Things I want to do in this life

*Picture of the Aurora Borealis* (Southern Lights)

...read on, it will make sense later.

Everyone has a mental list of things that they want to accomplish in life. I've been so concerned with the present tasks of volunteering, studying for the GRE and applying to graduate school that I forgot about my life goal of learning how to play the banjo.

And that's no joke. I really do want to learn how to play a banjo.

Some day, I will learn, but I want to take it seriously and have the time to set aside hours for practice. Like Woody Allen does with his clarinet. I worked with a costume designer who designed the clothes for a few Woody Allen movies, and the production staff had to work around his daily clarinet practice. Each practice was precisely 37 minutes long. Weird, I know, but he always stuck by that.

But, I digress.

My new thing I want to do is take a voyage to Antarctica. I was looking into this some time ago and there is a company out of New Zealand that uses old research boats that are fully functional, Icebreakers (which I just saw on Modern Marvels on the History Channel, which made me think about writing this), and large tourist boats for educational excursions for everyday folk. I've been to various aquariums across the country, and visited some amazing museums of natural history, but being able to see the southern lights, see the amazing glaciers up close...I would crap my pants.

I don't know what they mean by "simple" but comfortable ships. Not that I'm high maintenance, but still.

And, no, I'm not dreaming of the arctics because of the nationwide heat wave...just in case you were wondering.