25 Random Things

This sort of thing looks a little self-absorbed, but I did it at the prompting of someone I care about. [I was 'tagged.'] Now that it is done, I might as well post it here, for whatever it is worth.

[Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you.]

1. I have powerful mixed reactions to a task like this. I can anticipate all the tendencies that will slow me down, particularly the perfectionist part of me.

2. I analyze things to the n-th. In a task like this, I am likely to say one thing about myself and then note (at least mentally) all the supporting and contradicting evidence.

3. I am just about the world’s worst speller. Spellcheck has been my salvation. (Ah! My spellchecker doesn’t recognize the word ‘spellcheck’!)

4. As a toddler and pre-schooler, I lived in a tiny village and started school in a rural, two-room schoolhouse. (It would have been a one-room schoolhouse if I were just a year older.)

5. I always think of red as my favorite color … followed very closely by burnt orange. (Sorry, Sara.)

6. Truth is, I love interesting and unusual combinations of colors. I had a friend once who would get almost orgasmic when she saw pink combined with various shades of green. I completely understood what she was experiencing.

7. I am interested in and responsive to most human endeavors and activities, more so than I believe most people are.

8. Two exceptions to #7: spectator sports on TV (although I enjoy watching sporting events live) and TV sit. coms.

9. I love going to the movies. When the lights go down and the title comes up, every care and concern of my day-to-day life disappears.

10. Same thing when I teach! I mean, as soon as I begin the lesson, everything else in my life disappears.

11. I spent much of my childhood playing in forests and fields and I am completely at home in rural settings.

12. I’ve lived all of my adult life (since age 21) in and around cities. I am completely at home in urban settings.

13. I am really pleased that I’ve drafted half of these in about an hour. But I know I’ll need to take a break, refresh my coffee, maybe work-out and shower. And even when I get to 25, I’ll still have to type these into Word and spellcheck and proof about three times, after which I’ll post them, spot a typo. I missed, copy, delete, correct and repost.

14. I am promising myself, despite #13, I will finish this.

15. I see and understand a lot of things through the lens of economic theory and economic analogies. Case in point: a friend and I have been exploring the need for solitude and if I weren’t working on this list, I’d be writing about the marginal trade-offs involved in the needs for solitude and companionship.

16. I expected to give birth to daughters. (If you know me, you know I did not.)

17. At various points in my childhood, I planned to be 1) a ballerina (like just about every other little girl), 2) an acrobat and 3) the wife of a farmer. The third persisted the longest.

18. Like someone else whose ’25 list’ I read recently, I have a love-hate relationship with exercise.

19. My personal experience bears out this idea: the thing that most draws you to your mate is inseparable from the thing about him/her that most annoys you.

20. I was born on Easter Sunday and, due to a calendar process I’ve never completely figured out, my birthday seems to fall on Easter Sunday whenever the 2 digits in my age are the same (i.e. 11, 22, 33, etc.)

21. I love techie stuff and gadgets. In that, I take after my Dad.

22. I am drawn to things like time-and-motion studies, ‘therligs’, systems and methods. Both my Mom and my Dad were, too.

23. I do not have the normal complement of facial sinuses. I am missing a couple of them. (Can’t remember exactly which ones just now.)

24. Oh! I am left-handed.

25. I am amazed at how many more of these items are floating through my head. I don’t think I’ve even touched the ‘goal’ part. I guess those ‘100 random things’ lists aren’t as impossible as I’d imagined.