I bought this book, "100 Things to Do Before You Die," thinking that now that I'm 50 (OK, 52) it's time to polish off the list. I flipped it open, pen in hand, ready to check off a bunch of things. I haven't spent a half-century sitting on my duff, you know.

I've gone to war, hitchhiked across Europe, canoed through a hurricane on the Kentucky River, sailed across Lake Michigan at the helm of a wooden schooner and backpacked in the Appalachians.

I've eaten a snake, ridden a donkey up the sheer cliffs of the ancient city of Petra and dangled out the port side of a Blackhawk helicopter snapping photos, my sergeant holding me by my belt.

I froze my toes in the Russian Steppes in the winter of '91 and broiled in the Sahara one horrid summer. I ate a pile of dodgy steak tartare in a snooty Paris cafe and spent the next day vomiting into the bidet while my husband sloped off to Giverny.

You get the idea. Adventure is my middle name. (OK, it's Alberta, and I've sworn off raw beef.)

My pen remained capped. One hundred things and I hadn't done one.

I've skirted around the edges. I've been to Octoberfest, but in Frankfurt, not Munich. I've been to the Western Wall, but not on Yom Kippur, and to Chichen Itza, but not during the vernal equinox.

I've never attended the running of the bulls in Pamplona or the Nobel Prize ceremonies in Stockholm. I've never been to the Formula One Grand Prix in Monaco (does the Pocono 500 count?) or dickered over dromedaries at the Pushkar camel fair in India.

How could I hold up my head in the sip-macchiato-and-brag-about-your-vacation-club when I had never been to the Chung Yuan Ghost Month Festival in Taiwan?

I whipped out the calendar and the credit card. Could I combine a trip to the Sapporo Snow Festival in Japan with Tet Nuguyan Dan in Vietnam? Nope, the dates don't work ... neither does the bank balance.

And then I remembered. Life's not a contest; it's not about winning prizes or spending pots of money. It's not the adventures that have given my life meaning or the exotic travel or the albums full of photos.

It's the people.

It was teaching a troop of Brownie Girl Scouts to sing Dona Nobis Pacem and having the round emerge in perfect four-part harmony. It was playing the accordion in an all-girl rock band and having people dance to our ragged version of "Hang on Sloopy."

It was spending the weekend with my friend Julie hunched over a hot kettle and winning a blue ribbon for our zucchini pickles at the Arlington County Fair. (OK, sometimes it is about winning.)

I ticked off one of the items on my list last week: my first tamalada! Presided over by Marie Falcón, who has been making tamales for most of her 83 years, a group of us laughed all afternoon as we learned how to pat the masa into the corn shucks just so and put in just the right amount of filling and fold the bundles the way people have for generations.

Next year I'll reciprocate by teaching her how to make pfeffernusse, the way my grandmother taught me.

Instead of making resolutions this new year, I'll add to my list of things to do before I die.

Before I die, I want to take a class in bookbinding and make little books for all my friends.

I want to spend a day with my niece and nephew, students at Texas A&M, before they up and graduate on me.

I want to answer all my e-mail and learn how to change the ink cartridges on my printer. (OK, it's not always about people.)

We all have a list, I suppose. Sleep under the Texas stars. Learn a foreign language. Juggle three oranges. Get a pedicure. End a column with grace and dignity. Let's go for it!

Susan Ives can be reached at suives@texas.net.