just updated my list and I’m sitting at 12% complete.  I’m excited to see how this summer fills up more of my list and I promise to try to get to 30%, we’ll see how far I can actually get.

The third book of my 101 is Nelson’s Trafalgar by Rodger Adkins.  In the book Adkins puts forward the point that Trafalgar is the high point of warfare in the age of sail.  The book is an interesting read and Adkins makes good use of both primary and secondary sources.  The story itself moves along very quickly and Adkins makes great use of studies on the battle itself to product charts that show the location of ships to help the reader better understand the confusion of battle.  The death of Nelson is given ample space and the mood back in England paints a portrait of the sadness of the common people of England.    I highly recommend the book for all those wanting a good overall view of the battle and what it meant both in the early nineteenth century and today.

The second book that I’ve finished for the list is actually one that I read for school, The Falcon by John Tanner.  The book is both an autobiography and a captivity narrative.  The story moves quickly from his early years to his abduction by Indians, his journey north, and his subsequent adult life.  The book moves the way that one can expect from a first person narrative of the nineteenth century.  I enjoyed the book and while it takes a while to get through spelling and grammar of the period one has the most trouble with the many Indian names that are spelled phonetically with hyphens.  In order to get through some of these the reader must stop and work out what it is that the author is telling us.  The journey that John Tanner took is incredible, taken from the midwest he spend most of his life north of Lake Superior in Canada.  Becoming skilled as a hunter and trapper he married into the Indian culture and had a family.  Only later in life did he seek out his white family, and even then had trouble coming to fit into the culture.  He later returned to the north to live in the culture that he had grown up in.

Today while working on homework I spent some time watching documentaries from my netflix account.  I watched Outfoxed, Modified, the King of Kong, and Fall From Grace.  I’ll write a little about each of them here.

-Outfoxed: Murdoch’s War on Journalism – This documentary deals with the media empire owned by Murdoch, specifically the Fox News Channel.  In the ninety minutes of the program interviews with on and off air personalities associated with FNC, To back up the interviews there are copies of inner office memos and footage of on air personalities compared to events.  Throughout the program representatives from media watch organizations are included, specifically FAIR.  It’s not hard to slam an organization that has always functioned as a conservative media arm.  Overall I give the program 3/5 stars, good program with some compelling information but nothing really groundbreaking to those that pay attention to tv news.

-Modify – Deals with the body modification culture, interviews and discussion of the Body Modification community.  Somewhat simple in nature and seemed designed to offer some shock value to those not familiar with the nature of body modification today and the modern primitive movement.  The program did however put a face to the body mod community, and hopefully dispelled some myths about those of us that modify our bodies. 3/5 stars.

-King of Kongs – Interesting story about competitive gaming, specifically one man’s pursuit to set the all time high score on Donkey Kong.  4/5 stars, good story, well produced.

-Fall From Grace – This documentary follows the Phelps family of Westboro Baptist Church fame.  This includes many interviews with Phelps himself, his children and grandchildren.  In opposition of them are two of the children that no longer assosciate themselves with the family, other ministers, professors of theology, the mayor of Westboro, and other people that have had their lives impacted by the family.  I give the program 4/5 stars for a good view of the family from the inside and interviews from many people.

All of the documentaries were interesting to see and this goal will be very interesting to complete.  Next on my list is to work through some American Experience programs.

This weekend I met the wonderful Nikki Friday night for the first time in real life.  This took care of part 1 of the goal of meeting 3 people I know online in the flesh.  We spent some wonderful time hanging out at Stella Blue and while we didn’t get to double up on our time by meeting Saturday we made plans to meet up again next weekend when she gets back in town.  we exchanged funny stories, shared a few inside jokes and she introduced me to one of her friends that I can hopefully call one of my own now.

-Meet 3 online friends in real life. (1/3)

-Make 5 new friends. (1/5)

I promise that I have not been ignoring you or my list, but generally over the last couple weeks I’ve spent a lot of time on other stuff, or just putting together stuff from my list and not blogging about it.  I promise big blog post with tons of pictures from the 365 project, updates on books and movies and a life in general post will be coming up soon.  Also there may be some major changes to a few goals on my list.  I’m not feeling like some of the goals are as important anymore and may be replaced with others.

On a lighter note my good friend and the person that inspired me to start this 101 list @tarasg on twitter has a contest going on right now since she’s hosting her blog herself now. You should go check it out and see if you can beat me.   25hourbooks

I’ve done another goal, today I watched the last of the movies needed to finish the A-Z challenge.  Zoolander was a fitting end to a list of movies that was filled with great comedies that made break more enjoyable.  I’m also prepping myself for the upcoming semester of school and the books that will push me closer to reading the 101 books.  On my list for the semester are The Falcon, Walden, Empire, 1831, and Rebels Against the Future.  These are some of the highlights of the semester, I’ll also have a book on sexual attitudes of antebellum America.  This should be a really good semester, the books are solid and my outside reading for research should be really good as well.  I’m hoping that life will pick up once school starts as well and the boring level of my blog will go down significantly.  I’m also still hunting some good causes to donate time and money to so if you have one that you’re passionate about I’d love to talk about it.  Here’s pictures from the last few days.

Over the weekend the process of working towards achieving my first goal continued.  Friday started off by digging my car out of the backyard, as you can see in the picture I had a good foot of snow covering most of the car.  After getting out I spent the day enjoying what’s left of break.  Friday evening I added a new restaurant to my goal of eating at 10 new places.  I went out with the roommates and some friends to the Barrelhead.  I figured it was nothing more than a little bar, but they turned out some pretty good food.  The night continued later on after a failed attempt to go see Youth In Revolt I made it out for the night.  The night was awesome up until the very end, and ending that I’d prefer not to share with those that don’t already know about it.  Saturday was filled with hanging out at home and watching some football, as was today.  A good ending to the weekend with a loss for both the Patriots and Packers.  Next weekend there will be more football and who knows what else I’ll be taking a break from going out for a little while, which should give me time to work on a window seat for a friend and possibly work on the bookcase that I’m supposed to be building myself.

Goals achieved

-Eat at 10 new places (2/10)

-Participate in Project 365 (10/365)

Over break I’ve tried to do some reading just for fun and this is a book that I had begun before but never finished.  The book is a good book and I would give it 3 stars.  McCullough was given the Pulitzer prize for this work telling the story of 1776 chronologically tracing the developments as the colonies moved toward declaring independence and the struggles of Washington in leading the men that made up the army.  The book’s focus is well defined and the supporting arguments are well thought out.  An author such as McCullough the reader should expect nothing less.  Overall it was an interesting book about the American Revolution and staying within its thesis well.

Another day inside because I didn’t feel like digging myself out from the snow.  So I played videogames and watched movies.  A few hours of Modern Warfare 2 later a good nap and watching Legends of the Fall and the BCS title game it was a good day.  Here’s a picture from today while I start the movie for M, Mchale’s Navy.  It’s such a bad movie but it’s a good laugh.