101 IN 1001

ben folds and the nashville symphony

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:52:00 +0000

My friend Dave and I went to check out Ben Folds performing with the Nashville Symphony Sunday night at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center. It was my first time in the new concert hall, and my first time listening to the Nashville Symphony, and it was all fantastic.

They kicked off the first third of the concert with some classical selections performed by the Symphony, under the direction of conductor Albert-George Schram... seriously one of the most hilarious and fun to watch conductors I've ever seen.

After a brief intermission Ben Folds joined the orchestra and played about 10 of his own songs, all brilliantly executed with some great orchestrations to accompany. Really fantastic, and Ben blew me away with his piano proficiency. He's a truly talented guy. The symphony sounded equally as great, and as Ben himself said, it was a night of really condensed talent with 90+ individuals who have dedicated their lives to mastering one unique instrument, and the resulting effect was phenomenal.

The audience begged for multiple encores, but were only successful in extracting a very beautiful version of "The Luckiest" from him. It sufficed.

So my first Nashville Symphony experience was great. Thanks to Dave for the ticket!!

lunch with a friend

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 14:23:00 +0000

Yesterday I ate lunch with my good friend Scott. And while Scott and I are about the same age I consider him a person I look up to simply because of the fact he has experienced so many different things in life already, and he has the uncanny ability to speak about anything and everything with a degree of wisdom.

Over the last year Scott sold his car among other things and moved from Nashville to the Czech Republic to pursue a lifelong passion to learn more about that culture and the people. He has spent the year touring Europe, getting ingrained in the Prague lifestyle and taking up a personal street ministry in his spare time. In a lot of ways he personifies the Tim Ferriss "4 Hour Work Week" lifestyle - at least he's the only person I know personally that is coming close to doing that.

What it really comes down to is that he's pursuing that which he's really passionate about in his youth... I respect that, and I want to find a way to do that myself.

Keep tabs on Scott's travels through the Czech Republic at youtube.com/czechscottout.

steph went backpacking, and so did i

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:59:00 +0000

Prior to the wonderful road trip without an agenda, I was able to take Steph backpacking the Colorado Rockies... an absolutely wonderful week. I'm in the midst of dissecting the trip via blog here - you're welcome to read and learn about the trip.

a road trip with no agenda

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:49:00 +0000

The end of July brought about the completion of a number of key items in the 101 list... about time, it's been stagnant for far too long.

I'm going to claim "Go On A Roadtrip With No Agenda" as completed based on the fact that following our backpacking trip a couple weeks ago Steph and I randomly decided to go to Santa Fe and make the cross country trek back to Nashville the long way. On our journey we made stops as we saw fit - did things exactly the way we wanted to do them. For a full discourse, read here.

Along the way I also knocked off two new States in the Lower 48 that I haven't been to yet - Texas and Oklahoma. This leaves New Jersey, Delaware, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, and New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine. Hmm... those are all conveniently located next to each other.

the due date

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:28:00 +0000

I'm way off track. I'm over a year into my list, and I haven't done nearly enough items. I calculated out my 1001 due date - technically it's 3/12/2010. That's less than two years away at this point. Ugh.

this is elephant art

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:40:00 +0000

What you see here is elephant art. It was painted by an African elephant named Hadari who lives down at the Nashville Zoo. Steph and I saw a gallery of elephant art at the mall around Christmas time and thought they were so neat, so I got her one for Christmas.

Since the winter-time forces the elephants inside for several months, they give the elephants projects to do, like painting. Basically they put an easel in front of them with a bunch of paint cans w/ brushes to choose from. The elephant picks up brush and paints on the canvas, and there you have it... elephant art!

And you ask, why did it take me three months to post about this? I have no idea. I'm sorry.

But it is neat isn't it?

caleb and kristin's house

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:37:00 +0000

We finally made it to Caleb and Kristin's house in Wisconsin over Christmas... well, to be precise, over New Year's. They have a great place - a cute little house in small-town Wisconsin. It suits them, and their two cats, quite nicely and I'm glad we finally got to see it.

I took a bunch of film pictures of their house, but for some reason we have none on our digital camera... come on Burns. Oh well - we were there, and it was great.

We rang in the New Year playing Trivial Pursuit and watching 6 hours of 'tornado episodes' on the National Geographic Channel.

steph has a blog

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:32:00 +0000

Alright, I finally got Steph set up with a blog. She thinks she doesn't have interesting things happen in her life, and therefore has nothing to write about... this is simply not true. Go check out her new page and encourage a new blogger...

id theft protection

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 04:11:00 +0000

I've had it on my unofficial to-do list to get ID Theft Protection for over a year now, and I finally did it. Two things promoted it this week:

Over Christmas it was reported that laptops had been stolen from the Davidson County Election Commission containing voter data of over 337,000 Nashville residents including Social Security numbers.
My brother-in-law got a call from his bank while we were driving to Minneapolis last week because of "suspicious activity", which did indeed end up being a whole laundry list of fraudulent charges indicating that his credit card info had been stolen.

So I went on over to Zander Insurance and signed up for Identify Theft Protection. Zander was certain to underscore that it was not ID Theft Insurance, but Protection, as what their program provides is a recovery service in the event that you are the victim of identity theft.

It's really no surprise that our personal information is more susceptible to theft than ever, as demonstrated by the Davidson County Election Commission - actually just received my letter in the mail today indicating that I should go ahead and assume that my information had been stolen. And knowing my luck, if my credit card information was somehow stolen, I know that if I called up VISA, they would give me the run-around for weeks as they try to prove that I'm the incompetent dead-beat who actually ran up all fraudulent charges.

I don't have time for that, nor the patience... hence Identity Theft Protection.

paid off the computer

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 17:13:00 +0000

We have a goal to be debt free including all consumer debt, school loans, ~~and 20% of our house~~ within the 1001 day period. We knocked a lot out within our first couple years of marriage, but the last 8 months have been slow going with various other expenses eating away at the monthly paycheck.

Anyways, I had to get a new computer last summer and (somewhat) foolishly opened a credit account for that. I'm happy to say I paid off the last penny of it today, which makes us completely consumer debt free!

On to school and the house....

worship team

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 06:54:00 +0000

About the same time we joined the church, Steph and I met with our worship leader at Grace in order to join the worship team. One thing we love so much about our church is that the worship music is so laid back, and very honest and intimate - not anything like the big over-productions that so many churches are known for.

This made it very inviting for me to get involved on the team, and for the past three weeks I've been a part of the music on Sunday mornings, playing piano. It's been great and I've really enjoyed it. Surprisingly, given this is Nashville, our church is short on piano players, so it's nice to be needed to some extent! Steph sang on the team last Sunday as well and that was fun.

So, step 1 in getting involved with our new church is underway...

thanksgiving recipes

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 06:46:00 +0000

It's my personal tradition to cook a new sweet potato recipe every Thanksgiving... this year's was definitely a winner. It included mashed sweet potatoes and a healthy concoction of butter, sugar, and cream. I then topped it off with a brown sugar / crushed pecan crust and baked it in the oven.

I've also been searching for good cornbread recipe (one that wasn't so boringly dry). Thanksgiving was a good time for that as well, and I was quite pleased with my results. Made some cornbread muffins and found that a combination of 2/3 flour and 1/3 corn meal actually made them much less dry. That in addition to some whole kernels of corn made for some very traditional muffins that went over quite well.

2 Recipes of 10 Complete

kitchen painted

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 06:43:00 +0000

There are four rooms in our house that we absolutely want to paint (at the very least, prior to selling it). Of most importance to us is the living room and kitchen, and we're happy to report that the kitchen is painted. Grape Vine was the color we chose (after much deliberation) - it's a nice Tuscany green color that works well with our color scheme of dark woods and earthy tones. Now we need to find something that works for the living room, which has proven to be much more difficult.

grace community church

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 06:38:00 +0000

Within the last month Steph and I both became members of our church, Grace Community Church. That was a long time coming, and part of the hold-up was reconciling myself to the fact that I would need to get baptized (according to Baptist tradition)... so I eventually did, and wrote a post about the whole experience on my personal blog.

jack

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 02:45:00 +0000

This post is a good two months overdue, but we finished watching all of the 24 seasons (to date). Here's a recap...

Favorite Season
Day 3

Favorite Character
Tony Almeida

Least Favorite Character
Sherry Palmer (yeah, typical)

Best "I'm Gonna Jack Bauer All Up In Your Face" Moment
As bad as Day 6 was, what with a bad storyline, a poor President and way too much drama, I have to say that the episode where Jack apprehended Abu Fayed (9-10PM) was pretty memorable. Check out this video to relive this fine moment of acute strangulation.

lunch with tony p

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Sat, 15 Sep 2007 20:05:00 +0000

I have tasked myself to "Eat lunch with 10 people I look up to". 1 down as of last week. Had lunch with my good buddy Tony Patoto, who I truly believe is one of the most brilliant, compassionate, caring, and encouraging individuals I know.

Tony is a Canadian, but lived most of his life in the UK, hence really cool accent. Got his start in the music industry starting a distribution company over in the UK, and then happened upon a young band called Delirious. Tony managed Delirious for about 10 years or so, crafting them into the worldwide success that they are today. About a year and a half ago Tony moved to Nashville to take part in a project EMI was working on, which has since gone south, but it's music - can't win all of them.

So I met up with Tony last Friday, had ourselves some good Italian food, and talked about life. He had some good encouragement regarding the business ventures I'm throwing myself into, and was particularly excited about what I'm doing with music:nuvo. We talked about Steph and the fact that she's applying to vet school, so a lot of long term stuff is up in the air considering we could be leaving town in 12 months if she gets accepted:

He said, "Most people look at a time constraint like that as a negative thing. You should look at it as a postive and an incredible motivator to really focus on getting music:nuvo and your management career to a place where it is sustainable... because you can do those things from anywhere in the country. You don't have to be in Nashville to do that. Use those time constraints as a motivation!"

Good thoughts Tony, and thanks for lunch!!

1 Lunch of 10 Complete

keeping up on the blog

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:31:00 +0000

One of my goals is to blog on my personal blog at least once a week, and I'm happy to report that so far I am doing that... in fact, I'm over achieving. I probably need to spend less time blogging and more time doing other things on my list. We are a third of the way done with the second season of 24 though. This is what success looks like.

24 hours down, 96 to go

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 23:46:00 +0000

It's such a superficial item on my "in progress" 101 list, but yet so much fun. As of last night we finished watching the first full season of 24 on DVD. I'm almost ashamed to say we accomplished this in a mere five days, with significant portions of Saturday and Sunday dedicated to this shallow goal.

Oh well. It was fun, and this is a list about things I want to do, right?

And Jack Bauer is just really awesome. And I think Steph has a crush on him. Crap... this can't end well.

thinking

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 21:26:00 +0000

Well, the list is beginning to take shape. It's hard to spread things across the categories... personally, if 101 things all fell within the category of travel, that would probably be ok with me.

So at this rate, there will be a lengthy brainstorming session before the list gets finalized. Once I get them all up there I'll number them off and I'll get started.

Oh, if you have any ideas of things for me to do, shoot 'em my way. I retain veto power though.

excited yet listless

noreply@blogger.com (burnshead) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 19:19:00 +0000

Ah, a fresh blog. Clean slate. Feels good.

A while ago my friend Jon told me about his goal of writing a list of 101 things he wanted to do, in every different subject of life, in the next 1001 days. It sounded like a mountainous task, then I read his list and realized, "Wow, this isn't a list of work... these are things that he really wants to do".

So my opinion of the list of lists has changed - 101 things I want to accomplish - no strict deadlines, no getting fired if I don't accomplish it... just a way to tangibly go about life in a purposeful way. I think it will be very revealing, and I'll probably learn a fair amount along the way. 1001 days - that's 2 years, 38 weeks, and 5 days... so sometime at the beginning of 2010 I should be close to finished. Yeah, that's just crazy to think about.

Well, first things first. I'm listless and need to create a list. So I'll begin to do that over the next several days and add them to the right side of my blog, and I'll cross them off as I go and add comments and stories for reading pleasure.