Week 2: Axe Throwing

♫ I'm a lumberjack and I'm okay
I sleep all night and I work all day ♫

This has been a good week for new adventures! Last night a group of us gathered to celebrate on of my best friend's birthdays, and because she thinks outside the norm, we went axe throwing. The evening was, without a doubt, the most fun I've had in quite a while.

Gotta get that bullseye photo (with the official WATL axe)

So the place is in West Midtown and is called Bad Axe Throwing. Naturally I fell in love with the pun. We had our own lane and we took turns learning different ways to sling axes and hatchets at the targets. My personal favorite means of jamming the axehead in the board was underhand, behind-the-back, and my surprising ability to stick it earned me the nickname "Trick Shot McGee" from our coach. We're all pretty sure the skill came solely from the fact that I was wearing flannel. Of course I could never stick it when the camera was on me... (I gotta say, though - if you want to see some real trick shots, check out @badaxethrowing on Instagram.)

Our coach was great at giving us the rundown on how to throw the axes, and then (with supervision) let us loose on the targets. Turns out, there are a lot of games you can play with axe throwing - pretty much any game you can play with darts translates to axe throwing, as well as fan favorite HORSE, known in this world as TIMBER (full disclosure: the other team went down, they were yelling timber). Did you know there's a competitive World Axe Throwing League? Neither did I. Maybe that's a new adventure for the future... I will say this: I definitely plan on going back. And it looks like there's another axe throwing center opening up in Atlanta called Bury the Hatchet (again with the glorious puns!), so maybe I'll have to try that too!

Bonus Adventures

Turns out axe throwing wasn't enough this week. I also had the opportunity to check out a set of fascinating destinations in metro Atlanta for work this past Friday. First up was Lifecycle Building Center, which is all about reclaiming building materials, and offers DIY and nonprofit project programs. Following a tour of their facility, we stopped into the Busy Bee Cafe for some comfort food and left feeling full (plus cameoed in Genius Kitchen's show Carnivorous). The Busy Bee is truly an Atlanta institution, and I'm a bit disappointed in myself for not making my way to the West End for some soul food sooner. Lastly, we traveled down to the community of Serenbe near Chattahoochee Hills. I'd heard nothing but amazing stories from all of my coworkers who have been to the community (and especially to the Serenbe Playhouse), and it was great to finally see why they love visiting.

And if discovering new (for me) destinations in my backyard wasn't enough, I ended up trying a new ingredient in my cooking earlier this week. Anyone who knows my eating habits knows I love cauliflower. Well, this week I tried Violet Queen cauliflower, or purple cauliflower. I sprinkled it in sesame oil, curry powder and red pepper flakes, popped it in the oven for a bit and wound up having a delicious side dish! I will definitely be trying orange and green cauliflower sometime in the near future. Have any favorite cauliflower recipes? Drop 'em in the comments below.

Well, that's all for this week (and let's be honest: that was more than enough). Looks like I'll be checking out a new (again, for me) brewery this upcoming week, so I'm definitely looking forward to that. We'll see what else comes my way! 

Graham

Post Playlist

"The Lumberjack Song" by Ponty Python

"Timber" by Pitbull ft. Ke$ha (don't judge)

Week 1: Learning a New Language

♫Willkommen! Bienvenue! Welcome!
Fremder, étranger, stranger
Glücklich zu sehen
Je suis enchanté
Happy to see you
Bleibe, reste, stay
Willkommen! And bienvenue! Welcome!
Im cabaret, au cabaret, to cabaret! ♫

So for the first of my 52 Weeks of New, I picked a doozy. I have decided to learn a new language on my own. The goal is, by the end of the year, to be conversational in German - or, at the very least, know enough to be just a tiny bit dangerous. 

To undertake this endeavor, I've enlisted the help of the language-learning app Duolingo. And according to the app, after only seven days, I'm 21% fluent in German.

See? A full 21%. Which is actually slightly horrifying, as I don't feel like I've learned 21% of the entire German language. And when I compare my German progress to my Spanish (I've decided to use the app to simultaneously brush up on my Spanish), I've been speaking Spanish for 14 years, and the app claims I'm only 50% fluent. Au contraire.... no wait.... 

Anyway, I think my biggest concern with how I'm learning German is the lack of explanation the app provides. There wasn't an introduction to the alphabet with its pronunciation and non-Romance language letters. Nor was there any explanation that der, die und das are the masculine, feminine and neutral forms of the article "the." (I Googled that one.) I still have no idea why some words are capitalized in the middle of a sentence. (Do they stand for letters I don't have on my keyboard? Shrug. Guess that's the next Google query.) Right now I'm being expected to learn a bunch of words and phrases without any explanation of how the grammar and syntax of the language work. Admittedly, when learning Spanish, I was much stronger in the grammar side of the language than the vocabulary. Seems that translates to German as well. 

Oh well, I guess I'll trust Duolingo to do its thing, and we shall see. If nothing else, I'll memorize some key phrases and that'll be worth it. And I'll have the opportunity to give the parts of my brain that learned Spanish a good work out. But that's my first big "new" of 2018: learning a new language. What's coming next week? Keine Ahnung!

Bis bald!

Graham

Post Playlist

"Willkommen" from Kander and Ebb's Cabaret

Lena Halls' "Obsessed Hedwig" EP

52 Weeks of New: Exposition

"Oh, I guess you don't want to overload them with too much exposition, huh."
"Everything in its time, Little Sally. You're too young to understand it now, but nothing can kill a show like too much exposition."

From my recent new adventure to Iceland

Hello again avid reader and welcome back. It's been a while (apparently about two years and seven months), but here we are. In 2016 I participated in #Project365 on Instagram, posting something every day. Partway through, a friend and I were discussing how I liked to primarily showcase the new places I was traveling (all over the state of Georgia, as well as Milan, Venice and Amsterdam) and she suggested I start blogging about these new experiences I was having. Well, I liked the idea, but I didn't follow through. 

So when it came time to start thinking about 2018 New Year's resolutions, I decided that I would aim to try something new every week. And so, I challenged myself to 52 Weeks of New. And I'm going to blog about it so you, avid reader, can hold me accountable. My old blog posts have been archived as I'd like a fresh start (a new feel, you might say) to "All My Life's a Stage."

As for "new adventures," I'm not just talking about visiting new locations, but also cooking with a new style (I might expand beyond just sesame oil this year - gasp!), finding new hobbies, sampling new music styles, reading books by new authors (or at least authors whose works I haven't read before) and anything else that's new to me. And, hopefully, to maintain some element of excitement and variety, I aim to change up what time of new adventure I have each week.

Okay: wrapping this up because I'm also trying this newfangled concept called brevity. Feel free to follow along as I experience a whole new type of new (that sounded great in my head - didn't make sense once it left my fingers), and don't hesitate to join in on the journey. Thanks for reading; if you have any ideas for what I should try this year, drop your suggestion in the comments below. Cheers!

This past February's journey to Morocco - my first time in Africa!

Post Playlist

1. "Too Much Exposition" from Hollman and Kotis' Urinetown