#73. say "hi" to people instead of nodding

This was was a bit of a letdown. Not much is different. Maybe I'm coming off differently to people now. Parentheses/question mark.

#85. go to Montreal (if only for a weekend)

I went to Montreal twice, but only once for fun. The now-wife was there and it was absolutely great. It's weird going back to a place you lived in. It wasn't quite like walking through the neighbourhood you grew up in; the city is still the same size and the sites are similar, but it was a strange mix of feeling at home and a guest at the same time.

To heighten that weirdness I even went back to our old neighbourhood; even the grocery store we used to scrounge by on $40-$60/week at. We also went and checked out the new condos at the end of our old street and some of the new stores around.

I would love to move back there. I would love to regain the feeling totally at home there. I would love to live in that city on more than $16k a year. There are so many things at your disposal. Alas, practicality has to rule the day.

Of course, mastering French is somewhere on this list...

#34. go to dentist

This one isn't easy to write. For a long time, I prided myself on perfect teeth. I suffered (5 years of orthodontics and permanent retainers) for them and I was proud of them. Smug, even.

But then the crushing poverty of young adulthood meant that I didn't keep up with my dental hygiene as well as I should have. I can't remember the last time I'd gone to the dentist. Years. Several.

I have a job with benefits now and so I went to capitalize on it. I've now been to the dentist four times. I had five cavities, much to my shame. I still won't tell my parents. There's something to chew on, Dr. Freud.

But I'm glad I'm getting this done. I feel a great weight is being lifted and that I'm repairing the damage my neglect has done, or at least as best as could be approximated. Still, I can't help but feel shame for there being active decay in my head while I've been walking around.

#50. hang blinds in kitchen

Done. As done as it's going to get, at least. The problem with renting, of course, is that you can't actually do much about your dwelling. So the fact that we don't have an actual window frame per se means that most hangings won't work. However, we do have something (at least partially) obscuring the view into our home, and so that's mission accomplished.

#72. increase Facebook friends by 20%

Much easier than I thought. The wedding thing helped push me over the top, but the initial worry of contacting someone on Facebook is always unfounded. It's an almost meaningless exercise.

I suppose this goes against my Web 1.0-style-carefully-constructed-ICQ-contact-list. It's fine, though. It's good to catch up with people, and Facebook lets you act more as a voyeur than actual participant in people's lives which is probably the attraction.

#58. get married

I've been doing more on my list than I've been updating on, and I'll try to keep up with this here. But this one just happened on the weekend, and it was a great time.

There was a long time in my life that I just didn't ever see myself getting married. Didn't see the point, didn't understand why people would throw so much time and money into something so trivial that could be done at city hall, if even that. But family considerations made me realize that, for us at least, this wasn't about us at all, but about our families.

We're not from the same place and our families have never met. These days, our families rarely get to see us. This doesn't even begin to account for friends. So we agreed to basically throw a huge dinner party for loved ones. We invited lots of people and the vast majority actually showed up, which was really a powerful statement to us. Most came from far away and had to make serious investments of time and money to do so.

So we felt loved, we brought people together, saw old friends, facilitated people making new friends, and had a great time. It was a lot of work, and I never want to do it again, but it was spectacular.