This list has been making it around the world of Facebook, so I thought what the heck? And here we go. All my blog entries get pulled into FB anyway, so I won’t have to do this twice:
Twenty-five Things About Me
1. I am terrified of falling from heights, not necessarily the heights themselves. This means that I am scared to death of open ledges while hiking, bridges and ski slopes / chairlifts /gondolas but am perfectly fine in tall buildings and love to fly. When I am put into a “heights situation”, I have a paralyzing fear and cannot move. Also, I don’t want people to touch me, so helping me out of the situation become problematic.
2. I love giving presents, but receiving them makes me very uncomfortable (there being one notable exception mentioned below). My favorite type of presents to give is the completely-out-of-the-blue, for no good reason type. I send so many care packages that the folks at the post office know my first name.
3. Over the years between the end of grad school and the summer of 2006, I gained 70 pounds, topping off at 230 pounds on my scarcely 5’4” frame. On August 15, 2005, I had an “ah ha!’ moment (sort of like when I had quit smoking 10 years earlier). One year later to the day, I was 76 pounds lighter (and still weigh that much, give a pound or two). Here is the blog post from that day. While 155 pounds at 5’4” isn’t thin, I am happily ‘average’. This is my most meaningful personal achievement.
4. For a long time, my password (now not used for anything whatsoever, so I have no problem sharing it) was 99922332. This stood for September 9, 1992 at 11:32 PM (24-hour time). This is the first and only time that I have seen the aurora borealis, sitting on the front steps of the house in Orono with Seth Umel.
5. I am a very good driver (just the right amounts of masshole, seattle complacency and german autobahn) and love road trips. In grad school, my housemates were pissing me off so much one weekend while I was writing my thesis that I got in my car and drove to Denver (I lived in St. Louis at the time). When I drove from Seattle to Boston, the length of Interstate 90 from Safeco Field to Logan Airport, I took a picture every three seconds from a camera mounted on the dash, then compressed it into a 12 minute video. I cannot, however, drive a manual transmission car.
6. I love my two cats more than I love any human being.
7. If I had to do it all over again, I would be a pastry chef or own a bakery. As it is, I make a crazy-amount of cookies every year at Christmas and bake something at least twice or three times per week. I am good at baking, not so much at cooking.
8. I remember everything. You really only have to mention something to me once and I will remember it forever. Examples: I have inadvertently memorized the zip codes from most large cities in the US, know that my brother-in-law’s brother likes Hamburger Helper (he lives in Germany; they don’t have HH there) and remember that there was a caterpillar in the stairwell of the hotel we stayed in Acapulco when I was six. Ben says that I need to F-disk my brain.
9. I love flowers... giving them (see #2) and receiving them (that being the exception in #2 as well)... photographing them... growing them. A few weeks ago, I was having a horrible day and I was chatting online with Jean, who was sitting at the Edinburgh Airport and she called a florist about a block away from where I live. They delivered the flowers while I was still chatting with Jean (like within 15 minutes). I was stunned and my bad day completely disappeared.
10. I absolutely hate using the telephone, and yet, have six telephone numbers where I can be reached at, and forward all six of those to my mobile phone when I leave the house. I will email you the story of my life, but likely never call to catch up. I will look up all pertinent information (i.e. restaurant locations and opening times) on the internet, but will I will likely never call to get the same info.
11. I like peas in my mac and cheese.
12. I have a penchant for bags. Not as in “Oh, have you seen the new Chanel or Kate Spade collection for Spring?”; more like “Cool backpack from North Face!” I have gotten better at impulse-purchasing them, though.
13. Yes, Princess Buttercup, I can recite all of The Princess Bride. Verbatim. No joking.
14. I have a fan-girl crush on a blogger who lives in New York City who I have never met and most likely never will. CJ is a fashion photographer; KT is his girlfriend and the makeup artist that pretties up all the models. They probably have very average lives but for some reason, I find them more interesting that most of the hundred of millions of blogs out there.
15. When I eat a banana, I take the peel all the way off before biting it. I have this very vivid memory of when Elizabeth Genco and Shawneric Hachey and I were traveling through Europe, saying to her “I’m not the drape the banana peel over the hand type of girl”. I still think of Elizabeth whenever I eat a banana.
16. Ladybugs symbolize good luck or good health in many cultures. While I generally don’t have a lucky number, the number seven is generally considered lucky. Thus, I recently had 7 ladybugs tattooed on my left ankle. It kind of hurt, but at least I increased my luck quotient.
17. I passionately hate Rachel Ray.
18. I found my favorite place on earth, Tofino, Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, by accident. Ben and I had just moved to Seattle and had a few days to kill before I started my new job, so we went to Vancouver Island. There was this road on the map that cut across to the west side and we decided to go on it. It was a pretty desolate road (though rebuilt and improved greatly) and about half-way, we started to hope that Tofino had a gas station. Turns out that it not only has a gas station, but it the most beautiful place on the planet.
19. My grandmother used to call me Schneckennudel. Loosely translated, this means “raisin danish” or “cinnamon swirl”. Maybe it was a premonition, but I still love raisin danishes.
20. The sentences “The driveway curves.” and “I like your Christmas Lights.”, both sentences that I said often between my mid-teen to mid-20s, (a) have deep sentimental meaning to me, (b) mean the same thing and (c) don’t mean what the actual words in the sentence.
21. I love Starbuck’s Grande non-fat, low-foam 160-degree Chais and medium Dunkin Donuts coffee, regular (‘regular’ in New England means 2 sugars and about a half a cup of cream). I figure my high-maintenance foo-foo drink from Starbucks gets evened out my Joe-Sixpack order at DD.
22. I get cold very easily. My doctor tells me that this is a side effect of losing a lot of weight (less blubber?). And yet, I like living in cold weather climates. I even like to shovel snow, go figure.
23. In a “Say Anything” sort of moment, Erik Fransen once met my US Air flight back to Bangor with a boombox playing the song True Companion by Marc Cohen. He worked for US Air at the time and was standing on the ramp; I was the last one off the little commuter plane. Erik wasn’t wearing a trench coat and the music wasn’t Peter Gabriel but the similarities made me laugh.
24. My favorite colors are three shades of green: RGB 698B22, RGB 9ACD32 and RGB 6E8B3D. Yes, I have very specific taste in green.
25. One of the 24 things that I listed above is completely made up and completely not true. I am not telling which one. |
