Bucket List 2018

Today I'm updating the bucket list.

1. Take an exercise class with Richard Simmons
2. Ride a camel (not a location-specific goal)
3. Sit in the booth with Doreen Simmons while she comments on a sumo basho for NHK
4. Write a book
5. Meet distant family in Ireland
6. Play Carnegie Hall or Royal Albert Hall
7. Be a balloon wrangler in the Thanksgiving Day Parade
8. Volunteer in the Bishop Museum archives
9. Have our Hawaiian band sponsor a match in a sumo tournament in Japan
10. Play music at a retirement home
11. Learn to tie knots (as added in 2015)
12. Sing the National Anthem at a baseball game
13. Perform in a pantomime horse costume

At the time I started the list for realsies, Richard Simmons was still teaching. Now he's a hermit, so that's not going to happen.

It leaves the list.

A few months ago Doreen Simmons passed away.

Can't have that wish fulfilled.

#5 has been supplanted by something else: obtaining Irish citizenship. I have been working on that for several years, and my application is on its way. I'll update here later.

#9 seemed doable until Paul McCartney did it, which made me look further into the price. $150,000 or so. Bucket list items should require more effort than money, in my opinion.

It leaves the list.

While I'm thinking about it, who really cares about #6? I guess you can change your mind about these things.

#10 we did a number of years ago with the wacky halau we worked for.

And today I added #12, which is probably unfair. Can you add something the day you strike it? I feel that this was just a silly omission previously.

This leaves me with:

2. Ride a camel (not a location-specific goal)
4. Write a book
7. Be a balloon wrangler in the Thanksgiving Day Parade
8. Volunteer in the Bishop Museum archives
11. Learn to tie knots (as added in 2015)


I'm working on #2, but very slowly and things at the factory make me wonder, sometimes, whether the book's audience is myself. The publisher wants it, but work keeps getting in the way of the book. Crazy times.

Back to the list, though. If you don't have enough on the list, do you die? One item that should have been on the bucket list is going back to Norway to see relatives. That's happening in a couple of weeks. Headed to Stockholm to give a short presentation, and then taking that opportunity to see my cousin who I haven't seen since 1974.

But right now I have to head to the ballpark to sing the anthem.

2020: Added pantomime horse