The Challenge: Spend at least 15 minutes immersing yourself in a field you know nothing about.
Kim:
It was made obvious to me a few weeks ago on a trip to Milwaukee after a near death experience that I would like to learn more about cars. As we were on the side of the road in the snow with car problems, I faced the humbling fact that I wasn’t quite sure how to even open the hood of our Pontiac. “Our hood is tricky,” I rationalized. This is embarrassing for me to admit but a harsh reality.
So, I sat down with a “Fix It Yourself” book from Reader’s Digest and some very helpful websites (about.com and howstuffworks.com) and spent my 15 minutes learning Car Parts 101. I have to admit that 15 minutes was not nearly enough. I am still curious about the other parts under there that I didn’t get to. I really only got through the basics of how the car uses the gasoline to accelerate and the chain of command that happens with the parts in this procedure. Combustion, cooling, pistons, exhaust…lots of familiar words that are now clearer with some handy dandy animations. This challenge shined the light on my "perfectionist" side that gets too overwhelmed and often fearful to learn something new. It forced me to become curious and take the risk of looking foolish. Kids just naturally ask hundreds of ‘why’ questions and they are learning new things everyday. It is good to be reminded of that feeling. It was fun! I bookmarked those websites and I’ll be back.
Jason:
Today I immersed myself in an alien world right out of a Star Wars movie (at least to me.)
An oriental grocery store.
I know from watching those behind the scenes Star Wars documentaries that the artists take great efforts to create each planet from scratch, with its own native language, look, and culture. After only a few moments in Lee’s Oriental, surrounded by produce I’ve never seen and labels with words I couldn’t read, I half-expected to hear George Lucas step out from behind the aisle saying, “And cut."
I started checking out the jars and jars of sauces; peanuts, soy, and whatnot. Then I came across an interesting package that seemed out of place. The product inside was almost black, and it looked like a small folded Hobbit blanket. It said “dried laver” on the label. Before I could finish asking myself the question, “What’s dried laver?” I noticed another similarly stuffed package with the subhead “seaweed.” Cool.
The three shelving units in the crowded store were a feast for the senses: packages of dried anchovies, broiled ferns, and lots of cans of lychees (not sure what those were but they looked like skinned eyeballs.) I almost laughed out loud when I saw, amidst the exotic jars of pickled this and dried that, a few cans of Spam (perhaps the most inedible thing in stock, in my estimation.)
I scanned a spinner of packaged snacks, delighted to find an assortment of dried squid, right above bags of party mix. The squid reminded me of beef jerky — chicken jerky I suppose — and the back of the bag touted it as a great on-the-go snack and perfect for parties. Indeed!
On my way out of the store, I came across a row of giant bags stacked near the wall. “They sell potting soil in oriental grocery stores?” I asked myself. “Must be for rare, hard-to-maintain Asian flowers,” I answered confidently.
Upon further inspection, I learned that they were actually bags of rice. It made perfect sense, of course, but I couldn’t help but fancy the idea of my mom trying to jam a 10 pound bag of rice in the pantry next to the pancake mix and egg noodles. All in all, a pretty neat 15 minutes. Now, if you don’t mind, I need to go find out what lychees are.
Dark Room Confessionals:
Bonus Video: Kim | Jason
So, who was most creative with today’s challenge? Who went beyond the comfort zone and put the biggest hammer on Adultitis? Who did a better job of capturing the spirit of childhood, Kim or Jason? Cast Your Vote!
Tomorrow’s Challenge: Audio Sneak Peek
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OK, so I learnt all (well, maybe not ALL) about tuning and playing… the Ukulele.
Read all about it here.
I decided to tackle the Escape Plan challenge, and for #1 I thought I’d learn about the world of phonetics.
I have a slight speech impediment, so I thought it’d be interesting to learn about something that relates to speech. What was meant to be fifteen minutes of reading turned into just over an hour. :)
Now I know what epethensis (inserting a vowel, consonant or syllable into a word to aid pronunciation e.g. “um-buh-rel-la”), elision (the opposite of epenthesis e.g. “O’er”), non-rhotic (the letter “R” only pronounced when followed by a vowel e.g. “red” but not “water”), glottal stop (the sound made when the vocal chords are pressed together e.g. the sound in-between “uh” and “oh” in “uh-oh”) and oxytone (the stressed last syllable of a word e.g. “correct”) mean. I also tried to learn a bit of the phonetic alphabet, but that’ll take more than a day!
I know this will probably seem extremely boring to some people, but hey it intrigued me. :)
As I stated over at my blog I did start to research cars. I do have some info on car maintenance but due to being sick it’ll have to wait for a sunny day. Looking forward to tomorrow’s task.
We decided to do this as a couple. So, we wanted to pick things that we could do together. We chose to do things that involve each other’s interests (fields).
Katie: Doug went to JoAnns with me. I think he was the only guy there, and was completely out of his element. He helped pick out some really great scrapbooking items for the honeymoon scrapbook I am creating. I think he picked up some good gift ideas on the way.
Doug: I love Saturday Night Live and I don’t think Katie has ever seen a full episode. So, she played Trivial Pursuit, the SNL edition. I dominated and she had no idea what was going on, but we still had fun.
I think we were able to find out a little bit more about each other. It was comforting to know that it took us awhile to come up with something. I hope that means that we share a lot of our separate interests with each other already.
My grandmother died this morning. It turns out that she had chosen before her death that she wanted her body to be cremated. I’ve always been curious about cremation (my father-in-law’s body was cremated), but when people are in mourning does not seem an appropriate time to ask. So I spent some time today learning about the cremation process. I won’t get into any details here, but I learned some interesting things. If for any reason you want to know more, you can check out this website: http://www.funeralplanning101.com/cremation/the-cremation-process.aspx
When I heard this challenge I immediately thought I wanted to see inside a factory or laboratory like when Mr. Rogers “took” me to see how crayons are made. I really wanted that Mr. Rogers experience. Unfortunately, the first couple places I tried to get a behind the scenes tour of, I was denied. So I went to the Internet and found out there are still places Mr. Rogers can take me. I learned about how to make sneakers and wagons and fortune cookies - none of which I’d ever seen or done before. :)
Hearing the “how to” voiceovers woke up the curious child inside me that has always been fascinated by watching how things are made. I used to spend hours with my grandfather watching him make things in his workshop. In a way this challenge was both new (sneaker & wagon & cookie making) and old (the feeling of being wrapped up in all the steps to creating something). I’m excited to be “creating” a new adultitis-free me!
I always check my email in the morning before I go to work (because you’re never sure what important info awaits in your inbox at 6:30 am - LOL). I saw the headline about the WV miners…and being a “suburban girl”, I have no idea what mining is all about, other than the “coal” part of it. So I decided to take on Challenge #1 and learn about coal mining. I looked up coal mining on the Internet, and I was surprised at what I learned! Check out the cool link from the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago (definitely a fun place from my childhood)!
http://www.msichicago.org/exhibit/coal_mine/coalhome.html
Well, today I decided to learn about ice skating. I thought - I’d love to learn how to do that someday & being all I know about it is that it looks pretty, I thought I could learn a thing or two. So, some of the first things I learned concerned me a little like: “Skills to learn: How to fall” “Make sure you have medical clearance” “Try not to fall on your hands” “Keep your hands from being hurt by other skater’s blades.” Ok, now I’m a little concerned. I realize there’s a whole lot to learn about just standing up on skates, let alone actually moving & not dying. So, needless to say I have a lot of respect for people who can actually skate. I wanna think it’s just like rollerskating in the 1980s & although some techniques might be similar, I think this is a little more dangerous. I have to go consult my doctor for medical clearance now. ;)
For my 1st challange I decided that still our country has been fighting this war on terror and Islam and Muslims have been in the news daily since 911 I thought it would be a good idea to learn something about that subject. So rather than using the internet I got out my old World Book from 1988 I and M. I figured that this way I could get a more pure idea about Muhammad and the religion, Islam he started without all of the new print stuff out there today.
I always thought of them verse us, good verse evil. Being born Christian I didn’t really know about them and Islam. I learned that Muhammad at age 40 had a vision of God and that he believed he was a prophet of God. That their book, the Koran, teaches that God is just and merciful. The Koran denounces usury, games of chance, and the consumption of pork and alcohol. The Koran forbids lying, stealing, adultery, and murder. It teaches the virtues of faith in God, patience, kindness, honesty, industry, honor, courage, and generosity. Finally Islam teaches that life on earth is a period of testing and preparation for the life to come.
I decided that Islam has alot of the same ideals as Christianity and the terror movement that we see in the world today doesn’t represent all of the Muslim world and the Islamic religion.
The answer to this first challenge actually came to me pretty easily after I racked my brain all day for a topic to research. When I arrived home last night, I met my new housemate for the first time. I was lucky enough to spend about an hour getting to know about this new person. As an added bonus he’s only been in the US for 8 months so I also was able to see his perspective of living in our country and being so far away from home.
Still on day one. I spent the day learning how to make FireFox extensions. Details at my blog. Lots of fun. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to celebrate “Over the Flu” day.
OK, I’m a late bloomer but I’ll catch up, if I have to pull an all-nighter!
I just spent 15 minutes trying to learn how to knit. I just don’t get the infatuation with knitting but at least I tried.
So, I bought a violin and it arrived today. With all of the assembly (strings and the bridge), tuning, and reseraching care instructions, I probably did my 15 minutes without even having to play it. But play it I did, and badly, too! But I immersed myself in that bad playing and, eventually, managed to get some nice sounding notes out. Never mind that they were just open string positions. And violins are cranky about holding their tune.
Mission accomplished. On to #2!
Oh, and I’m not going to stop playing my violin just because I finished challenge #1! :-)
Hi there! I LOVE this idea and just wanted to let you know we have started a podcast for girl scout leaders by girl scout leaders and will be including one of your challenges in each cast!
We are sooo excited! Keep it up!
I have to say, I think that Kim’s challenge was much more creative, and voted as such. It might be that I am used to Asian Food Stores, and don’t see it as a challenge… And, I can tell you honestly that I would eat the Spam over the dried squid any day. ;-) I completed day one the other day, but can’t remember what I did. I think I need to de-frag my brain and start over….
Oh, I remember now. I went to the local museum, and spent most of my time learning about Australian Aborigines - the customs of resolving conflicts, the language groups and their distribution before white settlers, about their tools and weapons. Does that still count as challenge #1???
LOVE this blog - LOVE this concept!! I’m going to go through your challenges, and I’ll keep you posted.
GREAT idea!
Donna Cutting
aka Gal Morale
If you were to ask my wife about me accepting the challenge you get an exasperated scream! She’s convinced there isn’t an adult bone in my body. Whether she’s right or wrong, I think I need to hone my childlike skills. Besides, it just sounds like fun!
Today, rather than call a repairman to fix my ailing telephone system, I’m going to tackle it myself! I have no idea what I’m getting into. Hopefully, I’m prepared for the shock! If I’m lucky you’ll give me a new adventure and save me some money as well.
I’ll report on the results tomorrow!
Wow! My phones are working for the first time in a week! Finding the problem took place were the wires were brushing one another took some time, but separating them once found was no big deal at all. As with most things that actually function, the phone wires make sense if you take a methodical look at them. I feel good enough about it all that I’m going to install a new jack in a location we long wanted one. That’s this morning’s project, before I get going on Challenge Two.
BTW, Guess how I located the phone problem. I just carried a chordless phone around to the various accesses to the snarls of wires than run through my house and wiggled them while listening to the reaction on the phone! Not exactly rocket science, but it saved me around $100.00.
I decided to take the challenge with my hubby Chuck. He has already wimped out on day 1. He’ll have to catch up! While browsing The Lemonade Stand last week, I saw a balloon modeling kit. I decided “what the hey” and bought it. I thought it would be a great gift for the nieces or nephews. Yesterday, while pondering this challenge, I spied the box. Wow! What a great idea! I read a little on the internet and opened the box. This is so cool…POP! After more attempts and 30 minutes later, I had several really good balloon dogs and some very pretty balloon flowers. I am hooked now. Gotta find more balloons! Hubby says it is too much noise. I really liked the squeaking sounds!
It became more than just an exercise in fun. This was a good exercise in stress and stress relief. I felt my life was a lot like those balloons. If I blew them up a little too much and tried to manipulate them into shapes, they’d POP! Much like I do when I’m already tense and try to deal with problems. If I give myself some breathing room, like in the balloons, the stress of turning and twisting of problem solving doesn’t end up in POP! Instead when it is done, I have a beautiful work of art that makes me laugh and everyone else smiles too. How cool is that?
this is the best Ageplay related site i’ve seen yet i’m definately doing the escape plan