25 Things to Do While I'm Still 25

If I said it just occurred to me that I'm going to be 26 in two weeks, I'd be lying. I've been counting down the days to birthday time for quite a while now. I'm not sure why being 26 is a big deal. Maybe it's because I can now be categorized as someone in their "mid-to-late twenties." In forensic anthropology terms, I have entered Phase IV*. As my days of being 25 come to a close, it was suggested that I put together a list of "25 Things to Do While I'm Still 25." Here goes:

1. Make a list of "25 Things to Do While I'm Still 25." Hey, I've only got 13 days, I have to keep things simple!
2. Make a tarte tatin. I've done this before, but they're delicious, and I think it would be a great way to get rid of the apples I have in my kitchen.
3. Introduce people to "Cry Baby." As previously mentioned, this is some of Johnny Depp's best work. It's like "Grease," only more ridiculous.
4. Hug at least thirteen people. As a rule, I don't hug, but I make an exception for birthdays. I imagine most of this hugging will be done during my pre-birthday celebration.
5. Go swimming at least once and go running at least twice. Ever since I started working every day, my exercise regime has gone downhill. Must kick off the fall-winter gluttony season with some cardio.
6. Speak a complete sentence of words to the cute red-headed guy who works in my building and rides the bus with me sometimes.
7. Read the book about the Luetgert Murder of 1897 (provided Amazon delivers it to me on time). I plan to become an expert in the "Formative Period" of forensic anthropology, and learning about all of the grisly cases seen by Dwight, Dorsey, et al. is an integral part of that process.
8. Freak out less about the mass of responsibility my church calling is throwing at me this month.
9. Buy two new cute sweaters, preferably ones with argyle or buttons and that are colors that aren't black.
10. Attempt to have a conversation with that guy at church against whom I was initially prejudiced because I think his Peter Pan ca. 1991 haircut is ridiculous.
11. Book a plane ticket home for Christmastime. (Hey, these can't all be life-changing goals, I do have a "to-do" list, you know.)
12. Get a haircut that costs more than $15. I think I'm too old for the Hair Cuttery.
13. Convince the cat that is temporarily living in my apartment that he loves me. I don't know why he growls and hides under the coffee table every time he sees me, but we will be best friends by the end of his stay (especially if he kills the mouse that is also squatting in our kitchen).
14. Do a new restaurant review, but not necessarily about a new restaurant.
15. Kiss a boy (or get kissed by a boy). This is low-priority/low-expectation, and I'm sure if it doesn't happen, I won't [remain a beast forever/turn into a pumpkin/fall asleep for 100 years], but it's on the list, even just to be neck-in-neck with Drew Barrymore (but then again, she got a young Michael Vartan, so no matter what, she's still ahead).
16. Get better. I'm currently ill, with the awful, persistent cough and the achy everything and the generally being quite tired. I feel like this has to happen if I'm going to accomplish #15.
17. Stay up until midnight one night. You may look at this and be like, "Seriously? What are you, some kind of geriatric loser?" To you, I say, "yes." I've been averaging a 10:30 pm bedtime since the fourth grade. To stay up until midnight is a feat, and since this is the end of my "younger years," it'll probably be easier now than later.
18. Eat food at one of the awesome Townie haunts--probably either Jenny's Pizza and Subs or Grasshopper Cafe.
19. Do something "death defying," like office-chair drag racing, or riding on a Vespa.
20. Wear fishnet stockings to church. Actually, I don't know if I'm going to have time to do this before I'm 26. Maybe I'll just wear them to work where I sit behind a desk all day and nobody can see my legs.
21. Paint my fingernails black.
22. Get as far as the Book of Alma in my current round of Book of Mormon reading (I'm toward the end of 1 Nephi now, so that's feasible, right?).
23. Watch "Hocus Pocus" with or without other people. Or maybe I'll save this one for closer to Halloween. They say "hell" in it, so it's not a kids' movie!
24. Buy a breakfast cereal without taking its fiber content into consideration.
25. Eat some hideously decadent dessert: one that may or may not have twenty-six candles attached to it.

This is a pretty lame list, but there's really nothing exciting about turning 26. 25 is sort of a big deal, 30 is a big deal, but all the ones in the middle are kind of "whatever." At any rate, stay tuned in two weeks for a follow-up report on which items I did and did not check off my list (though feel free to make predictions in the comments!).

*This is on the Suchey-Brooks (Brooks and Suchey, 1990) six-phase system for age-at-death estimation from the Pubic Symphysis. I'm probably still only Phase II (I haven't had any abdominal/pelvic CT scans to verify this), but those 95% confidence intervals don't lie.