18. go to a rodeo (30x30)

I did it. But I didn't like it.

Jason and I went to the Delaware State Fair in July...which was pretty awesome, lots of lights and fried foods, laughing children and obesity, oh and e. coli warnings because where there are farm animals, there's poop.



and I should have read more about what a rodeo means. I had some Romantic notion of cowboys and forgot about the animal cruelty part. The first part that walked into was steer wrestling:

The event features a steer and two mounted cowboys, along with a number of supporting characters. The steers are moved through narrow pathways leading to a chute with spring-loaded doors. A barrier rope is fastened around the steer's neck which is used to ensure that the steer gets a head start. The rope length is determined by arena length. On one side of the chute is the "hazer", whose job is to ride parallel with the steer once it begins running and ensure it runs in a straight line, on the other side of the chute the "steer wrestler" or "bulldogger" waits behind a taut rope fastened with an easily broken string which is fastened to the rope on the steer.

When the steer wrestler is ready he "calls" for the steer by nodding his head and the chute man trips a lever opening the doors. The suddenly freed steer breaks out running, shadowed by the hazer. When the steer reaches the end of his rope, it pops off and simultaneously releases the barrier for the steer wrestler. The steer wrestler attempts to catch up to the running steer, lean over the side of the horse which is running flat out and grab the horns of the running steer. The steer wrestler then is pulled off his horse by the slowing steer and plants his heels into the dirt further slowing the steer and himself. He then takes one hand off the horns, reaches down and grabs the nose of the steer pulling the steer off balance and ultimately "throwing" the steer to the ground. Once all four legs are off the ground, an official waves a flag marking the official end and a time is taken. The steer is released and trots off.

... the steers were skinny, hip bones protruding, and have very flexible necks, so some of the bulldoggers had to twist the neck in both directions to get the steer on its back. assholes.

then came the part which I most associate with a rodeo, the bucking bronco event.



and then someone told me that the way that they get the bronc to buck is by tying something around it's testicles and cinching it. I have since done some research and don't think it goes around the testicles since many of the animals are geldings and mares, but still.

The part that made me get up and leave the even was the calf roping. fuck those motherfuckers.

The calves are lined up in a row and moved through narrow runways leading to a chute with spring-loaded doors. When a calf enters the chute, a door is closed behind it and a lightweight 28-foot (8.5 m) rope, attached to a trip lever, is fastened around the calf's neck. The lever holds a taut cord or "barrier" that runs across a large pen or "box" at one side of the calf chute, where the horse and rider wait. The barrier is used to ensure that the calf gets a head start. When the roper is ready, he (or, in some roping events, she) calls for the calf, and the chute operator pulls a lever opening the chute doors and releasing the calf. The calf runs out in a straight line. When the calf reaches the end of the rope, that trips the lever, the rope falls off the calf, and the barrier for the horse is released, starting the clock and allowing horse and rider to chase the calf.

Timing is critical. From a standstill, a rider will put his horse into a gallop from the box shortly after the calf leaves the chute, so that the horse saves valuable seconds by being at near-full speed the moment the barrier releases. However, if the rider mistimes his cue to the horse and the horse breaks the barrier before it releases, a 10-second penalty will be added to his time. This is sometimes referred to as a "Cowboy Speeding Ticket."

The rider must lasso the calf from horseback by throwing a loop of the lariat around the calf's neck. Once the rope is around the calf's neck, the roper signals the horse to stop quickly while he dismounts and runs to the calf. The calf must be stopped by the rope but cannot be thrown to the ground by the rope. If the calf falls, the roper loses seconds because he must allow the calf to get back on its feet. When the roper reaches the calf, he picks it up and flips it onto its side. Once the calf is on the ground, the roper ties three of the calf's legs together with a short rope known as a tie-down rope or "piggin' string". A half hitch knot is used, sometimes referred to colloquially as "two wraps and a hooey" or a "wrap and a slap". The piggin' string is often carried between the roper's teeth until he uses it. The horse is trained to assist the roper by slowly backing away from the calf to maintain a steady tension on the rope.

When the tie is complete, the roper throws his hands in the air to signal "time" and stop the clock. The roper then returns to his horse, mounts, and moves the horse forward to relax the tension on the rope. The timer waits for six seconds, during which the calf must stay tied before an official time is recorded. Top professional calf ropers will rope and tie a calf in 7 seconds. The world record is just over 6 seconds.

...except at this rodeo, the horses didn't move forward to relax the tension on the rope... they moved back, dragging the calf and tightening the rope around their neck. I felt sick and wanted to cry.

I have choices today, so we left... and ate fried pickles.

32. be at ease (33x33)

I experienced and practiced metta meditation at my first against the stream retreat in August 2012.

...and bawled my eyes out.

the practice is to feel caring and well-being for all sentient beings, yourself included. There's no wrong way to sit and focus your good on the universe. there are a few guided metta meditations. this one is from refuge recovery

Another, that I like to read, is:

Let me be able, upright, and straight forward, of good speech, gentle, and free from pride.

Let me be contented, easily satisfied, have few duties, living simply, of controlled senses, prudent, without pride and without attachment to nation, race, or other groups.

Let me not do the slightest thing for which the wise might rebuke me.

Instead let me think:
"May all beings be well and safe, may they be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be, whether moving or standing still, without exception, whether large or small, whether tiny or substantial.
Whether seen or unseen,
Whether living near or far,
Born or unborn, may all beings be happy.
Let none deceive or despise another anywhere. Let none wish harm to another in anger or hate."

Just as a mother would guard her child, with her own life, even so let me cultivate a boundless mind for all beings in the world.

Let me cultivate a boundless love for all beings in the world, above, below, and across, unhindered, without ill or enmity.

Standing, walking, seated, or lying down, free from torpor, let me as far as possible fix my attention on this recollection.

This, they say, is the divine life right here.

practicing this meditation for the past few years has helped me to be at ease. even when I'm uncomfortable, I can be at ease. like in yoga, I can be thirsty and at ease about it without having to do anything to relieve the thirst. what does thirst feel like? where is it in the body? what happens to the muscles when they require more water? In the same vein (pun intended, wait for it), being at ease means trusting the body and listening to the signals that say, drink some water! I'm going to stop working if you don't add water to your blood stream!

28. wish upon a star (33x33)

We've all done it. Look up at the sky and pick the first star you see, even though you see about a hundred - less, depending on the light pollution (which I've learned all about because of the observatory item coming up soon) - and make a wish.

When I was little, I'd wish for physical, material, objects. Like something to hope for in the holidays.

As a teenager with raging hormones, it was usually a wish for attention or affection from the latest object of obsession. Because, yes, people were objects around then...

As a college student, usually I was too inebriated to focus on just one so I just appreciated the magnitude of the cosmos. totally radical.

In early sobriety, I'd wish for the man I was pining for in numerous imaginationships to return my affection and thereby validate the promise that I'm loveable. and I'd wish for peace and serenity and acceptance, because it was a good habit to get into.

I put together this list of items in November 2012 and a lot of the items are repeats from previous leap lists. I was still fairly miserable at my job, still pining over unrequited love, still struggling with body image issues, and I had just had the amazing experience of my first silent retreat. That was my mindset, still focused on the idea of "better."

What would it look like, feel like, seem like, to put away the story of a "better" me?

It feels wonderful. I was walking home from work the other day and looked up, directed my attention to the first star, the brightest star, and was at a loss for a wish.

I was exactly as I was and didn't want my story to change, didn't need to alter the attributes of anything in me or about me to feel right and perfect.

Granted, many of my circumstances have changed since I wrote the list. I'm excelling in my employ, have found the great peace of being part of a pair, gained weight, lost fitness, fallen out of meditative practice, obtained and lost a service position, and am older.

I want everything I have.

9. go iceskating in CANADA (30x30)

For my 33rd birthday this year, I decided to make the trip, long-overdue, to Seattle to visit an old friend. Recently, another old friend told me that I'm not the friend who will drive slower when told that a passenger has lived through an automobile collision. I'm the friend who laughs driving down old New Deal era parkways at break-neck speed (and turns off the headlights). I'm not the friend who coddles. I'm the devil's advocate, loving and caring but pushing and pulling.

Sometimes I wonder if I stopped, if I'd have any friends anymore or if I only know how to have relationships with people who are in transition. It worried me that my friend who lives in Seattle wasn't calling with dramatic tales about campaign life or her romantic dalliances. I wondered if all I was good for, for her, was a sounding board. The woman I befriended nearly a decade ago was brave and adventurous, tenacious, principled, passionate, and smart as a whip. She was also existentially transitioning from heterosexual to homosexual and going to graduate school for religion in the public square.

In the past decade she's moved from DC to Wilmington NC to home to New Jersey to Lynchburg VA to Seattle. She's been in give serious relationships and has been employed by nine different organizations (some concurrently). That's a lot of living to do.



And she's figured it out. She has the most amazing aura of self-actualization and acceptance. She's her own boss in a perfect-for-her relationship, is always late, has created a cozy inner circle of friends, and still builds her relationships with her family back home. She's a highly sensitive person and needs food or else gets the Hanger, and appreciates high-threadcount sheets.

After visiting, I've found, she doesn't need me anymore, and if she and I met today, I don't know if we'd be as fast of friends as we were nine years ago.

For the life of me, I can't remember why I put ice skating in CANADA on my list. But there it is. Seattle is a few hours south of Vancouver, British Columbia. So I thought that I'd go visit and we could go ice skating together. Because really, this list is just an excuse to see friends and do random things (the more absurd, the better).

Since living in Seattle, my brave, tenacious friends has become very risk-averse when it comes to personal safety... which she neglected to tell me when I told her the main objective of the trip north. She also neglected to tell me just how scared she was that she wouldn't be allowed to cross the Canadian border... Had she told me these aversion, I may have asked someone else to go with me to Toronto some other time or maybe I'd go to Mont Trem Blanc with Tiffany for the Team in Training Iron Man in August (shameless plug here...)

I still would have gone to Seattle, maybe our day trip could have been to Portland or to the water or to FORKS (TwiHard for lyfe)!



Maybe that's the reason she hasn't returned my texts or calls. This trip wasn't exactly as either of us had planned, which, in and of itself is interesting. The point of the leap list is to live and experience and be conscious. This might not have been the most pleasant trip, but it fulfilled the purpose of the list. Makes me think that I have an expectation that the items on my list will be intrinsically pleasant. But that's not the point, and its not accurate or reasonable to expect that all the time. Its nice to be able to step back and appreciate an unpleasant experience.

Speaking of, let's discuss Seattle Freeze. On Sunday morning, I woke up early to go visit my friends Marc and Perry in North Seattle. I planned on taking the bus, found the map and the schedule online. My friend had directed me to some places to go for coffee the night before when she dropped me off. Not further than a block from the bus stop was a restaurant called Liberty, it had an "Open" sign in the window, so I walked in. I was greeted with a wolf-whistle. I looked around and around for the source, very curious, because it wasn't even 8AM and I'm just not used to such nascent cat-calls.

In the back of the restaurant, sitting in a booth with an open laptop, was a woman with short hair, shrunken cheeks, and a pinched face. Next to her was a pink cockatoo bobbing his head up and down, whistling still, and flaring his feathers. Seattle became a million times more awesome in a nanosecond.

this is a pink cockatoo (and Cee lo Green).



I ordered my coffee, and while I was waiting for the barista, walked towards the woman and her bird in the back booth. She opened her mouth and the image of Seattle plummeted. Very defensively, she told me she was too busy to talk, even before I said anything and when I turned my attention to her avian friend, she explained that he was NOT to be bothered.

PSA: If you bring a conversation piece into a public place, you forfeit any expectation of privacy. People are going to want to talk to you, not because they are cow-towing to an implicit call for attention but because we are inherently curious creatures. Don't take it personally, I just wanted to admire your bird, Lady.

17. swim across the Long Island Sound (33x33)

... almost.

For Johnny's 30th birthday (on December 26th) we did a polar bear plunge! This will count for the moment... because it is swimming in the LIS. I still want to swim the race though.

22. pay off 1 of 8 loan debts (33x33)

not gonna lie, my family absolved me of 5 of the 8 debts I owe this year with the hopes that I'll put it towards the federal loans in arrears and that I'll get out more often. It doesn't really count as "paying" off the debts. But there are still two with sallie mae and one with the department of education. The two with sallie mae are actually seven separate loans (one of which is at 8.5% interest). I'll tackle one of those in particular this year.

With this gift, along with my promotion, I should be able to put a dent into my debt.

indentured servitude sucks. no one can ever fully express exactly the weight of the loans to someone with stars in their eyes for advancing their education though.

31. earn a promotion (33x33)

In October of last year I was told I'd be part of a different task on the project I had been working on since May. I would be working on a task called, Scenarios. A requirement scenario document is comprised of a few components: a business synopsis (how the business processes a claim in words), a process model (a representation of the artifacts that have been written in order for business system to function), and a process architecture model (a representation of the business service hierarchy specific to the scenario). The contract was fairly vague and didn't actually describe the components, except that 36 were due by the end of the contract year. After drafting a few versions of the scenario components and developing templates and instructions for creating scenarios, it was already December and a draft was due to the project managers by the second week of January. Although not the official team lead of the scenarios team, I took the initiative and a leadership role.

To recap the major push:

John M got sick, Sanyog got sick, Caitlyn got sick, Jessica got sick, Anna got sick, Omar got sick, Sarah got sick, Will got sick and then his dog got sick. Karin broke her knee, again. Stuart, Justyn, Chad, Charles, Karin, Ross, Orest, John M & B, Caitlyn, Will, Jessica, Sarah, and Josiah took vacation for the holidays. Our Subject Matter Experts for review were redirected back to their work or got sick. Sanyog was made team lead for Awards, requiring a third of his time. Stuart, Ross, Justyn, and Caitlyn were redirected back to their work streams this week. Jessica's computer broke. There was snow, ice, and metro delays.

And we got it done. There were 108 working documents: 36 individual scenario documents, 36 scenario process models, and 36 process architecture models. Each of those documents were drafted, reviewed for internal scenario content, reviewed for consistency across the group, and reviewed for grammar.

There were only 21 working days to coordinate and execute this effort. The master scenario document has been drafted with all 36 and was delivered to Karin tonight, on time.

BRAVO, everyone. BRAVO.

The principal on the project took notice of our work and my leadership shown on the task and I earned a promotion as a result. Feels awesome.