10 THINGS TO DO BEFORE I DIE

LOOK DEEP AND LOOK LONG TO SEE WHAT I WANT TO DO BEFORE MY END

at the bequest of step-sister, Kimberly, I come up with a few things I would like to do before I die.

THE LIST:

• Read all the major Jane Austen novels, as well as Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, and Little Women with my daughter when she is a pre-teen.
  • I have always had difficulty with these tomes of feminine literature, but to plow through them with my daughter could be a shared joy. I look forward to it!

• Retire someplace outside of California.
  • Enjoy the autumn and winter of my life somewhere other than a place with a Third World dynamic of huge numbers of uneducated poor, a few filthy rich, and no middle class.

• Give my daughter away at the alter...
  • ...on the day of her wedding.

• Bicycle from New York City to Los Angeles.
  • Truly it will be an adventure!

• Bicyle down from San Francisco to Laguna Beach.
  • Perhaps as a warm-up for cross-country trip.

• Enjoy a romantic trip with Maria to Italy.
  • The Amalfi Coast and a vespa!

• See Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri die violent deaths.
  • Hopefully at the hands of their co-religioninsts, if not the U.S. government.
• Make games out of memorizing famous poems with Julia...
  • ...as a routine part of her childhood.