February 03, 2009
Some Number of Things About Me
So there is a meme going around the net of writing 25 random things about yourself. I've been "tagged" several times, so I thought I'd oblige folks, with the understanding that I don't tag other people for memes. If writing 25 random facts about yourself sounds amusing/inspiring to you, drop me a link to your post in a comment. :)
I'd imagine some of this stuff will be surprising and some will be very old hat for people who know me.
1. I suffered from huge amounts of social anxiety as a kid. There were days at school where my eyes never left the floor and I pretty much only opened my mouth to answer teachers.
2. When I took Saber fencing in college I discovered that my instructor was one of my parents D&D buddies from when they were in school, well before I was born. He is an excellent fencing instructor, btw.
3. I find it more difficult than some people to hear the difference between certain vowel sounds. Apparently someone noticed this when I was in elementary school. It made learning to spell properly in our stupid non-phonetic language an even greater hell.
4. I had 16 fillings in my baby teeth. I list this under "things I am not grateful to my Dad's genes for."
5. I attended GenCon as an infant of less than a year old. I later said my first word in the old MECCA center (not that year, obviously) and have only missed two GenCons in my lifetime (stupid little brother having to be born in the fall :P ).
6. I still remember the worst nightmare I ever had. I was like 3 or 4 when I had it.
7. I have two cats that are both named from Lovecraft's Mythos: Miskatonic ("Miska") and Unaussprechlichen ("Una" - from Unaussprechlichen Kulten). I'm still not sure how I talked my husband into this.
8. I took riding lessons (English) for 5 years as a kid. I miss riding, but don't have the patience to take lessons again or the money to own my own horse.
9. I still think of Batman: the Animated Series as being in black and white. Our color TV died the month before it premiered, so my brother and I watched it for quite a while on a tiny black and white set. It holds up extremely well.
10. I tend to obsess about hobbies and soak in knowledge for weeks whether or not I'm actually doing the hobby. I used to haunt libraries for this reason, now I roll around in the internet a lot.
11. For the last two years my Christmas tree has been about 15 inches tall with a santa ornament on top. I love that tree.
12. I own and have played all the Myst games. I have rants about plot continuity... yea, so another nail in the geekdom coffin. Even more damning is the fact that I own and have read all the Myst novels.
13. I actually think properly sized parachute pants made my butt look smaller.
14. I've been a Weight Watchers member for more than a year now. I've lost more than 30 pounds. I think I'm near halfway to where my weight should actually be. I still need more exercise.
15. As a small child, I had not one, but seven febrile seizures. Like the vast majority of children I grew out of them. I almost never suffer from fevers of any kind as an adult. Still, sorry Mom!
16. I love Art Nouveau. I am going to do my damnedest to decorate my house in Art Nouveau with a tint of Steampunk. Since I am not fabulously wealthy this will take a while.
17. I only started to enjoy learning history when I started collecting Victorian magazines. Looking at the period through the words of someone living it (even if they were talking about relatively trivial things) made it much more real to me.
18. I am very fond of British mystery shows. I watched Mystery with my Mom every week when I was a kid.
19. I was recently asked if I did any "outdoors" things and was a bit sad that the answer was no. I love being outside and walking and being in nature. The problem is that nature also loves me. My mom used to joke that you could find my dad and I at a camp site by following the clouds of mosquitos.
20. I've grown to be violently allergic to mosquitos. Bites will swell up and remain for days or even weeks if I don't refrain from so much as touching them and take major antihistamines. Why nature? Why? :(
21. I realized in advanced English in high school that if I was even going to find a spiritual grounding in my life it was probably going to be along a path similar to the one taken by some of the American Transcendentalists. I can see the possibility of finding the divine in nature and in solitary reflection. As nature appears to hate me (see 19 and 20), perhaps it's suggesting that I settle for Agnosticism? I'm still undecided here.
22. I have a scar on my right thumb that looks like /. I mean literally like the characters "/." I assume they arranged some cosmic mojo to brand me when I stupidly grabbed the front wheel of that exercise bike in middle school.
23. I've always been extremely stubborn about physical things. If I want to lift a box, I will lift it. If I want to take something apart I will figure out how. This tends to make me good at thinking outside the box when solving physical problems because their very unsolved existence pisses me off on a deep psychological level.
24. I've never been good at writing in books. I had a professor in college who required us to highlight our reading... total debacle.
25. I am poor at defining my own identity. It takes me agonizing hours to write a bio of myself unless I just write something stupid or flippant. I have a lot of silly bios.
26. I hate meme rules. They remind me of the chain mail spam I got as a kid with the "or you will die a horrible death" crap tacked on the end. I think meme's should inspire you, not make you feel like you need to be chained to your computer slavishly following the letter of their laws.
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