Estate Sale Finds

Sometimes the best part of an estate sale is the house itself.

This one had a great setup for baking: a flour dispenser, zinc rolling surface, rolling pin rest.

I hope the house is purchased by someone who can appreciate it.

Bucket List: National Anthem

Couldn't resist a selfie while on the field at the game, before we sang the national anthem.

Things That Make Me Happy: The Inappropriate Ice Bucket

I have a thing for things that look like other things. Hence the gazelles, the wig form, the model of foot bones. In my first apartment I used to only stock fake food in the fridge. For many years I kept a rubber head of iceberg lettuce that was a hidey hole for money. You get the point.

So when my turn came at the last department white elephant gift exchange I definitely went in for the ice bucket in the shape of a pair of cut-offs. My hope was to use it in our kitchen in the archives because the only thing that is missing over there is some ice. Also, it's hilarious.

But this gift exchange was in the opening months of the #metoo movement, and my colleagues informed me that the ice bucket was inappropriate. So now it lives in my office, where it is filled with individually wrapped dinner mints. 

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