Friday, January 30, 2009

25 Random Things About Rebel

I was tagged to do this on Facebook. Although I've recently been schooled on the difference between 'arbitrary' and 'random', so I actually wrote out 50 arbitrary things about myself then used a random number generator to create this list. And yes, I agree, I *should* have gotten first place in Dorktoberfest... take it up with Michael5000.

1. The beach I frequented in California is often featured in movies / TV / ads. I take personal pride in knowing that "my beach" is so photogenic.

2. I'm terrified of snakes... absolutely terrified. I've been known to run screaming from little 8" garden snakes. It's not funny... it's a phobia.

3. I miss Knit Night on Thursdays at Abundant. Yarn, gossip, chocolate... life was good!!!

4. I'm extremely sensitive to pain, I bumped into a door today, not even especially hard, and it hurt for like 5 minutes.

5. Drop Top Amber rocks my world.

6. Havarti makes me happy.

7. I'm a very tactile person and I love touching things... when I go to the store I just have to touch things as I walk past.

8. I had a crush on one of my students (so cute... sooooo cute!) but forgot to get his number before the course ended. =( He gave me really high marks on my evaluation, though. =)

9. I regularly ride side-saddle on the back of a motorbike with no helmet.

10. I went to Knollwood Elementary school, in Lake Hiawatha New Jersey.

11. I am the world's worst liar. Half the time I can't even come up with anything that's not true.... and when I do, it's absurdly easy to tell. I'm pretty good at omitting the truth though, and subtle misdirection.

12. I'm an unappologetic carnivore.... I'll eat fried chicken while staring down the chickens in the next yard.

13. I got drunk enough to try escargot one time but regretted it as soon as the snail was in my mouth. I didn't know what to do so I swallowed it whole and downed another glass of white wine.

14. Opiod-based pain medications give me disturbing hallucinations and make me go more than a little crazy.

15. I think Marquam Hill (Portland) is incredibly beautiful when it's misty and foggy.

16. I love optical illusions.

17. I'm a little bit of a drama junkie and love good gossip.

18. I hate Thai beer.

19. I suck at math and once nearly broke down in tears in the grocery store because I couldn't figure out which was the better deal 2 for $3 or 3 for $5. I love that my phone has a calculator on it for just these occasions.

20. My shoe size is 5 wide... it's incredibly difficult to find shoes that fit well, so when I find them, I'm not opposed to buying several pairs or spending a lot of money on them.

21. My sister and I have the same birthday, 6 years apart.

22. I'm not very good at telling when other people are lying, and I don't always get sarcasm. If I start staring at you like I'm retarded, it's because I honestly don't understand if you're being serious or joking.

23. One autumn, around my birthday I had a bad cold and wanted nothing more than those Dutch sugar cookies to have with my tea. I scoured the stores and couldn't find them anywhere. I was so excited when the Christmas displays appeared (the day after Halloween), and the stacks of cookie tins. I bought five tins.... just in case. I only managed to finish two before moving though.

24. I heart decoupage.

25. Every time I drove down Terwilliger I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the trees & moss & ferns. It's so otherworldly.

And now for the not so random analysis. I noticed that the things I wrote generally fell three categories 1. likes/dislikes about external things 2. completely neutral facts about myself or 3. things I don't like about myself. While the 'neutral' category outweighs the 'things I don't like about myself' 12 to 5... there's still nothing in the completely positive column. And in the 50 item list it was 19 neutral to 12 negative. Is this fucked up? Or is it just modesty? Or is it false modesty because the things I'm counting as neutral are really positive? I don't know.

Bunny is just about my polar opposite in some respects. When we were at the beach I made an off-handed comment appologizing for making them look at my thighs (and I hate making comments like that - I don't know where they come from, they just come out sometimes) she commented that the beach was really gorgeous and whenever she was in a beautiful place it made her feel like she was beautiful too, because she was a part of it. She's also said that her father told two things "One, I never lie, and two, you are absolutely perfect." Which explains a lot about her.

When I came home for the summer after my freshman year of college, my dad noticed that I'd gained the 'freshman 15' and called me a walrus. Ten minutes later he offered me ice cream. I think that explains a lot about me.


TAG: Code Fish Sauce.

9 comments:

IamSusie said...

I am amused that both of your feet could fit into my shoe. I am a mens 10. And for someone who doesn't like math, you sure do like statistics! I am absolutely with you about the chickens. The only reason they would even be in the next yard is because they are all kinds of delicious. ;-)

I don't notice that any of the things you listed here is a negative I'm curious which ones you think are bad. Most of these things just .. you know.. .are.. and that isn't either good or bad, just fact. Right?

d said...

i agree with the above. i didn't read any of them as negative or positive really.

when i did this on fb, a lot of mine were about food, which is weird because i really dislike everything about having to eat. thinking about it. making it. going to buy it. cleaning up after it. all of it.

so, i went back and rewrote a lot of them to get rid of all the food references.

i actually really like these lists from people quite a bit. they're so insightful.

thanks for sharing.

Bezzie said...

Ha ha, in the spirit of #7--a friend and I in college would hop a bus every Friday to the mall and eat frozen yogurt and fondle the velvet shirts in the clothing stores.

I still have a velvet shirt I bought when I was 18 on one of those trips.

Cate said...

I completely know what you mean about Terwilliger. I ran on that road every day in high school and I miss it like CRAZY!

Michael5000 said...

I salute the dorkiness of your methodology! And especially of your post-game wrap-up analysis!

Batty said...

Everyone likes a little bit of drama, I think, but Havarti... yeah, Havarti and crackers. Heaven!

Karin said...

I want Bunny's dad.

gl. said...

@karin: yeah!

@rebel: i'm with you on #11. if i plan it in advance and practice it, i can lie convincingly (erm, not that i need to do that a lot). but i can't do it on the spur of the moment nor embellish it if questioned.

also, now i want some havarti.

Anonymous said...

I also appreciate the true randomness of your meme. That's interesting the two anecdotes about your dad vs. Bunny's dad. It really does help one's self esteem to have positive people to be around.