Executions

#8 COMPLETE: Ate Conch & Wahoo — Seriously.

Conch | Source: Wikipedia

I think we get the gold star for today because we spent our whole day trying to find something “new”, which was surprisingly hard. Conch is supposed to be popular out here in St. Thomas, so I made it my mission to find some and eat it even though seafood is my enemy.

I won’t waste time explaining what Conch is because you’re gonna see this photo to the right and be all “oh that’s that shell I’ve bought in various sizes on every summer vacation I’ve ever been on!” Yup, that’s the one. I’m actually more familiar with it from playing Animal Crossing way too much back in 2004 (bonus high-fives to anyone who understands that).

Anyway, unfortunately, they’re big on conch “fritters” around here and I felt like that was cheating. But we DID find conch chowder and I think that totally counts because there were giant bits of it. Think of it like clams, but soft and not chewy. Same flavor, different texture.

Conch Chowder @ Molly Malones, Red Hook, St. Thomas

But… we one-upped ourselves later on over at some over-priced fake Italian joint when our waitress told us that a fisherman pulled up to their back door with two 50lb Wahoos this morning. Yes, our thoughts exactly… “WTH is a Wahoo?” An ape of some kind, perhaps? Sounds like an ape to me.

Wahoo! | Source: PesekCharters.com

Well according to Wikipedia (yes, we did this on the spot), it’s a “prize game fish”, “the body is elongated and covered with small, scarcely visible scales; the back is an iridescent blue, while the sides are silvery, with a pattern of irregular vertical blue bars and have razor sharp teeth” and “they are one of the fastest fish in the sea.” Also, they are sometimes confused with the barracuda.

That last part is the ticket got me to say “yes, we’ll take it!”.

It was served sort of like Tuna steak, mostly raw and only seared on the outside. Patrick dug in like a champ while I took a little time to swallow my fear of raw fishy bits. All in all, it was pretty good. The salted seasoning was pretty yum, but the Wahoo itself was pretty bland and flavorless. A novelty item I suppose since it’s somewhat hard to catch? In any case, we did it. I also had plantains and a few other items while looking for the conch and not wanting to miss this resolution but I’m glad we endured!

Wahoo!

#7 COMPLETE: Drank 3 Cups of Green Tea… Sort of.

Well thank heavens that on the ridiculously expensive island of St. Thomas, you can still get yourself some green tea for under $10. I can’t say the same for bacon, pickles, Oreos, hot dogs or any type of meat though. And even though we’re attempting a $100-dollar a day challenge (which pretty much just covers lunch), we were able to get our green tea. Patrick takes green tea extract daily anyway, but today he settled for a few hot cups (in 85-degree weather… we’re champs). As a bonus, I took in a green tea extract candy too which was a foreshadow-ey purchase I bought earlier in the week.

See the original resolution: Drink 3 Cups of Green Tea

See today’s resolution…

#6 COMPLETE: Read a Little & Read a Lot

When I was a kid, I was what you’d call a “bookworm”. Then at some point in my sixth-grade infinite wisdom, I decided that reading books was uncool (as was getting good grades, listening to my elders, and wearing dresses).

Sometime in college when it became apparent that brains were cool again, I decided that I’d rather experience the world than read about adventures in a book. And I did, and I still do. But I also decided that it was a hell of a lot more fun to write my own stories, poo-poo on the rules of grammar, and all that hipster-hating crap you go through when you are, in fact, also a “hipster”.

Thankfully(?) my degree in Interactive Media Design drum-rolled me into the position of Managing Editor at a publishing company (yes, there were a few steps in between). Since then, I’ve been writing about 2,000 words every day (or more if there’s copywriting involved) even now that I’ve moved on to running BuzzFarmers.

So here I am,  a writer who rarely sits down to read a book and wants to assault every person who asks me if I “read the book” every time a new movie comes out. And I don’t think it’s some kind of rule that as a writer or professional blogger I need to consume a book a week. Oh you’re a writer? You must read tons of books. Nope.  I write and edit for at least ten hours every day, so “sitting down with a good book” the opposite of what I consider a good time. I read all day long, isn’t that enough?

Patrick and I could argue about this for hours. By the way, he read Contact, and is reading it again as I write this.

So today as I tried to conform to the norm by “sitting down with a good book”, I choose Tina Fey’s Bossypants because I heard everyone gets a lot of ha-ha’s out of it and I figured that an hour of omg-I-can-totally-relate-to-that humor would be cheap and easy. And it was; funny, not relatable.

I got 25% of the way through the book according to the Kindle, so it must be a short book. In any case, I laughed, I enjoyed, and maybe I’ll finish it on my flight next Thursday. Unfortunately I don’t think they’ll be coming out with a Bossypants movie anytime soon, but yes, I read the book.

#5 COMPLETE: “Saved” a Hermit Crab, and Other Tales

Today we did our best. Being in an airport and on a plane for half the day isn’t the most pleasant place to act like a superhero because any action you make to help someone ends up having you look more like a suspected terrorist or drug smuggler than a superhero. I saw a french woman get pat down and mildly violated for 10 minutes before deciding that touching other people’s things was probably a bad idea. Logan security was top notch today.

So instead we were superheroes in less obvious ways.

Patrick made sure I woke up and got to the airport on time, he remembered everything I would have forgotten, like checking into JetBlue early, cellphone chargers, and bringing an inconspicuous bag for our new Sony NEX 5-N so that we didn’t get robbed (because in St. Thomas that actually happens). BAM, superhero cred.

And me, well I saved a hermit crab from the hypothetical death that would have ensued if someone had stepped on him like I almost did. I named him Harry, brought him inside and fed him peanuts and corn on the cob. Until we leave, he’s living the glamorous life in our giant indoor/outdoor shower, complete with palm trees, plants, and tree frogs. So I superhero’d him, although some might consider it crab-napping. Tomato, tomahhhto.

Harry trying on my sunglasses

 See the original resolution: Act Like a Superhero

#4 COMPLETE: Told Everyone, and I Mean Everyone, That We Love Them

I’ll tell you what, telling people that you love them rocks, because it’s always reciprocated. I started my day by tagging some beloved friends on Facebook and soon discovered the limits of how many people Facebook will let you tag. Not enough. Once you get started, it’s hard to stop!

 I could have followed this up by loving the cashier at Stop & Shop, the lady who runs our doggy’s daycare, and even our chatty neighbor who feeds about 600 stray cats every day. But I thought, let’s not cheapen these words while we’re off to such a good start.

Patrick decided to love everyone in email today since the only person he talked to was some guy at UPS and our friends at doggy daycare. He wasn’t so much strategic as… well…if you got an email from him today, it probably went something like this:

“Yes, uh sure, I’ll get you those TPS reports by noon tomorrow… and by the way I LOVE YOU. FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY HEART.

I LOVE YOU LIKE BILL COSBY LOVES SWEATERS; LIKE A FRENCH KID LOVES CREPES…. I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU…… LOOOOOOOOVE….                LOVE.”

And that’s only a mild exaggeration. Consider me lucky for getting my own version of this each and every day.

So to wrap this up we’re gonna go ahead and say I LOVE YOU to all of ya’ll who have been sharing and reading Life or Depth! The list is getting huge!! It was awesome to see so many people publicly loving eachother today. 🙂

I’d also love to hear any of your “love” stories, so share ’em in the comments if you’ve got ’em!

#3 COMPLETE: Kept Our Mouths Shut for a Whole Day!

Wow, what a shamefully hard resolution, and I know I wasn’t the only one who felt that way because I got tweets, emails and Facebook posts from lot of people saying the same. Is it really that hard to not get mad, and then express it, for one day? It always feels good to be more positive though, and hope you guys got a little out of that too.

So the photo above is what happens to Patrick the first time he breaks his resolution and starts making fun of someone by giving them a british valley girl accent, as he often does.

I’d say it was probably harder for him than it was for me today, but I did throw out a lot of f-bombs at WordPress, Hootsuite, UPS, AirBnB, SallieMae and every other website that didn’t work as quickly as I needed it to today. Technically, I don’t think I hurt anyone’s feelings but I did try to start rational out-loud conversations like, “Dear WordPress, sorry for calling you a ******’ **** *******. I’d love it if you would stop ******* stalling every time I try to upload a ******** image…… Oh, I’m sorry I wasn’t clear with you that first time, well that’s OK, if you could just…. [insert long string of swear words]. Wow, potty mouth, huh? It’s cool, I work from home.

In honesty, I’m a pretty positive person deep down, but I’m definitely impatient and sometimes at a lack of works that don’t start with F, A or S.  Patrick is a lot more patient; Just as long as he can give people accents and make up fake conversations between him and them about things like eating cupcakes, listening to bad music, and their lack of knowledge about American history.

#2 COMPLETE: Turned Off the Phone… Just Kidding.

You might call this resolution self-serving because I simply hate answering the phone. As a digital native, I’ve booked entire cross-country road trips on the Internet. I’ve gotten jobs and other paid work through email correspondence and Twitter. Shoot, I’ve never even talked to my new beloved editor over at BuzzFarmers on the phone which is a damn shame because she rocks.

Call it social anxiety, or simply the anxiety of dead air, I just hate the telephone… almost as I much as I hate excessively long text messages… which are generally my only reason for picking up the phone…. to avoid the continuation of texts…which are usually from my mom…because she apparently hates email as much as I hate the telephone.

So in any case, I answered my phone all day today except when it died… and nothing bad happened. However, it was not on purpose that this resolution was scheduled on a national holiday, I promise. I even tried to make outgoing calls, but apparently everyone other than me got the day off today. Damn you, self-employment. I did however, do a teensy bit of day-drinking today and “watched” Star Wars in the background for six hours. So… cheers!

Love, Amanda (and Patrick, who had no trouble with this resolution because he’s a “Chatty Cathy” anyway).

#1 COMPLETE: On Time and Ready to Go!

Re: Resolution #1 of 366: Start Running On Time

As of 2:45pm this afternoon, everybody around here is running at the same speed and dashing towards the same deadlines. This didn’t stop us from being a total two hours late for a lunch date at my dad’s house but we’re blaming that on the New Year’s Eve hangover. I bought Patrick some very nice Scotch/Whiskey (see: The Balvenie 17-year Madeira Cask) , so, you know, irresponsibility ensued.

Nine clocks in all, but three devices made it easy: iPhone #1, iPhone #2, and the cable box. Booyah.

Officially on time.