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The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, and Also Me

In the last few weeks, I think I have been tagged via blog, via Twitter and via Facebook for every "Seven Interesting Things About Me", "Ten Honest Facts About Me" and "Twenty-Five Things About Me That May Or May Not Be Interesting Or Factual" meme known to man. So let this be my response to all three of those:

Forty-two Things About Me That May Be Interesting But Are Likely Very Dull Indeed

  1. I just made a gigantic "cup" of tea for myself in my giant 20 oz soup mug. It is very hard to drink 20 oz. of tea in one go, because it starts out too hot to drink and gets too cold before you've drunk it all. Worst thing is, I have a beverage warmer in my office, and have just never taken it out of the box or plugged it in.
  2. This is what I looked like in high school, only not as good and not as blurry. I don't look all that different now. This is sort of depressing to me. I am not very adventurous with my "look".
  3. I have spent way too much time over the last week deliberating over the best visual representation of my 2009 Oscar-watching progress thus far. This is what I have come up with.
  4. After watching Milk on Saturday, I don't remember having any dreams about it, but I woke up in the middle of the night convinced that I was a gay rights leader, and fell asleep planning what I was going to say at upcoming rallies and debates and what I was going to write on protest signs.
  5. I'm not a vegetarian, but I like vegetarian food. I don't like to cook meat and I don't think I'm that good at it, and I'm also pretty picky about the quality of the meat that I eat. So I tend not to eat much meat at home, and to instead eat it when it's prepared by a professional. When I was in college, this semi-vegetarianism meant that the only cafeteria meat I would eat was chicken strips, and that I would try to get my parents to take me out for steak when I came home.
  6. I do not like meat on pizzas. Once I was working in a three-person group on a project in grad school, and when it came to ordering pizza, one person only liked meat on his pizza, while I only liked veggies. We were going to compromise by just getting cheese, but the third person refused to eat plain cheese pizza. I don't remember how we resolved this.
  7. One of my favorite study abroad anecdotes is that when I was a sophomore in college, I used to make my roommate order pizza because I didn't like talking to strangers on the phone. Then when I was in France, I realized that I couldn't get anyone to talk to strangers for me anymore, and I was going to have to man up and do these things for myself. And when I came back to the US, ordering pizza was even easier, because it could be done in English.
  8. I still hate talking to strangers (or anyone) on the phone, but like so many things in adult life, I just have to man up and do it.
  9. I said something about "manning up" to my boss and he had never heard that term. I think he may have been taking it too literally. I do not actually become a man when I do that.
  10. If you are wearing tights as pants, I will point and laugh at you. This is not my problem; it is yours. You brought it upon yourself. Tights are not pants.
  11. Even though I haven't been recording or paying attention to the data from it recently, I feel naked without my pedometer.
  12. My favorite kind of apple is Gala. I pretty much only buy those or Granny Smith, depending on what they look like.
  13. My skin was better in high school than it is now. How I wish I'd been a pimply youth instead.
  14. I can't make a purchase over $100 without deliberating over it for weeks and weeks. If something is going to be on sale, it has to be on sale for less than $100 or I will miss out.
  15. I like cleaning things that are really dirty so that you can see the results, like in commercials where they mop an absolutely filthy floor or dust a really dusty table. I think this explains the state of my kitchen floor.
  16. I can't remember the last time I read a non-fiction book. I am all about fiction, to a shameful extent. I would rather read historical fiction than learn about what actually happened at that time. Non-fiction is what we have Wikipedia for.
  17. My whole family has slightly different master's degrees from the same school (or will when Alfie graduates).
  18. I took two years of Arabic and one semester of Chinese, but whenever I try to speak Arabic, Chinese comes out.
  19. When I was in China, I remembered enough Chinese to understand people sometimes, but I only actually said "hello", "thank you" and "goodbye." Once I tried to tell a taxi driver that my hotel was near Fudan University (Fudan Daxue?), but I don't think he understood me. Someone at one of the programs I visited taught me how to sing "Happy Birthday To You" in Chinese (I don't know WHY), and tested me on it later in the day, so this is the main Chinese phrase that I brought back with me. ♫ Zhu ni sheng ri kuai le! ♫
  20. I have gotten to the point where, when people ask me where I'm from, I will often say "Ohio" rather that "Michigan." When I first got here, I always seemed to answer that, "Wait, where I'm from or where I live? Because I live in Ohio, but I'm from Michigan." I don't think it's necessarily because I like Ohio any more than I did then, but just because I got lazy in my answering.
  21. I'm taking the Jeopardy! online test tonight, which I do every year possible. So far, it has resulted in bupkes. It's hard to compare the two, but I think I made it further in the in-person College Jeopardy! test/tryouts in Ann Arbor in 1999. I made it past two rounds of written tests, then got nervous and froze up when I had to stand up and give an anecdote about myself.
  22. Stuffed tomatoesI'm only in the 20s and I'm already running out of facts. So... here is a recipe instead. It is a "thing" that is "about me" in that I made it once.
  23. I would kind of like to have a personal chauffeur at my beck and call. I do not foresee this happening on a study abroad advisor's salary, but maybe if I have a Ken Jennings-like winning streak on Jeopardy! I can look into it.
  24. I have a reputation for being difficult to share a bed with, although most of the complaining comes from my sister. So it may be that I'm not so difficult in general, so much as I'm subconsciously taking out daytime frustrations on her in the night. Apparently I kick her, and once I woke up and found that I had scooted over to the middle of the bed during the night so I moved back to what I thought was my side (but was actually hers) and ended up pushing her out of the bed.
  25. I would like to try making my own jam or chutney or something sometime, but I don't have confidence in my ability to can things properly so that they don't poison anyone.
  26. I put off reordering contacts so long that I have been wearing glasses for the last week. I'm really tired of glasses. I have been putting off getting a haircut until my new contacts (or the new glasses I ordered!) arrive, so that I can look ultra-glamorous in one go. I have also been putting off waxing my eyebrows, although that's not on purpose - I just keep forgetting. As I'm sure you can imagine, I am a sight to behold.
  27. Speaking of ultra-glamorous, I have probably seen the Brady Bunch parodies The Brady Bunch Movie and A Very Brady Sequel more times than I've seen actual episodes of The Brady Bunch.
  28. I only like coffee at a coffee/milk ratio of about 3:1 or 4:1. With a couple spoonfuls of sugar. That said, it's quite nice that way, like melty coffee ice cream. I like coffee ice cream.
  29. I have "Zhu ni sheng ri kuai le" in my head.
  30. I would like to own multiple pairs of eyeglasses. I think this stems from when I was a teaching assistant in a professional school where many of my students were studying to be opticians. I don't know if it was because healthcare was socialized or because they were studying to be opticians, but several of the students owned multiple pairs of glasses that they coordinated to their outfits.
  31. It probably also stems from my love of costumes and disguises and the fact that my personal fashion style is usually, "I'm dressing up as [X] today!" [X] is frequently a different era in time, but sometimes it's something like "a fancy grown-up lady."
  32. I like to cook, but I like taking shortcuts. It drives me crazy when recipes are all, "First, you make your own stock from bones you have sitting around" (see #5) when I would rather just pour it out of a box/can. I like to "make" spaghetti sauce by just adding things to the stuff that comes out of a jar.
  33. As a general rule, I drink black tea with milk and sugar, green tea straight and rooibos with milk only.
  34. I have gone sort of crazy with the tea-buying lately and have had to enforce a tea-buying embargo. Either that or I'll have to completely rearrange my kitchen cupboards so I have somewhere to put it all. I think I'll do that instead.
  35. I wish I'd taken more library science classes in grad school so that I would have the education to go along with my ALA-accredited degree. At this point, I could technically get a job as a librarian, but I doubt anyone would hire me. It would be nice to know that I had an alternative career if this one doesn't work out.
  36. I had a student teacher in an English class in high school who did a lecture on Postmodernism one day. The only thing I remember is him passing around and discussing this picture. I've been pretty much obsessed with Rene Magritte ever since, though I don't really understand how that came about, because I'm not a huge fan of that picture in particular.
  37. I like being at sea, especially when the waves get a little rough and it gets harder to walk straight. I am convinced that I have mad sea legs and can stay upright come what may. I don't think I'd like it if it got too rough, though, because now that I'm thinking about being at sea in a major storm, I am getting terrified of capsizing. And I'm sitting at a desk in an office, so I imagine I'd be freaking out more if I were actually in it.
  38. I cleaned out my desk at home for the first time in at least three years. I own way too many pens. There is a pen-buying embargo in effect, too.
  39. I have been obsessed with organization since Christmas. Unfortunately this manifests itself more in drooling over storage furniture than in filing all the papers that are sitting around.
  40. I love hearing the Flemish language spoken. (Bonus joke I stole from QI: What's the difference between a French kiss and a Belgian kiss? Answer: ˙ɯǝןɟ ǝɹoɯ ɥʇıʍ ssıʞ ɥɔuǝɹɟ ɐ sı ssıʞ uɐıƃןǝq ɐ)
  41. I have been waiting MONTHS to use that upside-down text thing for something.
  42. I know just a little about enough subjects that I can often fool people into thinking I'm smarter than I am.

I tag... NO ONE! NO ONE IS IN THE BOX! YOU SO STUPID!

srah - Tuesday, 27 January 2009 - 7:41 PM
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Comments (9)

gravatar Gretchen - January 27, 2009 - 8:50 PM -

I also "make" spaghetti sauce and have a reputation for being "kicky" in bed, to the point where I have to sleep on the floor during vacations because no one will share a bed with me.
And I'm very much guilty of #42.

gravatar SA - January 27, 2009 - 9:48 PM -

So agree with 10. Can tights go out of style for a while please?

I went through the same as #7. Minus the France.

Kudos on 42 different things. I don't think I could have done it.

gravatar alfie - January 28, 2009 - 12:01 AM -

10. Given where I go to school, I keep seeing this. I think of you every time I see one of them and wish that you were there to make fun of them.
16. I have books to loan you in that case.
24. I will still not share a bed with you.
37. Remember that time we crossed the English Channel and the combination of gale force winds, the movie Free Willy, and eating a cold BLT made me throw up? Yeah, that sucked.

gravatar J - January 28, 2009 - 9:54 AM -

#25 - Me too! I want to make my mom's salsa recipe but I'm terrified of canning it. Is there a way to test food to make sure it's not poisoned before you eat it? I don't have a personal food taster I can sacrifice.

gravatar katie - January 28, 2009 - 10:04 AM -

Re #32: Last night I made flounder puttanesca. The magical interweb told me how to clean and cut leeks. It told me to only cook with the white root-y part, and to save the greens for making soup or stock. I'm baffled as to why anyone would make their own vegetable stock, when it grows on can trees. So I told M I was putting the greens in the fridge and would throw them out in a few weeks when they were all gross.

gravatar JD - January 28, 2009 - 11:07 AM -

#37: Sounds like you are a candidate for "The Deadliest Catch." Now that would make for some good reality TV. Srah on a crab fishing boat in the Bering Sea in January. I would DVR it.

gravatar Cheryl - January 28, 2009 - 1:24 PM -

10. The game of Spot the No Pants is fun.

My mom recently redid her cupboards all for tea storage.

gravatar Jess - January 28, 2009 - 1:32 PM -

This was FASCINATING. I relate to so many things! But not Jeopardy. I would SUCK at that show.

gravatar Fraulein N - January 30, 2009 - 10:36 AM -

Hey, we "cook" the exact same way! This list was actually not at all dull, by the way.

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