Keep at it. It sucks to get to 100, but it's worth it. I used every voodoo I could think of to get skill ups on cursed soup (face SW, only synth on Thundersday, equip a Thunder Staff, etc). I did everything except hop on one foot, but hey I'm at 100 now. :)
One thing I did do to make it a little less monotonous was use my signal pearl and farm with my NPC.