, there were dozens and dozens of little chipmunks racing back and forth in the hopes that people would drop food over the side.  It was kind of disgusting, especially since rodents West of the Rockies have Black Plague. 

518. Fly over the Rocky Mountains sitting in the window seat

It was a pretty awesome view flying over the Rockies.  I went from Denver to LA.  It was clear out, so you could see the sun setting.  After the sun went down and it was dark, you could see little patches of lights on the black ground.  Then when we got above LA, it was a huge stretch of lights that went on for a completely absurd distance. 

641. Go to Hooters

The wings at Hooters are pretty good, actually.  And I'm sure so are the articles in Playboy.  But we had about the third-spiciest wings they have, out of about 8-10 levels of spiciness.  It didn't seem like a sleazy place.  We went in the middle of the afternoon, so it wasn't a madhouse.  I couldn't tell you how it is there later in the day.  Our group was also made up of three women and one man, so that may also have had an influence on the atmosphere.  I would probably go there again, depending what time of day it was.   

542. Walk the Vegas strip

The Strip was not exactly what you might expect from watching random movies that occur in Vegas.  Although, we did go check Circus Circus to see if they still had that rotating bar from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  There is now a non-alcoholic snack bar there.  But, speaking of alcohol, it is legal to drink in public there, so every time I went out, I would see at least one woman walking down the sidewalk, holding a tropical drink in her hands, giggling, and looking furtive.  There are also huge numbers of people handing out postcards advertising hookers.  The postcard guys are on every corner.  Prostitution is not legal in Vegas, but I guess that doesn't stop them.  I also saw one pregnant young woman handing out the postcards.  I guess the look on her face is what people mean when they say someone looks dead inside.  There were also a lot of people dressed as tv and movie characters and panhandling.  There was Batman, Bumblebee the Transformer, Homer Simpson, Dora the Explorer.  It was kind of weird.  Also, Harrah's is terrifying.  There are huge harlequin statues on the outside.  They look they might reach down to the street, pick you up, and bite your head off.  There are a lot of statues on Caesar's too, but they're just plain white Roman-looking things.  Treasure Island also had their pirate show closed so everybody could go on vacation.  I haven't seen the real Eiffel Tower, either, so I can't tell you if the one in Las Vegas is any good.  

302. Go spelunking

It counts if you  use an inner tube, right?  This is Waitomo, New Zealand.  You get to take an inner tube through a cave system with water in it.  We had wetsuits, rubber boots, and helmets with lamps.  They also had glow worms in the caves.  The caves were yellowish stone, with a stacked look, like the Pancake Rocks on the South Island, except there were long black streaks where people had held onto the walls.  I'm generally not claustrophobic, but there were a couple places where we had to lean way back in the tube to go under the low ceiling, and I wasn't very fond of those parts.  There was a lot more walking than tubing, it seemed.

616. Eat at a cheap buffet in Las Vegas

I had the breakfast buffet over at the Gold Coast.  It's across the freeway from The Strip, and it was fairly warm out, even in December.  It wasn't too terrifying a walk, but there was a big parking lot with no walkways in front of the casino.  I didn't see many other people walking, but there were a couple joggers, possibly left over from the marathon the day before.  The buffet wasn't bad.  I think it was $6.99; it was definitely under $10 anyway.  There were many tasty things to eat, and it was all-you-can-eat.  It was a huge, huge room.  There were several other cheap buffets going, but they were also at casinos that were off the strip and would've been a very long walk. 

121. Visit the Hoover Dam

I liked the architecture at the Hoover Dam.  Even their picnic tables were spiffy, with metal umbrellas and art deco-adobe-looking things at the visitor center.  I was fairly disappointed in the tour, though.  We got to go in a tunnel, and later look down at the generators, but we didn't get to go near them.  Apparently it's some September 11th thing.

174. Hold a bird

I've held chickens before, but I did catch a wild bird in my hands one time.  The school I went to had a building with a big rotating wall, and a lot of skylights inside, so it was not unusual for birds to come in, but they usually stayed pretty close to the way out.  But one time I was upstairs, and there was a blackbird smashing its head against a window trying to get out.  It was concentrating very intently on the window, so it was easy to catch.  I grabbed it, and managed to hold it tightly enough that it didn't get away, and loosely enough that I think it was okay.  I used sort of a scooping motion around the whole bird to get the wings, since they were sticking out from the flying and all.  It had its mouth open while I had ahold of it, and it looked rather nervous.  It didn't poop on me, though.  I took it to a door and threw it out, and it flew away as soon as I let go of it.  Fortunately, no one stole my backpack while I was gone.

425. Send someone flowers

This is the Thinking of You Bouquet by FTD.  This is the medium size one, and it comes with the vase.  I sent it to my mother.

558. Gamble at the Bellagio in Las Vegas

Well, I spent a dollar on the slot machines across from their prix fixe restaurant.  The stuff on the menu looked interesting, but they didn't open until 5pm or 5:30.  I'm not really a fan of slot machines; you push a button and it beeps and makes flashy lights, and then you have less money than you started with.  I haven't found any other forms of gambling I like either, since the odds are so bad.  I'm bad at lottery tickets, too.  Even if someone buys me one and gives it to me, it won't win. 

309. See a sheep in New Zealand

Turns out it's sort of hard not to see a sheep in New Zealand.  Although, apparently they're raising a lot more cattle and deer than they used to.  They used to have feral deer that somebody imported to hunt, and then venison got popular, so they went out and caught all the deer, and now there are deer farms all over.