qotd

[aroraborealis]

Tell me three things about yourself you think I don't know. If you have the stamina, tell me 10 things about yourself you think I don't know!

Comments

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

I want to play, but figuring out what you don't know about me requires estimating how much you've been paying attention and that seems somewhat fraught.

[jillbertini.livejournal.com]

I am an omnivore/flexitarian when it comes to eating.
I am an identical twin.
I grew up in Florida!

How'd I do?

[zzbottom.livejournal.com]

I have a half-brother and two step brothers.
I ran away from home when I was in second grade and hitchhiked with my (half) brother (who was three years older) to my grandparent's house which was 20 miles away.
I was given the Chester Academy Medal, the highest award at my high school (one each for each academic department), for music when I graduated. I haven't played an instrument since.

[laurenhat.livejournal.com]

Hmm, this is difficult... I think I've already told you many interesting facts about me over the years! You may already know some of these things, but hopefully there are three new ones somewhere in here.

1. Back in high school, I used to write fanfiction (much of it coauthored with my best friend) without knowing that that was a thing people did. (It was mostly Star Trek parodies or about celebrities.)

2. I met my first boyfriend in alt.music.peter-gabriel.

3. I have never enjoyed a statistics class (though I've taken many), even though I really like using statistics for both work and hobbies.

4. I created my first webpage for work purposes in 1996 (as part of an internship) and for personal purposes in 1997.

5. I was firmly convinced until at least third grade that if I just looked in my wardrobe at the right time, said the right words, or proved myself worthy enough, I would be transported to one of the fictional magical lands I was in love with. I just found a diary entry indicating that in 7th grade, i was still mildly hopeful. My rationalist self finds this both embarrassing and adorable.

[ceelove.livejournal.com]

Until 27, I was pretty firmly convinced that recreational drugs were the root of all evil.

I was in Overeaters Anonymous when I was 20. The program didn't save me from binge eating, but it did end up decoupling me from Christianity.

I wrote my first novel at 13-14. Unfortunately, it took me two more novels and all of my teen years to know that I am a ghastly novelist.

[entrope.livejournal.com]

1. I name all my computers after characters in Gravity's Rainbow.
2. I have checked a car for bombs with a dental mirror on a stick, and learned how to defend myself from a knife attack - for a living.
3. My right big toenail has fallen off more times than I can count. Thankfully, that stopped when I learned that long-distance runners should buy their shoes a half size up.

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

. i'm no longer in chronic pain.

. i just adopted a canary.

. i really love "le choix du president"-versison nutella-like substance.

[yagagriswold.livejournal.com]

!!!

Re #1, that's fantastic!

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

no freakin' kidding. i'll tell you the whole gory story some day over drinks, perchance :)

[bloodstones.livejournal.com]

1. My favorite book in elementary school was a biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
2. I rowed crew for five years. My team swept the new england's one year and went to nationals several years.
3. The most fun theater thing I've ever done was running light board for Stomp because the finale had so many light cues it felt like performing.

[dreams-of-wings.livejournal.com]

1. I miss performing a lot, but I miss wearing pointe shoes not at all.
2. I'm intensely aware of the class privilege I have through my marriage that allows me to keep working as an adjunct, which would otherwise be financially untenable. I love the work, but I have really mixed feelings about the way that I'm allowing the academic system to exploit my knowledge and labor.
3. I am remarkably good at making a realistic sounding frog noise.
4. I'm incredibly hard to gross out. Things many people find disgusting I just see as really fascinating.
5. I had much better mentors as an undergraduate I did as a graduate student.
6. One of the things I like best about my work as a teacher and a tutor is the process of reverse engineering how I came to have the skills I take for granted now. Seriously, how DID I learn to perform close reading on a text? And how can I teach that to other people? I honestly don't remember, so the experimenting is a lot of fun.
7. I keep in touch with almost none of my extended family – most of whom don't make any attempt to keep in touch with me either – but I am still close with and regularly speak to friends from both early childhood and high school.
8. I really wish I could talk Tish into letting me get a pair of pet rats.did you know that rats laugh when you tickle them? I think this is pretty much the coolest thing ever.
9. I really love wrestling and playful roughhousing, particularly with my husband.
10. I have a secret right now that part of me is absolutely bursting to tell and part of me is loving keeping to myself.

[cos]

Everything I think of, I then think "but she might know that!" Even though you probably forgot most of them, if you knew them.

I can read the Hebrew, Arabic, and Korean alphabets, but not cyrillic. (I really should fix that one of these days)

When I was in junior high & high school I used to write shareware video games for PCs. The kind people would share via BBSes, and occasionally send an actual check to the author by paper mail. I got very few checks :)

My first actual job was washing boats. Solid days of scrubbing, very tiring, but fun coworkers.

[redheadedmuse.livejournal.com]

You know so many of my juicy secrets! This is a challenge.

1. Past Me once spent a year working in an indie film theater and watched every movie they showed, but Present Me hasn't seen a movie in the theater without my kids this calendar year.

2. Some of the best medical care I have ever received was at a free clinic for sex workers in San Francisco. My "physical" included optional counseling and massage treatments!

3. When I was a kid I collected dead June bugs in a little tin. I had about a dozen green ones and one gold one. I found out many years later that my mom used to sneak into my room at night and weed out the rotting ones and replace them with fresh dead bugs. I played with them constantly.

4. I applied to graduate school for fiction writing, and got shunted into a non-fiction class because the seminar I wanted was full. That class changed the whole course of my life.

5. Speaking of grad school, my biggest regret is not dropping out of my MFA program halfway through to spontaneously move to Switzerland with a guy I met on vacation in Prague.

6. I'm allergic to nickel, which limits my cheap jewelry fun.

7. I have been keeping a regular diary since age 7, and still have every entry.

8. I'm terrified of snakes because when I was six I held our classroom pet snake and dropped it & it was startled and hurt. Similarly, my fear of dogs is rooted in having seen one get hit by a car as a child.

9. Another childhood secret: I had two wizards that protected my sleep at night, one at each end of my bed. I absolutely needed to check on each of them before getting into bed at night and on waking.

10. [REDACTED]

[amber-phoenix.livejournal.com]

- my first job with a paycheck was working the counter at dairy queen

- my second was delivering prescription meds and groceries from an old school pharmacy

- i had a 15 year run of always wearing matching bras and panties which was inspired by a college girlfriend and broken by pregnancy.

- i wish i played piano (i did for a couple years)

- i also wish i played chess

- i secretly love jackson brown's music

- i was on the elementary school basketball team

- i like eating catsup on potato chips, especially pringles

- in middle school and early high school, i sent my long distance friends valentine's day gifts

- i am totally squicked by chicken feet, even though they make the best stock

[veek.livejournal.com]

I've always been good at memorizing lyrics. In my tween years, before emigration, I used to go on very long walks (to school, or to grandma's house -- 25 and 50m on public transit respectively) with my lyrics notebook and just sing.

In the fall, I consider spending time staring at trees to be color therapy.

I don't particularly like chamomile or ginger tea. (This makes exciting new herbal teas surprisingly difficult to find: they're all so mellow/flavorless! The Zinger series is ok. Suggestions for your favorites welcome.)

[ghislaine.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh, this is a challenge!

1) I name many of my passwords after some version of my first girlfriend's name.
2) I read celebrity websites.
3) I like roller coasters but HATE the feeling of falling from the high-dive.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Wow! I think I've posted almost every obscure fact about myself to LJ over the last decade, but I'll try.

1. Since the 2012 election, I've spent much of my (cough, cough) "free time" discussing politics with the very knowledgeable and passionate wonks at Political Wire. This replaces my previous online habit of surfing news headlines, which I found too stressful and depressing.

2. I learned twirling in the seventh grade (and served on the pep squad, complete with rickracked orange uniform -- de rigueur in a Texas junior high school). I still pick up my baton from time to time, although I drop it much more than I used to.

3. Tolkien inspired my passion for languages (I effectively minored in linguistics and am teaching it now) and I've dabbled in at least a couple of dozen, but although I had no problem reading Dwarven runes and Tengwar in my teens I've been defeated by almost every non-Latin alphabet or syllabary I've tried to read since. (I got through four weeks of Japanese and three weeks of Siddur Hebrew before calling quits. I can puzzle out Greek if I really have to ... but. Sigh.)

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

Oh that's hard. You know a lot. Hm.

I sang in chorus and show choir in high school.
I've caught eels, but we released them.
I pick up tails-up pennies just to give them to dilletante.
I have a thing for men's white dress gloves.
I never liked radishes. Meh.
I've always felt guilty for not getting my ham radio license with my dad when he asked me when I was 12 or 13, because then I became a teenager and was too cool and then I was 18 and it was too late.
Natalie and I have a plan to get pilot's licenses together when she's old enough.
I walk on my tiptoes when I think nobody's around.
I freaking love Jolly Ranchers. They still seem like magic.
I'm extremely proud of having managed to breast feed my kid, given how rough a start it was for a bunch of reasons (mostly hospitalization).

How'd i do? What are things I don't know about you? :)