Nikki Yeager

Sitting in a coffee shop I look across from me at a man no younger than a hundred, no faster than a sloth. He has a military hat on and white socks yanked up to his knees. Camouflaged shorts and big, bug eyed glasses, holding a distant expression and saggy skin. 

But it's not the outfit that keeps me staring. He sits alone at a table for two, his chair turned outwards, legs splayed before him and dated sales papers resting calmly on his lap - of course he's not reading the news print. That'd be far too ordinary for a man so comfortably out of place.

Nothing but staring into the distance, glancing at his hands, staring back into the distance. Over and over he stares and glances, stares and glances. 

And on his table sit two cups, one half full and one entirely empty. Both cups sitting on the opposite side of the table as if waiting for a friend. The ghost friend, whose chair remains pulled out and welcoming. Ready for a warm body to take it. 

And next to the cup sits the man's two companions, also waiting patiently for an old friend or obligated family member to take their place at the table. One of the two companions holds a gun before him, aimed tirelessly at the door. A little plastic police officer no more than 10 inches high and ready to frighten off intruders. A man in waiting, never moving. A plastic figurine protecting the table ... and the figurine's accomplice. 

A little stuffed dog, disproportianate to the officer. Far smaller than a real dog but towering over the model cop. Just a dog and his owner, perched infinitely on the table top. Literally plastic. 

I take another look at the man and he looks again at his hands. Gazes at the door. His companions never move and his chair remains empty for as long as time chooses, they remain. 

It all started about three weeks ago: 

Dinner first, ballet second. 

That was the plan, but finding someone to go to a ballet with you is an impossibly difficult task. With options running out fast I got a hold of my Uncle Richard yesterday afternoon and a date was set. Dinner at his members only club (suit and tie required) and then off to the ballet. 

Unfortunately I don't get around to hanging out with my Aunt and Uncle very often but Richard was great. I met him across from Wall Street at his club and off we went on the grand tour. The buffet room, the reading room, the lounge.... everything was fancy to the extreme. Heavy yellow curtains framing the over-sized windows, dark wooden walls, dead animal heads in the billiards room. 

Then he whisked me off to the dining room where I was stuffed full of yummy pasta, chardonnay and an apple tart. And bread, which is my favorite part of any meal.

Overall-  Deliciouso. 

After dinner I daintily placed my napkin back on the table, admired the two forks and two spoons on either side of my plate one last time and then perched my glasses atop my nose.

Ballet nearing, it was time to turn my sophistication up. Ballets require class and wearing spectacles was the closest to class I could come at the time. So it was the best I could do. 

Anyways, the dancing started and out pranced ten skinny-minny girls in leotards and slicked back buns. They all entered the stage on tippy toes with their sleek heads hardly bobbing when they moved. 

Cue music. 

One by one the girls spun circles around each other, looping in and out of each others arms, squatting (somehow gracefully), leaping across the stage. Over and over again they contorted themselves into unimaginable shapes. While on their tip toes. Always in step with the other girls. Always glaringly graceful. 

We went through the 6 segments of the ballet with ease. The girls coming out in blue leotards, black leos, big puffy dresses, little skinny leotards with skirts. Always moving with ease, hardly making a sound. Gorgeous. 

But my favorite was the segment right before intermission, "How to Break a Heart". It was more contemporary dance than plain ballet. Out the girls came again in flesh colored leotards and electric blue skirts. Around they swirled like each dance before. 

And then the voice over entered the music. A woman's voice talking to the music about a 'little boy' who must break her heart. 

Cue man dancers. 

Three men bounded across the stage and quickly melted into the girls. Each girl seemingly enticing the men with their feminine wiles, always looking more beautiful than before. Always keeping their image. Never twitching so much as a muscle. 

.... which made me startlingly aware of gender roles.  

Somehow I found myself watching the men lift the women in the air, fling them around, tuck them under their arms. The women gracefully wrapped around the bodies closest to them, pirouetting between movements. Always perfectly in step with the choreography and never looking anything but relaxed. 

I found myself craving femininity- praying I could someday perfect the grace those dancers had. They were beautiful, they were feminine.... they were delicate. Soft. 

And that thought, the beauty of being soft, scared that pants off me. That's not how I view women and it's certainly not how I view myself. 

As the music came to a crescendo the smallest girl leapt into the air, soared into a mans arms and then leaned herself backwards holding her entire body up with nothing but her stomach muscles. 

To any average onlooker it looked smooth and girly as could be. Flawless if you will. 

But then I remembered those long gymnastics practices from middle school. You never, ever have skills like that until you have the strength. You can't move slowly until you have complete and utter control of every muscle in your body. Until you've sweat during long practices and pushed your body far past it's usual limits. 

And you never ever have grace until you have the strength to be feminine. To be graceful. To be beautiful. 

So maybe this time it was ok to find myself wanted to be dainty. Because this time I was actually wishing for something much more. Something involving a little muscle. 

And for a ballet, I think that was a pretty good takeaway. I expected to like the ballet, I didn't expect to think so much. 

If you're not from Cleveland you don't have to read this whole post. It probably won't make any sense to you. I'm about to go on a sports rant and it's well deserved after the hell Clevelanders endured tonight. 

After all, our main celebrity left forever. Lebron is gone. 

Now this might not seem like a big deal. In fact, Twitter-ers everywhere are up in arms about how silly we Clevelanders are being. They say we're immature, we're overreacting, we're crazy. 

But before anyone else starts knocking our outrage think of this- What other city has been more trampled on, abused and neglected (especially in sports) in the last 20 years? We had the Browns stolen from us and then had to wage a vicious legal war on the city to retain the rights to the Browns franchise name and record. We had to deal with Art Modell screwing us big time. In basketball Michael Jordan came in with 'The Shot' and left the entire city crying for years. Oh, and just look at the stats about the Indians if you're curious about the last time we won anything significant. 

In short we're cursed. 

So when Lebron came around we rallied as a city. That's what Cleveland does- we support our players. When a game in on in Cleveland, everyone watches it. And those are season games, not just championships. Before the world was watching Lebron we already spent 80% of our sports news time talking about him. Back in the day, when he wasn't of king status yet, we already had billboards erected in his honor. We took him from the ground up and talked about him 24/7 in order to get the world to pay attention.

Go into Cleveland a week ago and ask anyone about Lebron. You could've asked the mayor of Cleveland or a homeless man on the street. Everyone was behind him as a player and as a person. A week ago if you tried to insult him you would've gotten a good kick in the side. 

We Clevelanders are the reason Lebron is where he is when he is. Sure, his sheer talent would have catupulted him to success eventually but we offered something different. We offered him complete unity as a city and a support system that was unbreakable. Other cities have sports fans. But Clevelanders are all sports fans. No one was out of the Cavs loop. No one from Cleveland ever loses their Cleveland heart.

That's just not how we roll. 

And now Lebron just ups and goes away. 

I get what all you New Yorkers out there are saying - burning jerseys does seem extreme. But other cities have it all. They have awesome restaurants, great clubs, free music, beautiful parks... passenger trains...jobs. Cleveland isn't big on any of those things. We have a heap of run down factories that haven't been working for the last 20 years and a long line of sports embarrassments. 

But we did have Lebron and we did have the Cavs. And that was our hope.

Now that's gone. We still have the Cavs and I'm still behind them 100 percent. But the celebrity WE made is gone. 

And I've decided Lebron gets no more mentions on my blog. If you're from Cleveland and you write on a blog, on a newsletter, in a newpaper, in the media... anything... I think we should just stop mentioning him all together. Why? Because we made him famous and the only way to take that away is to stop mentioning him. Let's just ban his name from everything, let's take his fame away. 

We gave him a huge ego, now let's crush it.

Or at least give it a little bruise.

Because that's a lot longer lasting than fire to jerseys. 

Rain delays and cancellations aside, I finally got a chance to skateboard. Turns out I'm not half bad. 

I'm not half good either, but I didn't die. And that's always a bonus.

It all went down like this:

After days of responding to CL emails about teaching me how to skateboard (and weeding through the creepy sex-propositions) I came across one of the coolest 19 year old guys I've ever met. He wears blue shoes, lives in Upper Manhattan and skates like a pro. Plus, he's taught a bunch of girls how to work a skateboard so he's a pretty darn good teacher. 

I'm pretty sure he's used it as a pick up tool before, but so goes life. 

Anyways, I met Javen (the guy) at Riverside Park and started sweating around the time I got through his group of friends with introductory high fives. And by sweating I mean that I was dripping fluid  from every pour in my body. It was just cooling down from a 100 degree day... to 95. 

My arms were slippery wet, my clothes were sticking to me, my hair was dripping a little. If only my camera was better you'd be able to tell just how disgusting it was. Sorry you have to miss the ickiness of the experience.

For the first move Javen had me plant my feet on the board with my right foot in front. Since I ride goofy when snowboarding we decided to stick with my goofyness and keep the left foot in back. 

-- for anyone who's never been on a board of some sort - your strong foot, normally your right, is your back foot. I'm ambi-footerous so I can use either in most sports but opt for riding with my left foot in back making me 'goofy'--- 

I thought it'd be the accomplishment of the day if I could go straight, turn and stop. Turns out those things only take about 5 minutes to learn. The turning motion is really similar to a snowboard with the exception of the 'tic-tac'. 

And no, that has nothing to do with the breathe mints. It's this little turn move that I'm only halfway decent at. I'm actually pretty impressive at tic-tac-ing forward, but tic-tacing backwards... not so good. In fact, it's a little scary to watch me attempt while moving.

Anywho, when Javen asked me 'do you want to learn any tricks' I basically jumped out of my skin. Of course I did. Sure, I could only go straight at about 1 mile an hour and my turns were shaky at best, but I decided that it was time to jump into the air. AKA- do an ollie. 

Javen's friend grabbed his board (bright pink) and popped one effortlessly to show me how it was done. Apparently they wanted to teach me how to kick the board into the air from a standing position, magically float in the air for a split second while sliding your front foot forwards and then land safely on the ground without so much as a quiver. 

How? Oh I still have no idea how that's supposed to work. 

It took me about 100 tries to even get the tip of the board to pop of the ground. It also took a face-first fall, a sideways stumble and a lot of embarrassingly girly maneuvers (all caught on tape, will be posted tomorrow) to get anywhere close to the elusive ollie.

But alas! After hours of toiling away on that little skateboard, I jumped into the air and shrieked on my way down.

I ollied! Scraped hand and all I did one. 

And the video camera was off. 

You know how riding a bike is one of those things that you try and try and try to do. And then one day *BAM* you just get it. After that you can always ride a bicycle. It just sticks. Sort of like doing the splits- it's all down hill after that first one. Or tying cherries in a knot with your tongue. Skills that just stick after you can get it that first freaking time. 

I love those skills.

Too bad ollies are nothing like that. 

I spent another hour and although I got close, I never felt the glory of olli-ying again. 

However, I did have a blast and Javen thinks I'm a "quick learner" and insists that I let him make me into a "nasty" skateboarder. So on my to-do list it goes. 

Public vote- who thinks I could compete in the next X Games? :) 

Today was officially the first day of my 21 Days! So sorry I missed yesterday, there was a hospitalization (my boyfriend got attacked by an angry spider) and a rain delay (cats and dogs falling from the sky). So I'll have to double up skateboarding and another activity on another day. So goes life.

But that doesn't really matter. What DOES matter is the fact I just ate 10 different things all in one sitting.

It started out with me asking some friends about five course meals. Turns out my friend Ed is a bit of a foodie and loves a good meal with good company.. or at least interesting company. So he set the date and found a place that did extravagant tasting menus for vegetarian 20somethings like me. 

Turns out there's a place called Babbo in the West Village that was started by Mario Batali (my new best friend). Apparently this Batali character is famous, which is news to me but that fame is well deserved. Everything from the "Black Tagliatelle with Peas and Castelmagno" (read: black noodles with peas) to the "Bigne" (little lemon cream cake with a fig) was absolutely delicious, albeit difficult to pronounce. 

When we first sat down I warned Ed- "My phone may go off throughout the night, I'm really sorry." It's such a natural warning I didn't even think about it - Ed did.

"This is an experience, Nikki." He looked down his nose a little and I almost blurted out, "but my boyfriend has a spider bite and his arm might fall off, I have a hundred projects going at work and there should be brokers calling me every five minutes for an apartment I have yet to find." 

But when he flashed the next look of disdain I closed my mouth and shut the phone off. After all, a friend who's paying for dinner always has the first say. 

Telephone off we headed to our table and picked a red wine at random from the wine list. A full-bodied red. Whatever that means. 

The glasses arrived at the table and Ed picked up his glass natural as could be, did the customary swirl and sniff, then took a sip, swished it, swallowed. Looked at me as if I should do the same. 

So I swished, swalled, sniffed and smiled. All in the wrong order. And then I topped it off with a giggle (which makes everything ok), "you know I have no idea what I'm doing, right?"

To which he replied with a detailed explanation about what makes a wine woody, acidic, bitter, smooth, delicious, rancid, just plain icky. Or the most delicious glass of fermented fruit ever to grace the earth. Whatever it is, he told me how to figure it out.

Well my palate isn't very sophisticated so I just looked at him with a glazed over expression. "Can you repeat all that?" 

Next thing I knew a man in a well-fitted suit and heavy Italian accent came over to the table and started explaining how our bottle of wine was made, the family who made it, the barrels it was stored in. Everything down to how nice the grandma of the family was. Ed smiled, "thought you'd like hearing from him."

And then the man used a lot of technical wine-y terms I couldn't understand for the life of me. Instead I just nodded and enjoyed his sexy Italian accent. Oh how wonderful it was. 

Turns out this guy's sole job is to talk about wine. He's a sommelier, or the in-house wine man. And Wine Man is exactly what I've named him.

So Wine Man left after a few minutes and we went on to start our 10 courses. After the black noodles with peas landed in my belly I was shot into food heaven. I've never had food that good. There was so much flavor in it! First it was a little salty and then pea-y and then noodle-y and then all the different flavors collided into one mess of a dish and my tastebuds gave up trying to differentiate between anything anymore. My brain overheated and I was left with nothing but contentment... and an empty plate.

After the first mouth orgasm a squat little waiter-man promptly arrived to whisk away my plate. Being a good middle-class girl I grabbed my fork off the plate as he tried to take it away. He stopped for a moment and stared at me. 

I held on to that fork. I needed that fork for 9 more courses and no little waiter-man was going to stop me from getting what I came for. 

After giving him a good stare down he politely informed me that I could surrender the fork "we replace those every plate, ma'am". 

I blushed, tried to chuckle (but not too loud) and handed the fork back, "hehe yea. I knew that." Ed chuckled.

Then came more food, plates galore, coffee, three desserts, cookies, pastas, jello-like things, all over deliciousness. My brain was on overload. All my other senses started to shut down one by one until nothing but my mouth was capable of working. 

Finally with a little soft cookie the meal came to an end. And Wine Man came back. 

So naturally I took a picture with him.

Thank goodness I kept my phone off :) Look at that cute foreign Wine Man. 

Check out the video

It was stop number three on my ride home, two girls sat across from me fiddling with loose threads, earrings, hands. Whatever was around them. 

The one girl looked at me, I looked away. 

Pretending I wasn't listening, but obviously I was. She continued her story. 

"And then my mom, she said 'Sleep with a boy for all I car. Get pregnant. I don't care what you do just don't tell me you're gay. Just tell me you're not gay!' but I couldn't tell her that." 

She flipped a piece of hair behind her ear and smiled, clearly with the past behind her. Not a trace of pain on her face. 

I continued looking down at my hands, listening intently. Hanging on her every word. 

"The next day I came home I tried to kill myself." 

Her friend's mouth flashed a quick grimace. She half fought it and then gave in, allowing the disdain to exist all over her face. The story teller didn't even take a breathe for emphasis, "But my mom found me. Sent me to a preacher, tried to turn me 'straight'. Told me she'd send me away... whatever..." 

The girl smiled once more, "but we're over that now. How'd your family take it?" 

My stop comes up and I nod at the girls, both twentysomethings in well-fitted button downs and black pencil skirts. I could only hope that some day a parent's love will run much deeper than a child's sexual orientation.

And I spent the rest of the walk home praying that someday it won't matter what sex you are- but rather that you're capable of love. And love, the real kind, that's all that matters. 

I start my 21 days on Monday! Skateboarding is first on the two-do list. Figured I'd start out relatively slowly before getting myself into anything too major (like jumping out of an airplane or anything). 

For anyone who's interested, I could still use a ton of help with the project. I've never edited videos before so if anyone wanted to help with one -or a few- videos that'd be amazing! Also, check out the list and see if there's anything you want to help with, I made a whole section on my website for the 21 days. Just look on the top navigation bar :) 

Lastly, if you know anyone who likes my art please send them to my website. I could really, really, really, really use the extra cash to get some of goals accomplished but my full time job prevents me from picking up all the eccentric gigs I'm known for. Therefore if I could sell even a few pieces or prints it would help out a ton!

Email me with any suggestions or thoughts - nikki@nikkiyeager.com

Sure, corporations have their downfalls. They have more buying power (because they did business well enough for long enough to become large enough to have that buying power) and can drive prices down. They ship large quantities and usually use terrible packaging processes that destroy the environment. 

But does my Frappuccino cause the war in Afghanastan like I've been told. 

No. 

Does my purchasing something at WalMart keep Southeast Asia struggling for survival? 

No. 

But those are the easy targets. The ones that we don't mind hating because, hell, "down with the man!". Why not despise WalMart, the company who STARTED as a small business and worked it's way up the chain... because it was that good at what it did? Let's curse Starbucks for creating an amazing business model that allows them to pop up like crazy, keep the stores filled (at least in NYC) and still have enough money to pay employees above minimum wage WITH benefits. 

Damn them and their high employee satisfaction, great customer service department and increasingly environmentally friendly cups. 

Sure buying coffee exclusively at street carts keeps the street cart man in business, but buying drinks at Starbucks keeps 15 of my friends employed at part time jobs that pay for their childcare bills. 

I'm a horrible human being for going to those big businesses. 

:( 

But seriously. What I want to know is this- Why is it that everyone gives a crap about corporations but has nothing wrong with morally corrupt organizations, Evangelical Christian churches that completely demolish local traditions and wipe out entire cultures, genocides that take place right under our noses, small medical businesses in BK who game the insurance industry and make all of our premiums go higher and higher, tiny storefronts who use entire freight cars to carry half a load of goods instead of filling up the area and optimizing the gas usage, small foreign hotels that actually DO take the money directly out of third world countries (i.e. every 4 and 5 star hotel in Siem Reap minus 1 or 2)... and none of that is even speculation. It's directly related. It's right in front of our faces and first-handedly impacts the things we like to blame big buisnesses for indirectly impacting. 

Does that mean I love the corporation? Heck no. The bigger a company, the more room for error. But instead of hating on them and blaming them without proof for things like 'the iraqi war' and 'african starvation' let's try to be a little more specific. For instance, did Chiquita bananas really f- up certain island countries? Heck yes. Do some diamond companies create a culture that inspires the 'blood diamond' phenomenon? Sure do. Is the Gulf of Mexico severely damaged because of BP. Yes indeedy. 

But does buying a Frappuccino directly support the war in the Middle East? 

Maybe you can come up with an argument that down the line the oil we use to ship coffee grounds back and forth impacts our need of oil and in turn makes war more likely. Sure. But where do you think small businesses get their merchandise? The backyard? 

I don't think so. 

Enjoy your frapps. 

Sometimes I get antsy. Who doesn't? 

Sometimes I need to jump around, move, change things up. 

Why not? 

More often than not I start breaking down without ample vacation time, constant changes in setting, big life events and so on. 

So goes my life and I love every second of it.

But when I hear the comment "you've done so much," I can't help but thank my insatiable desire for change. I would'nt have the accomplishments under my belt that I do if I was content with monotony (no matter how much I wished at certain times that I'd  be ok going to the same office every day or I'd be happy living in the same place every year or I'd be content showing up to the same campus for 10am classes).

For all of that I can thank my dad- the original family vegabond. 

Anyone who hasn't had the stories, I thought today would be a good time to share :) 

If you ask my dad about stories when he was younger he'll chuckle, turn a little red and walk away. Sometimes he'll share a small insignificant detail and then say "eh that's really all" and he giggles. But sometimes I get the goods. Not all of them and not with full disclosure. But I get the basics. 

It goes something like this. 

He hopped freight trains from PA to Cali where at some point he had friends who grew pot in their dorm room. He then went to live in a tent (seriously, he lived there.) and headed off from there to Vail where he worked as a maid for free ski passes. His other man-maid-friends took him up to the backside of the mountains and they'd jump off the side of the road and extreme ski through the forest to the bottom of the untamed mountain where they'd hop in a passing taxi to take them back to their car. 

You'd think it'd stop there but it doesn't. 

He worked in some sort of mine, had a job lighting the Christmas lights in his town with a giant stick (his little chicken legs would have to run him from one light to the next with a pole vault sized wooden rod in his hand), lived with ex-convicts (who may or may not have been planning another heist of some sort in his living room), had a motorcycle, grew a beard, ran wild across the country. 

But I was always kept in the [semi]dark about his young and crazy days. 

Since I've known him he's been a grey haired old man who reads the newspaper every day and never takes his shoes off. Even when we're inside. 

He was a stay at home dad when I was little, taking full responsibility of volleyball dinners, school meetings, housework and cooking. He baked cookies (and then ate the whole pan), he did my laundry before I learned how, he took on carpool duty and shuttled my friends back and forth from the mall, from track practice and from school with the prowess of a seasoned soccer mom.

And he never yelled at me. Just gave me 'the look' which was more disappointment than anything and used his 'upset voice' (it wasn't angry... more sad than anything) to talk to me when I did something wrong. And boy would that voice make me cry. For HOURS! ... in the privacy of my room. 

So I never thought about his wanderlust and, at times, ridiculousness, except as a vague point of fascination. 

However, as I get older I realize his wandering ways didn't disappear when he decided to go domestic. They're still alive and well. His restlessness appears in my hatred for 9-5 jobs in a single office every day. His need for adventure manifests itself in my snap decisions to take a plane to Cambodia, to the Bahamas, to Japan. And even his slight introverted tendencies come to life in my quest for individual adventures, solo excursions and long walks with no one but myself to keep my company. 

The fact that I'm sitting here thinking of my 21 days of my 21st Birthday and getting the urge to take off immediately...my leg is jiggling and I'm spending time alternating between work and looking up flights.

Which reminds me of those characteristics that made my dad who he was when he was younger. And who he still is inside. 

It's quite obvious I'm his daughter through and through. 

The other day I took a gander at my wardrobe and realized that I only have two summer styles: 1) just-got-out-of-the-gym-and-look-like-death 2) Jewish-conservative. 

Needless to say, neither are quite right for my office in the Fashion District, not to mention events in Manhattan, which is why I wandered into a BK mall yesterday- in search of appropriate summer attire for cheap. 

First stop H&M. Normally about a quarter of my outfits come from H&M. I love their dresses, love their professional fun shirts and can't get enough of their pants (they fit my booty but aren't too baggy!) so I thought I'd be just fine buying a few things right away. Unfortunately when I perused the rack all I found were terrible floral prints and skin tight dresses. And trust me, skin-tight is no exaggeration.

I tried on one dress and it literally fit me TIGHTER than my own skin, showing off every curve of my body. And every bump, lump, roll, shape, crevice, organ from my chest to my upper thigh. 

Even the mannequins looked fat in those uber stretchy tubes of fabric... which is always a terrible sign. 

Then Macy's. Nothing but see through shirts and dresses that looked more like shirts. Quick browse through Express. Lots of sequins = icky. Desperate run through Strawberry. Only stripper-esque attire. 

Finally, Forever 21. I thought I struck gold when I saw the cutest knee-length polka dot skirt hung up on display. So I hunted down an employee, a good twenty minute process, and begged her to grab the skirt in a small. 

The woman looked at me, scoffed and stated: "That's a dress." and walked away. 

Turns out my perfect knee length skirt was really a crotch length dress :( 

So I finally left the whole mall, disappointed and tired, now ready to settle for Jewish-conservative in order to avoid Hooker-classic. 

The email was sent a little over two weeks ago, "I'm doing 21 days of my 21st Birthday. Anyone want to help?" 

Within an hour I got over 20 replies. Some from people I know, some from people I've never met. A few introductions and a text message. 

Somehow I found someone to let me fly their plane (seriously?!), another girl who's willing to teach me how to surf (and offered to track down some boards we can use), someone who skateboards, a dozen girls suggested  their favorite brazillian waxer and a friend insisted on skydiving with me.

So now I just have a few more that I could use your help with-

1. Shooting- Preferably with rifles where you shoot the plates in the air. I'm a vegetarian so I won't kill animals but I'd like to learn how to shoot things :) Oh, and I needed something to replace SNL with since it doesn't film in the summer :( 

2. Cirque Du Soleil - May be replaced by 'Learn to Breakdance (i.e. spin on head)' ... could use suggestions/friends for both.

So email me. Call me. Text me. Whatever. This should be fun and you'd get to be on my soon-to-be video posts. Yay!  

Another update: 

I changed "ride a segway" on my list of 21 things to "learn how to shoot things in the air" 

I.e. Go to a place where they rocket ceramic plates into the sky and shoot them down with rifles. Does anyone know somewhere I can do this?!?!