2. Do a 10 day Master Cleanse: I officially start today, even though my first real day is clocked tomorrow. Thankfully I have a few things on my side for this item.
First, Claudia has already completed one 10 day session, and will be doing the cleanse at the same time as me, so I'll have someone knowledgeable, and some moral support.
Second, I have two and a half more days of vacation ahead of me, so I'll have a little time to make it past the worst part of the cleanse, namely the first three days.
Tomorrow morning, I'll take my starting weight so I can see how much I lose over the course of the cleanse. Of course, this program isn't primarily for weight loss, but has weight loss as a side effect. I should lose about 20 pounds based on what I have read, which will be a nice outcome.
The most important part of the cleanse is that it will give me a "clean slate" to rethink my overall diet. Fast food and carbonated drinks have crept back into my daily meals, and it isn't helping me have a healthy lifestyle on the whole. When I complete this cleanse, I plan on making the suffering worth something by focusing on eating more fresh foods prepared at home.
The official end of my cleanse will be at midnight on July 16th.
5. Get a tattoo (COMPLETED): While in the Los Angeles area I got a tattoo as planned. While I had to adjust my overall plans a bit, I'm happy with the results, and the tattoo is healing very well.
I had my tattoo done by Andrew at Donovan's Autumn Moon in Anaheim, CA on June 29th, 2008. I decided to get the "P" in the Pixies logo, since they are easily my favorite band, and heavily influence my playing style and how I approach the music writing process.
Here's a picture taken about 3 hours after the tattoo was done:
25. Listen to every one of my tracks on iTunes: My total is now 5453 tracks out of a total of 7089. I am 76.92% of the way through my collection.
42. Read 50 books that I have not read before: I finished reading The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha on July 1st, 2008.
I will begin reading Jennifer Government tonight (July 6th, 2008).
So far I have read 13 of 50 books.
47. Read The Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha (COMPLETED): I finished reading this book on July 1st, 2008. It took me far longer to finish this rather slim volume than I had previously thought.
I found a lot of the writing to be more difficult to move through, and the concepts far more murky than those in The Upanishads or The Bhagavad Gita. I also found it to be less engaging and frankly, boring at times.
I do think that I took away some valuable concepts from the work, mainly that we tend to be our greatest enemies and the largest impediments to our intellectual and spiritual development.
74. Take a road trip along Route 66 (COMPLETED): I started the Route 66 segment of my road trip on June 26th, 2008, and ended it on June 27th, 2008.
We connected with Route 66 on the morning of June 26 just up the road from our hotel in Amarillo, TX. While we traveled intermittently along Interstate 40 and what is left of Route 66, I did make an effort to see a decent portion of the old road.
We stopped for the night in Flagstaff, AZ, and then continued the next day through Barstow, CA, where we then headed south to Los Angeles.
Sadly, it seems that a lot of the elements that made the route a storied and semi-legendary path across the west have either died away completely or have fallen into a state of disrepair. Many of the towns along Route 66 are now bypassed by Interstate 40, and the commercial centers, the hotels and restaurants, have turned into national chains that gravitate toward the Interstate, rather than the smaller, kitschy, local establishments of the 1950's.
I enjoyed my trip, and would like to conduct a longer, and more thorough exploration of the road, but any such plans are far in the future.
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