Unless you've been living under a rock, or, you're not on FaceBook (and really, what's the difference?) you know that the "25 Random Things" tagging has been rampant over in that corner of the internets. Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, you choose 25 people to be tagged. After being tagged by a bazillion people, (haha, kidding, no one - not even those crazy college kids - has a bazillion FB friends, right? ... right?!) I finally succumbed to peer pressure and did mine. It was made easier by the fact that so many other folks had done theirs already - I could steal their ideas! (I didn't tag anyone because I think everyone on FB has already been tagged.) The laziness doesn't stop there ... it stops HERE! Because, I am recycling the material as a blog post.
1. I was born in the year of the horse ... as was my mother ... as was my daughter.
2. I love trick-taking card games like euchre, pinochle, hearts, whist ... and I would love to master bridge.
3. When I was in college I decided I wanted to learn to knit. I bought the yarn and pattern for a Lopi Icelandic sweater and asked the ladies in the shop to show me how to cast on and the basic knit stitch. I knew if my first project was a scarf I’d never finish it; I didn’t want a scarf, I wanted a sweater.
4. I was a canvasser for the League of Conservation voters the summer between college and leaving for Peace Corps. I got a $300 donation from Bobby Orr.
5. I have had different parts of my body in casts five times, but never for a broken bone.
6. I had eye muscle surgery for strabismus when I was little; I don’t have total binocular vision and thus I don’t have great depth perception. This makes things like catching softballs and hitting tennis balls kind of tough.
7. I was a competitive gymnast from when I was 10-years-old most of the way through high-school. Ever since then, I have recurring dreams about doing uneven parallel bars routines – I miss swinging around / upside down.
8. I could bike, swim or cross-country ski happily all day long, but running bores the shit out of me. I need audiobooks or something really engrossing to listen to when I run and I still check my watch every 30 seconds.
9. An ex-boyfriend and I drove and I drove cross country and up to Alaska in a pop-top VW Vanagon named “Prudie” when I was in my twenties. Our goal was to get to Baja after the summer in Alaska but we stopped in Seattle and never started again.
10. I have a surplus of summers in my life: I left in November of ’89 for Southern Africa where I spent 2.5 years then we left in September 08 for Australia, where I still am now.
11. I am a voracious reader. I read mostly fiction / novels. Some all-time favourite authors are Zadie Smith, Wallace Stegner, Jane Smiley, Jane Austen, and John Updike.
12. I ignored the Harry Potter craze for the first few years. Then I picked up book 1 during a summer holiday, read it in a day and proceeded through the rest of the series. And while I didn’t stand in line at midnight to buy book 7, I got it the next morning. Other favourite series of books are the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon and of course the Little House books.
13. I love boarding school fiction; from Ludwig Bemelmans’ “Madeline” to Curtis Sittenfeld’s “Prep” ... you would think that having gone to an all-girls’ boarding school would have gotten it out of my system.
14. I started an environmental group at Lake Forest that is still going today.
15. I was a philosophy major in college. It wasn’t the so much the “what is the meaning of life” aspect that attracted me to philosophy as the esoteric discussions – the cerebral exercise.
16. I am either an INTJ or an ISTJ. I am a classic “I” for sure – I need time alone to recharge. Being around too many people too much without a break is exhausting. The “T” and “J” are also pretty firm. In most tests, I split evenly between an “N” and an “S”.
17. I love organizing things and devising systems and continuously improving processes, etc. Disorder and disregard for efficiency make me crazy.
18. I married an engineer ... who is the least engineer-y guy you’ll ever meet. He has no innate sense of categorization. He’s getting better about loading the dishwasher though, and there’s plenty of other stuff to love about him.
19. Since Kid was born Guy and I have tried to split domestic stuff as evenly as possible – until we moved, we each worked part-time / from home and shared childcare.
20. I have never been interested in NOT working outside the home ... and now I am starting to go batty. Even though I am busy and have plenty to keep me occupied, I am bored. I need to find a job.
21. Having Kid, as in the actual birthing – pushing her out – was the most amazing, empowering feeling ever.
22. When I used to get “have another baby” urges, I would usually realize that it wasn’t another baby / child I wanted, but to have Kid as a baby again. I got a puppy when Kid was three – and, no more baby urges.
23. I love my dog more than I like many people. He’s the best, furriest, friendliest, cuddliest little guy.
24. I will almost always choose salty / crunchy over sweet. I love pretzels, tortilla chips, smoked almonds. My favourite snack is popcorn (I have one of those stove-top whirly pop thingies) with Old Bay and nutritional yeast.
25. My favourite flavours are lime, cilantro, basil ... thus my love of Vietnamese and Mexican foods. Fish tacos from Taco Del Mar is the only food I really miss.
26. We moved because we (two returned Peace Corps Volunteers) think living overseas (if you can do it) is a formative and valuable experience. We picked Melbourne because it was number 2 on this list (Vancouver was number 1, but we already lived in Seattle, so it would have been silly to move there).
27. Life here is very, very good. We are very fortunate to have the resources that allowed us to pick up and move halfway around the world, just because. I feel really lucky to be here and I try to not take our good fortune for granted.
28. I have a tendency towards verbosity.
