The 2016 100 Wrap-Up, Part 3: The 28 Things Left Over

And we’re finally here—the 28 items that either just didn’t make the cut to come back after 2016, or got tabled for future Casey to handle somewhere down the line!

The more I do these, the more I realise I can’t do everything today, and so I work harder to focus on what’s in front of me so I can give myself the room to manage future challenges!

But hey—if there’s something on this list you think you can make happen sooner, feel free to let me know at palmer.casey@gmail.com and we’ll see what we can do!

Without further ado, here’s The 2016 100 Wrap-Up, Part 3: The 28 Items Left Over!

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The 2016 100 Wrap-Up—What I MAY Do, But Not Necessarily in 2017

2) Win a vacation for my dry cleaner

One thing I’ve learned as a blogger is that while it’s all too easy to get high on yourself when you have successes, you also need to keep realistic. Though many great things have happened in my #BloggerLife so far, I don’t have the clout nor the contacts to conjure a vacation from thin air. Not yet, anyway. This is one I’ll pursue awhile, yet.

4) Take Eric to a sporting event so he can stop complaining about getting left from sporting events

After hitting a Toronto Argos game last year with a few buddies (and by association the Canada vs. Slovakia World Junior Hockey Championship game I was at just before the new year), I may have promised my buddy Eric that I’d take him to a game sometime. This would make the 2017 list, except I have no idea when I’ll find myself invited to a game next, so we’ll get back to this one eventually.

12) Do the CN Tower Edgewalk

By this point in my life, this one’s more of a “nice to do” than anything else. I’ve climbed a mountain. Backpacked through Europe. I’ve shot guns, ridden roller coasters across the continent, and gone face-to-face with black bears in the wild. I wouldn’t do the CN Tower Edgewalk to chase a thrill—I’d just do it because it looks fun to do! One day I’ll be a tourist in my city and give it a try!

24) Find the time to pack more lunches for work

This should be a given—with our access to fresh ingredients in Ontario, there’s little reason why anyone should eat takeout meals on a regular basis. Yet here we are. Eventually, I’d love to consistently bring lunch to work every day, but it seems so hard to squeeze it in between everything else going on in this phase of our lives. But who knows—maybe we’ll find a way!

25) Clean up and optimize my Pinterest account (I still have that copy of Pinterest Savvy lying around somewhere)

Many say Pinterest is still super relevant in an age dominated by Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, but I’ve failed to make great use of the account I’ve had laying around since forever. Sometime in the future, I’d love to take my copy of Melissa Taylor’s Pinterest Savvy and apply it to a killer content strategy to introduce my site to people who might not discover it otherwise!

28) Clear out the bookshelves to prepare for Baby #2

So far, my boys’ books and mine manage to coexist peacefully on my old Bombay bookshelves, but the time will come to thin the collection down to what’s still relevant to make room for the Seusses and Munsches of the world. But we’re really good at purging—new things rarely come in the house without us sending out two to Value Village or a friend who might need them more, so I haven’t had to lock horns with this issue yet.

36) Get our Christmas stockings embroidered with everyone’s names to match my childhood one.

My Christmas stocking is embroidered, one my Mom got even before my younger brothers came along. Now that I have a family of my own and everyone has their stockings, it’s time to pay it forward and do theirs up to look like mine. When, though? Who knows!

37) Mend my shirts, jackets and sweaters to make them last longer.

Though many say that nothing’s built to last these days, it doesn’t mean we immediately discard things once they’re a little worn. It’s over five years since I took an introductory course at The Sewing Studio to further my skills (since closed, sadly, but The Make Den offers a similar service), and while I haven’t put my life as an amateur tailor to the test, I still see the value of maintaining one’s clothes and truly making them their own. One day, I hope to sit down and restore my clothes that’ve taken quite a beating over time!

40) Get new towels for the bathroom.

This originally made the list because I don’t know my own strength and tore one of the Lacoste towels we have in the bathroom, but it’s not really a goal, is it? I think we could eventually do with a bit of a towel overhaul, but calling it a priority is just overkill.

48) Watch the Star Wars films in Machete order.

One can watch the Star Wars films in a number of ways. Traditional purists often watch them in order of theatrical release—Episodes IV, V, VI, I, II, III, VII. Or if you rather watch them as the story unfolds chronologically, then it’s the obvious Episode Order: Episodes I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII. But for maximum impact, Rod Hilton’s “Machete Order” is arguably the best—Episodes IV, V, II, III, VI, VII, skipping I altogether!

What this does:

• doesn’t spoil the surprise that Darth Vader is Luke’s father as the Episode Order does
• doesn’t make new watchers slog through Episode I, which is mostly horrible and more so irrelevant, and
• treats Episodes II and III like a backstory for the original IV, V and VI… which is exactly what they are.

Now, since the movies aren’t on Netflix, I’m unlikely to give this a shot anytime soon, but it is my duty as a parent to eventually expose my boys to the joy that is Star Wars, so if not now, then.

50) Finish One Piece in One Piece.

If you’ve never heard of One Piece in One Piece, it’s my project to create an infographic outlining all of One Piece (my favourite Japanese manga) in one place. But that’s no light undertaking—as of posting this, we’re 851 chapters deep; the story started in 1997, and we’ve still plenty of story to cover before we see it through. Its author, Eiichiro Oda, fills the chapters with so much information that one needs to carefully read each and every one (~18 drawn pages apiece) to make sure they don’t miss anything. As I’m currently transcribing Chapter 32, let’s just say I have a long way to go 😕

52) BUT, invest in high-speed photo and negative scanners to archive Sarah and my families’ histories

Our families—Sarah’s especially—have a wealth of photos and negatives chronicling not only our generation, but also the ones that comes before. And while Google PhotoScan’s alright, there’s nothing like getting the source material and scanning it to a computer directly. Being the genealogy geek that I am, I’d love to see this all catalogued and tagged to the appropriate entries in the family tree, but that’s not happening without the hardware to do it for me. I’ve spoken about it with Sarah’s family in the past—maybe we’ll build out the project and revisit it sometime this year!

53) Fix the garage door.

So I’m about as handy as a dude with two left hands, but I’m still compelled to repair our garage door which suffered some damage after spending months frozen shut from the Great Ice Storm of 2013. However, I assume it’s no small feat, and when I finally tackle this one, I have a feeling I’ll need plenty of YouTube to help me out!

58) Seriously—get the Toronto Fun List MADE.

When I first visited NYC in 2010, one of the resources I used to get the most from the trip was Zoomdoggle’s NYC Fun List, outlining more than 300 things you could do in the Big Apple, even if you’re a local who thinks they’ve done everything. Since using it and sharing it many a time, I thought Toronto surely has enough to have a Fun List of its own! I tried to start the project a couple of times, but it too often fell flat as life pulled me in other directions. I’d love to see it made real sometime, I just don’t know when.

61) Build an active group blog, because especially with a second son on the way, it’ll be IMPOSSIBLE to be all the places all the time!

I say “no” to more pitches than I’d like, but there’s only so many places a married father of two young kids with a full-time job can be. But when I look at my friends like Zach and Jenn, I can’t say I don’t imagine how much farther I could get if I could just take more on. Which is why for a while, I toyed with starting a group blog to give up-and-coming bloggers a leg up by doing the things I couldn’t fit on my plate. Codenamed “Fauxronto”, I built a decent contact list to start with, but the brand identity just didn’t feel right. Who knows—maybe I’ll get to this eventually, but for now I’ve bigger fish to fry.

80) Get a new vacuüm cleaner, preferably a Miele Complete C3 PowerPlus
81) Invest in a Vitamix G-Series 780
82) Play with some new cameras, like the GoPro Hero 4 Black, and a Canon 5D Mark III with a Canon EF f/4L 11-24 mm lens

#80-#82 are all items I mentioned in some form on my recent Best Buy wishlist, and while new tech would make a marked improvement in my world, I’ll make do if I don’t get my hands on them in 2017. I can live with the ancient vacuum that’s falling apart. The blender can only manage light jobs. While not fixing things that ain’t broke isn’t my style, patience is. So things will happen when they need to happen!

89) Do more speaking gigs

Many are scared of public speaking, but I love it. The rush I get from sharing my mind before a captive audience is something unparalleled by almost anything else, and I’d love to get to more of it in the future. But at the same time, I clearly see how packed my life is right now, so if it doesn’t materialize today… well, I think I can live with that.

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The 2016 100 Wrap-Up—What I’m Just Not Gonna Bother Doing

10) Build shelves into the crawl space

Originally I’d considered installing shelves into the crawlspace to keep it better organised—right now, we need to move a number of bags any time we want to access what’s in the basement chest freezer. But after sorting through some of the clutter in there, I think we have more space than I realised, and perhaps I don’t need to install shelving at all. Less stuff—it’s always the way to go!

11) Give my FWD Powershot 2 to my old manager the hockey coach

I was totally going to do this, but it came back in a less stellar condition than I’d lent it, so I decided to just forgo this and move on with my life. Also, I kind of feel like that manager grew somewhat apathetic about me once I decided to move from his shop as it is, so hey.

18) Try Uncle Tetsu’s cheesecake

If there’s one thing that’s very Torontonian about our food scene, it’s that crazes come and go in an instant. When it first launched, Uncle Tetsu’s cheesecake—as I understand it, a Japanese rendition of the popular dessert—was a joint with lineups around the block, hundreds trying to get their hands on one before they sold out for the day. Now? Now I only see their bags when people use them to carry their lunch. I think this is one craze I don’t really need to worry about.

34) Get a steamer, since I RARELY have time to iron a shirt.

Show me a Dad to young children who leaves his house each morning looking like a GQ model, and I will show thee a unicorn. I’m slowly accepting that I need to change my expectations while we’re in these early years of parenting, and realise the time I’d once invest in looking fresh to death needs to be earmarked for other things now. S0 whether iron or steamer, neither is likely to see regular use until things get a little more… stable.

42) Get cool swag from Mexico City

If you blinked you probably missed it, but my family spent a full ten days in Mexico for my sister-in-law’s wedding! “Why didn’t you write about it,” you ask? Because a trip with two young kids at 2250m above sea level and 40-degree heat is hard—it doesn’t leave a lot of time for sightseeing and picking Mexican swag up. So yeah—pretty sure this ship has sailed until my next visit to Mexico. And now that my sister-in-law has family down in Mexico City, you never know!

43) Get a good quality men’s grooming kit.

When I looked at this in December, I found myself thinking, “What do I really need to get myself ready in the morning?” I have electric razors, face creams, tweezers, scissors, things that exfoliate, gets that soothe… I don’t know that I need anything else! Moving right along…

67) Finish “32 Things I Know Now That I’m 32”

As the blog caught its stride through 2016, I found myself feeling this series less and less. Celebrating coming of age felt like it made sense around 30 when I was in a new decade of my life with new expectations, but a few years later with two kids the new focus of my life, all this just didn’t feel so important anymore. Maybe I’ll come up with a list for 40.

72) Finish cleaning up Walmer’s old sound files

I spent a number of years as a sound tech at our previous church, and one of the tasks I inherited was going through the old Sunday recordings that never made it to the website and getting them posted. While I got a good chunk of ’em out, there’s a bunch that’ve sat on my computer since forever, and I think it’s time they go via courier in an envelope with my keys to ye ol’ sound bench. Because closure is always important.

99) Send my Mom to at least one Toronto Raptors game

I fully intended to score my Mom a Raptors game sometime in 2016 since she’d never been, but when your brother does it for you, why fret? Thanks, bro!

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So Long, 2016—It’s been at LEAST several slices.

And with that we did adieu to 2016. It was a busy one without a doubt, but one that steered me in a better direction, kicking my year off on a positive note, ready to tackle whatever comes next. I appreciate you all indulging me for the last week as I got these posts out—they literally kept me up at night, and I feel better for starting the year without this hanging over my head. This way I can devote my mental real estate to other priorities. From here on, 2017’s the name of the game and I’m pulling out every last stop to tell my stories with the greatest potential possible!

I hope you’re ready; there’s so much to come this year!

So Happy New Year once more, and until the next, I remain,