My friend Cricket has a website for a meme/project she started: it’s called Before I’m Gone. I am going to send in this list of ten things I’d like to do before I die. My list is focused on things that are actually achievable now rather than requiring new technology to be developed or for me to have skills I should have started learning as a child.

1. Learn to speak Spanish. I don’t think this will be very hard for me, because I already have a very good command of French, and a good ear for language. I don’t need to speak it fluently, but I sometimes regret having taken French in middle school instead of Spanish, just based on how useful Spanish would be in current American society. I still think French is beautiful and I’m glad I can use it, but I wish I had studied Spanish first and then French.
2. Visit Japan. I think this culture holds more fascination for Americans than any other. I particularly want to visit the Shinjuku district of Tokyo, and the memorials at Hiroshima. I think it’s quite probable that I will get to Japan in my lifetime, if I save my money.
3. Take dance lessons. I took ballet when I was a kid, and a semester of tap in college, but I’d like to try dance again. I’m not particular about what type as long as I get to wear special shoes just for dancing!
4. Have a partnership celebration. My thoughts on this are not well-formed; they are more a gut feeling of something I want rather than a clear image in my mind of a specific goal. I want my family and friends to come together to celebrate the life I live with my partner. This doesn’t have to mean a wedding or even a commitment ceremony, but could also be perhaps a party or dinner. I mainly want it to be something that is special for the two of us, but also involves our loved ones to celebrate together.
5. Run a useful website. I’ve been trying to do this since my earliest days of web development, when a high school project in 1996 included creating a webpage with links to resources on deafness. My tutorial on Importing LiveJournal Entries to Movable Type was useful for a while, but has been surpassed by tools that make the conversion much easier. I don’t have to provide a unique service, but I’d like it to be useful and something that gets a small but loyal following.
6. Have a clean house. At this point I think I would have to move somewhere brand new for this to work, because I’d really like to keep it in great shape. But it’s got to be possible, right?
7. Swim in the Pacific Ocean. This is a strange one for me, because when I was on the island of Grenada and I could swim in the sea - I hated it! But swimming in the Pacific Ocean implies that I will be in the area long enough to make the trip to the beach, and because most of my life has been on the East Coast the Pacific feels exotic enough that I’d like to stay there for long enough to go swimming.
8. Go kayaking in Greenland. I’ve only been kayaking since September 2001, but I saw an article or story or something about kayaking in Greenland and I really want to. I was able to go kayaking in Alaska and that was fun, but it wasn’t quite the same as Greenland! It just sounds like the ultimate kayaking experience.
9. Learn to type on a Dvorak keyboard. I’m not sure why, really. Just because it’s eccentric, and because I have known about it for a long time and always wondered about it. I used to use the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing program when I was a kid (this was the very early versions of the software) and it taught me to type about 100 words per minute on a qwerty keyboard, but I never made it very far with Dvorak. I’d like to try again sometime.
10. Experience life as a hospital patient. This is a bit of an odd one, but having interpreted for many hours in hospitals, I’d like to see it from the other side of the bed. I don’t want to be in pain, I don’t want it to cost a lot of money, I don’t want to have anything really wrong with me, and I don’t want to stay there for a long time - I just want to see what it’s like a bit. I know it’s no fun to be woken up every three hours to have your vitals checked, but I’m still just curious about the hospital bed experience. I guess this is just a weird one!