January 31st, 2014 - How to put on make-up

I made it!  Today is the last day of my "How-To Month" project, and I've decided to go out on a high note (at least comically speaking).  For my final lesson, I enlisted my fiance, Elizabeth, to teach me how to put on make-up.

So I looked...rough.  But the goal of this was not to just make myself look like a beat up night walker (that was just a side effect).  I actually wanted to learn how to do this skill for a variety of reasons.  One, I wanted to know what took so long for Elizabeth to get ready.  Now I know the answer to that.  With the amount of brushes and containers and powders that erupted from her kit, it's amazing that we get out the door in the first place.

More importantly than that, however, was the fact that if I have a daughter, I'd like to be able to help her with anything.  I'm hoping to be her Superman, and that I will be able to handle any problem that she throws my way.  And if Elizabeth is out of town one day, and my potential daughter needs help with her make-up, then I wanted to be able to show her how it's done.

It's looking like my future daughter will turn out looking like a clown hooker.  Wonderful.

I have learned a lot of things this month.  I've learned how to bake a variety of goods, from breads to cakes to Danish treats.  I've learned how to do a handstand...and I broke stuff in the process.  I learned how to play the noseflute and the violin and the spoons, and I learned how to change a filter in a car.  I learned how to start my day off with a cup of french press coffee, and how to crochet.  I learned how to throw a curveball and how to curve a bowling ball and how to throw cards.

I learned how to light paint and how to jump off a 855 foot building and live to tell the tale.  I learned how to juggle, both balls and bottles.  I learned how do hair and makeup, and how to do reflexology.  I improved my golf game, and I hula hooped, and I learned how to shag.  I cursed in Yiddish and sang in sign language and I can now recite the Greek alphabet.  If you want a Pimm's Cup, come my way.  If you want something quilled, I can do that too.  I hope to get buff from the Olympic style lifts that I can do now.

I can do a cartwheel now...kind of.  And I can play a mean round of "London Rummy." And when it's time to go home, I can pack up my shirt in less than five seconds.

It was a really, really busy month.

But the biggest thing that I learned this month is that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, knows how to do something.  It was funny, but almost everyone I asked to teach me something had to think about it.  "I don't know how to do anything," or "I don't know what I can teach you," were common responses.  But in the end, they came up with something.  And that's what I enjoyed most about this month.  I got to learn the hidden talents of my co-workers and friends.  I got to see a side of them that I normally don't get to see.  I couldn't have done that if I had simply Googled the answers.

Joe Cristy said something pretty profound as we were walking back from the field after my curveball lesson.  He said that people naturally want to impart knowledge onto someone else, and I wholeheartedly agree with that.  Wisdom, in any shape or form, is how we are able to live on through our friends and our families and our children.  We want to make sure that the people that are here after us are going to be okay when we are gone.  Teaching them something is a way of ensuring that at least one part of life won't be a mystery to them.

I close this month a little wiser and a lot grateful for all of my mentors, teachers, and gurus.  Not just during this month, but for all of those people throughout my life who have taken the time to show me how to do something.  They were opening up a little part of themselves when they did that.  And no Internet search will ever rival that kind of connection.

I'm going to continue this spirit of learning throughout the year, so check back from time to time to see what else I'm learning.  Thank you for following along, I hoped you've enjoyed it.  And I hope you learned something.

January 30th, 2014 - How to do bar flair

Before he went off the deep end into Scientology and all around nuttiness, Tom Cruise actually made some pretty great movies.  Top Gun, Jerry Maguire, Rain Man, Magnolia, A Few Good Men, the vastly underrated Vanilla Sky. Hell, 3 out of the 4 Mission: Impossible flicks have been been well worth the price of admission (with the second being the only read dud of the bunch).

But the 80iest of the 80's movies that showcases the Cruise's pre-Operating Thetan awesomeness is Cocktail.  Come on, who hasn't seen that movie and immediately wanted to go flip bottles around?

I know that I did.  So when Keith Ritter said that he could show me how to do bar flair, I jumped at the chance to learn.

 (For the YouTube version, go here)

I thought that my previous lessons in juggling would help me with this, and for the most part, I was right.  Because I've been practicing juggling off and on throughout the month, it helped a little with the coordination of this.

But it wasn't a lot of help.  To be honest, these two skills were completely different animals.  While juggling basically broke down to a routine of tosses repeated over and over again, flipping bottles, or "bar flair," is a performance.  There's an element of spontaneity to it, and a lot of ad-libbing.  To get to where Keith is at and where I currently am, there are about a million steps.

But as Coughlin says, life is just cocktails and dreams. So who knows, maybe one day, I'll dream hard enough to get this down too.

Just hide your breakables until then.  I've still got a lot to practice.

January 29th, 2014 - How to bake bread

As luck would have it, I have incredibly talented bakers in my life.  So far this month, I've learned how to make a Danish treat (ableskiver) and how to bake and decorate a cake.  It's been an anti-Atkins month, and I can certainly dig that.

To round out my lessons regarding baking, my boss, Kate McKeen, brought me back to the basics.  Tonight, she (and her mom) showed me how to bake bread.

The recipe I used was actually handed down through Kate's mom's family.  They had run a restaurant in West Virginia, and Kate's grandmother had gotten up at five o'clock each morning to start making bread.  I prefer to wake up around noon and go to the store to get mine, but to each their own.

I won't go into exact quantities, because it is a secret family recipe, but you get the idea...

To make this family style bread, you first dump in your flour and make a volcano in the middle of it, like so:

Tommy Lee Jones is down in there somewhere...

Next, add your other ingredients, except the yeast, into the volcano.  You mix the yeast in luke warm water (not too cold, or it won't mix well, and not too hot, or it will kill the yeast).  Once the yeast has dissolved into the water, you slowly pour this mixture into the volcano.

Doesn't that look like good bread?!

Next, you mix all of this together...it can get kind of messy...

When you are done mixing it together and it is nice and smooth, you fold it into a loaf like shape and put it into a bread pan to let it rise.  This can take at least an hour or so (or more than an episode of The Following).  Once the bread has risen, you pop it in the oven for another hour or so.  And what you get is something like this:

I might have used too much dough...

Elizabeth and I snacked on some of the bread and we found it to be quite good!  Aside from the length of time waiting, it really didn't take all that much effort at all. It's definitely something I can see doing again...at least until after this loaf is done.  Judging by the size of it, that will be early next year...



Other things I learned/looked up:
1) How to make snow cream! Elizabeth showed me how to make this "cool" (ha, see what I did there) treat last night with some of the remaining snow in our yard.  It was a mix of milk, vanilla extract, and sugar, and it's wayyyyyy better than that yellow snow I used to eat.  Wait...it was ok to eat that...right?

January 28th, 2014 - How to do reflexology

 

It was a snowy day today here in North Carolina, which not only meant that I got to go on my yearly sledding expedition, but also that access to in-person gurus was limited.  One of my favorite things to do, however, is to curl up with a book. So since it was the next best thing, I decided to pick a "how-to" book from the shelf and see what it could teach me.  And what Chris McLaughlin and Nicola Hall and the folks over at Natural Health taught me was how to do reflexology.

About a year ago, Elizabeth bought me a gift certificate to a reflexology place.  It was one of those LivingSocial deals, the kind that you buy because it's on sale and because that's the only way you'd go there in the first place.  How many crappy restaurants have been visited, or vineyard tours taken, or subscriptions to Zoobooks have been purchased because of this, the world may never know.

I did end up using the LivingSocial deal, and found the place in an odd hippie commune in an old rec building here in Greensboro.  The practitioner, a very nice man who ran the practice with his wife, told me all about the healing powers of reflexology and how he had gotten into it (his wife had talked him into it was the gist of that story).  And while he was very sincere and was again very kind, I couldn't help but eye roll when he started discussing how he could improve people's energies.  Not only was he a trained reflexologist, but he was also a master of reiki and could channel a person's energy and change their overall well being.

"Cough, cough, bullshit, cough, cough," is an appropriate response to anyone who says this kind of thing.

But aside from this Jedi Master claiming to essentially use the Force (it's not real, buddy, I've been trying to do that for decades), the reflexology session was actually very relaxing.  I felt much calmer after leaving, and I even recommended that others check it out (although I did warn them about Obi-Wan).

Until today, that was really my only contact with reflexology, which for the uninitiated is the manipulation of the feet, hands, or ears to ease tension in other parts of the body.  According to reflexologists, pressure points in these areas correspond to organs, appendages, and bodily systems.  A rudimentary map of reflexology can be found here:

Elizabeth got to be my guinea pig, but no, there are no videos of this.  I'm a Tarantino fan, I just don't share his foot fetish. I didn't dive all the way into this, however...because it's a load of nonsense.  Instead, I focused on basic foot relaxation, which does have many benefits, aside from just feeling good. 

To perform a good relaxing session of reflexology, there are many things to remember.  Using a finger to press or a thumb to press can create different results, as can different amounts of pressure.  It's important to keep contact with the subject, moving from one area to another smoothly and without a change in speed or pressure.

The basic sequence went as follows:

1) Gently rotate toes with one hand while firmly holding the foot in the other.
2) Use both hands to wring the foot, placing your thumbs into the soles of the foot.
3) Rotate ankles much like you did with the individual toes.
4) Finally, press with your knuckles directly into the middle of the sole, right below where the toes meet the foot, and encourage rhythmic and relaxed breathing.  This is a pressure point that corresponds with the solar plexus, and it's apparently supposed to induce deep relaxation.

Ok, so it's basically a foot rub with some mysticism thrown into it.  The book went into further detail about how to cure everything from headaches to allergies to reproductive disorders. Unfortunately, I'm too much of a cynic to think that this kind of treatment can be the cure for real medical problems.  But, do I think that this kind of treatment can win you brownie points and end with a relaxed fiance?  Absolutely!

January 27th, 2014 - How to take a proper golf swing

There could be a whole year long blog regarding the instruction and understanding of this particular lesson.  But since I had just come back from Las Vegas and was running on approximately -45 days worth of sleep, my guru, Tony Robinson, decided to go easy on me.  Instead of breaking down each and every step, he taught me how to develop a rhythm to my shot.  With practice, this would develop into the proper golf swing.

I am sure that there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of videos out there showing how to take the proper swing.  It amazes me that approximately 1 million things have to go right for a swing to connect just the right way for the ball to go where you want it to go.  Grip the club, keep your head down, keep your arm straight, bend your knees, stand away from the ball, line up the ball, check the wind, find a target, ..., ...

What Tony showed me was that thinking too much about all of these things would prevent it from actually happening.  Developing a rhythm would take my mind out of it, because I would be so used to shooting the exact same way that I wouldn't focus on all the little things.  Instead, I would just swing.

Apparently, playing golf is something that takes a lifetime to get marginally good at, so I better get going on it as soon as possible.  Luckily, with support like Tony (who clearly was an awesome coach at Montreat), I think I'm off to a good start.

Just don't park your car near any driving range I visit.  I have no idea where the ball is going.

January 26th, 2014 - How to fold a shirt in less than 5 seconds

While I have enjoyed learning all of the different things that I have been taught this month, there are some that I can see myself using more than others.  Today's lesson would be one of these such skills.  Today, I asked Josh Morris, my best man, to help me pack for my return trip from Las Vegas.  In return, he showed me how to fold a shirt in less than 5 seconds.

Now if I can just find someone to do that for me...


Other things I learned/looked up:

1) You can do a bachelor party in Las Vegas and still make it out alive and without losing teeth or marrying a stripper.  Ok, maybe the losing teeth thing is going to happen no matter what...

January 25th, 2014 - How to "light paint"

I didn't need this blog to teach me that Eben Hall and Joel Desmond are incredibly talented.  Both have found success in photography, videography, and digital media.  It makes me incredibly proud (and jealous) to see the amazing things that they do on a daily basis.  The closest I've gotten to this is staring in two of Eben's early videos, Promiscuous Lars and All I Want for Christmas is Lars.  He went on to win an Emmy...I guess you gotta start somewhere...

But parading around in short shorts or an elf costume is not true talent.  That's found behind the camera. So today, while in glitzy and glamorous Las Vegas, I asked these two to show me how to do something creative with the camera.  They decided to show me how to "light paint."

Other things I learned/looked up:

1) How to order at the In-N-Out! Apparently, there is a secret menu that you have to ask for specially.  I was advised by my West Coast colleagues (Josh and Eben), to order my burger and fries "Animal Style."  This means that my normal burger and fries came with a helping of grilled onions, cheese, and secret sauce.  And holy crap, it was awesome!

Awesome sauce indeed!