This is all Rachel's fault (actually it's Rachel's friend Lin's fault, but I digress). I hate doing copycat posts, but this one seems worthwhile.

50 Things I Want to Do

1) Earn a Doctorate, thus giving my mother the chance to say, “I’m Doctor Callahan, and this is my son, Doctor Callahan.”
2) Get married to a very patient woman who wants to
3) Have children – preferably in a litter, like dogs
4) Write a few well-received articles in my field
5) Get a novel published
6) Spend more time in Ireland, so I can
7) Become proficient in Gaelic and
8) Live out of a backpack, as I
9) Walk the ancestral lands of my clan
10) Get back in fighting shape so I can
11) Start doing Kendo again and
12) Start doing Iaido again and
13) Start doing SCA heavy weapons combat again, so I can
14) Be King, and
15) Get knighted
16) Own a cell phone that actually works world wide (I can dream, right?)
17) Travel in Japan so I can
18) Eat Fugu and
19) Spend time in a Zen monastery and
20) Be still and
21) Learn to live simply
22) Improve my equestrian skills so that I can
23) Tilt (that’s ‘jousting’ for you folks who don’t read Chrétien de Troyes for fun)
24) Find a place to call home (near the ocean)
25) Go on pilgrimage to Dharmasala and Tibet so I can
26) Meet His Holiness the Dalai Lama (maybe over tea) and then
27) Write a book on Buddhism
28) Be the first man in my family to avoid diabetes and heart attack
29) Meet more of the blogiverse in person (the Pup and T show was a good start…)
30) Finally master swimming, so it will be safer when I
31) Start surfing again
32) Sail on a square rigged ship (I mean as a crew member)
33) Own a sailboat
34) Learn to kite surf
35) Own a home with enough land around it that I can have a big, loud parrot
36) Have another great terrier like Maevis in my life – probably a Jack Russell
37) Own a lot more kilts, including a formal rig for #2
38) Finally have the guts (and the physique) to wear a sarong in public
39) Have all the hair waxed off my body (just once, to see what it’s like…)
40) Take my mother on a great vacation (it’s only fair after all the money she dropped in Ireland this summer…)
41) Own another motorcycle
42) Make a pilgrimage to the grave of Douglas Adams
43) Travel to Africa before the wildness is all fenced in
44) Learn to fly something besides kites (Hang glider, private plane, ultra light, whatever)
45) Be abducted by aliens (hold the anal probe)
46) Inspire my students
47) Give up my cherished fears
48) Read everything by James Joyce so I can
49) Fully understand Finnegans Wake
50) If Clay manages to get that time travel thing down, I’d like to go back and interview the major religious leaders of history. Maybe even get them all at a table together. Imagine the Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Abraham, Confucius, Krishna, and Baha'u'llah, all chilling together. Setting the record straight about their teachings, cracking jokes, maybe ordering pizza on that cell phone of mine…