No, no, no...no bugles involved. We still don't know what meme actually means in the context of the blogging world, but I like them. Because usually they involve talking about me. Me. ME.
I've been tapped with two recently and I figured I'd better get them out!
Okay, first, Beppe wants to know 5 idiosyncrasies about me...
id·i·o·syn·cra·sy
n. pl. id·i·o·syn·cra·sies
1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group.
2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity.
3. An unusual individual reaction to food or a drug.
Well...this has turned out to be harder than I expected. This list is very random. Honestly there aren't that many things that are peculiar just to me. In fact, I bet nothing on this list is. As for unusal reactions to drugs, some antibiotics make me throw up. But that's not unusual. It's just gross. Here goes.
*I've been on an informal ice-cream strike ever since "Jerry's Jubilee" a flavour that was half Cherries Garcia and half Chocolate Fudge Brownie was discontinued. I've been relenting, lately. And the Cherries Garcia frozen yogurt is not bad. I've been tempted several times to make my own Jerries Jubilee...but it seeems so indulgent...
*I twitch and shift my legs, hands, feet, fingers all day but somehow manage to sit (mostly) still in meeting. Proof of the existence of God?
*I wait anxiously for the cold weather to arrive so that I can sleep under my 30 lbs of blankets. I sleep so much better that way!
*When I cook, I have to be very, very careful to scale things down, but still hardly ever manage to make the right amount. After making spaghetti a thousand times for my family, I can't wrap my mind around the tiny amount you need for one or two people.
*I honestly know I'm not as weird as I think I am, and so I can't think of anything cool or weird enough to fill out the fifth spot?
Was that lame?
Next,
Seven Things
(This feels a litle like answering paegent questions!)
7 Things I Can Do:
* Train a dog.
* Raise kids. (Well, I'm pretty sure that I could. I've had practice.)
* Read between 2-5 whole books a week.
* Milk a goat.
* Remember my dreams when I wake up.
* Remember inane little things from before the age of 2.
* Obsess over irrelevant details until you run screaming from the room.
7 Things I Can't Do:
* can't do any decent jumps in the center portion of ballet class.
* can't skip rope double dutch. I used to be able to, but no more.
* can't find anything I need when I need it.
* can't swear to be on time.
* can't sleep if there's anything to look forward to tomorrow.
* can't do algebra.
* can't remember to do my laundry before I run out of underpants.
7 Celebrity Crushes:
Okay, not all of these are current. I don't think I could sustain seven crushes at once anyways. And I don't think that I've really crushed on all of these people, but they're ones I've thought were cute at one point or another. Plus, no particular order.
* Harrison Ford, but only if George Lucas is involved.
* Liam Neeson, but only as a painfully noble IRA leader.
* Jake Gyllenhaal, but only in October Sky.
* Rob Thomas, but only because I was fourteen. (shut up!)
* Nicole Kidman, but only as Virginia Woolf.
* Ewan McGregor. All the time.
* Erm, I'm out of celebrities.
7 Things I Find Attractive (changed from "Attract Me To the Opposite Sex"):
* Height. I know it's shallow, but it's fun to tip your chin back for a kiss.
* A strong sense of silliness.
* A bit of a baby face.
* Nice eyebrows.
* Big eyes.
* Nerdiness.
* Patience.
7 Things I Hope To Do Before I Die:
* Live on a farm again.
* Dance en pointe.
* Achieve zero gravity!
* Adopt a baby.
* Become fluent in French and Spanish.
* Visit Argentina and meet my father's family.
* Scuba dive and do that thing where you tickle a clown fish under the chin and give the camera a thumbs-up.
7 Things I Say Often:
* "Oh, expletive, I left my purse ___________! Aaaaaaaaaargh!"
* "Oh, expletive, I'm supposed to be there in five minutes!"
* "Pugsley, you smell horrible."
* "Pugsley, please stop licking your nose."
* "Whoops, sorry."
* "Hmmmm. I don't know."
* "I love you."
7 Bloggers I Would Like To Infect With This Meme:
*Twink
*Claire
*Rob
*Beppe
*Kate
*I'm embarassed to ask most people their celebrity crushes, so that's it for now.
Also, I found this on Polly's blog, and it's funny. You google your name with the word "needs" after it and find out wat you really need. Here are my best ones:
*Amanda Needs Herself A WIDESCREEN TV.
*Amanda needs your help building her bike! (no, Jeff, seriously, it was there when I googled!)
*Amanda needs to know: Why?
*Amanda needs wisdom & strength to do what is right.
*Amanda needs to relax.
*Amanda needs to chill out.
*Amanda needs to suck on a pacifier to clear her ears
Of The Best Stuff, but Cracked
8 comments:
"Honestly there aren't that many things that are peculiar just to me."
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
???????????????????????
ahhhhhh eeeeerrrrrr emmmmm
:0
:D
:p
:)
oooohhhhhh.... ahhhh
well....
hmmmm
ah....
Oh, my my my....
:)
Ack,
I tried the google thing, because that is just the sort of thing I would waste the rest of my life on given the right circumstances.
And the first two things were
Pam needs Sperm donor (I have been thinking about it)
and Pam needs turbulence
(being, of course, something about Pamela Anderson and a stalker - I can't bear to read enough to actually understand the context, and how to wash the non-stick spray - which I have never used, off your pans - I thought it didnt' stick?)
:)
Pam
PS on the google thing... there are only two hits for lorcan needs...
hit # 1. "I'm fully equipped, but maybe Lorcan needs some gear"
&
Hit # 2. "the Alliance it seems needs men like Lorcan and this might what Lorcan needs to
bring him "back on track" and into mainstreem society again. ..."
!!!!!! Gee, dunno I wanna be in maistreem society again, whatsit pay?
:)
lor
I've done the "all about me" meme once already. (I think it isin my Auigust archives).
As for the google thing:
"Kate needs to be able to reload a file automatically.."
"Kate needs better keyboard usability"
"Kate needs to be genuine" (well, yeah, but I hope I already do a decent job of that).
"Kate needs to go back to living in her car and working at the diner" Hmmm....or not.
And the most disturbing, "Kate needs a shave" (from this strange page: http://www.bubblestheartist.com/htm/kateneedsashave.htm)
Kaaaaaate...that was a different one. The 5 Things one. You do this one and I'll do that one.
We should also make up a new one some time.
Alright, here's my best shot..
Seven Things
Seven Things I can Do:
-stay up all night
-stay awake in class [and pay attention and take notes] (even after staying up all night) even with the most impossibly difficult weight on my eyelids (it's like doing push ups with your eyelids - an uneasy task, indeed)
-make silly faces from time to time
-adapt to new surroundings with relative ease (in many senses)
-take decent black and white photos (film), and also develop those black and white photos
-play the xylophone (though I'm quite rusty right now)
-play goalkeeper in soccer
7 things I can't do
-knit
-get the wireless to work on my laptop again (it stopped yesterday, ugh!)
-remember how to play poker (I only remember for a couple days each time I'm taught. Then it's gone again.)
-go for too long without listening to music
-make little decisions, like where to go to eat with friends, or what kind of such and such a thing to buy (I often just throw up my arms in indecision and leave before getting anything. Sometimes this is for the better. Sometimes not.)
7 Celebrity Crushes:
-honestly, I was never one to pay a ton of attention; I don't think I ever really had celebrity crushes! Lame answer I know. I promise I'm not just saying this!
7 Things I Find Attractive:
-patience
-understanding beyond superficial things; a deeper understanding
-a passion for something
-an open-ness
-depth
-the ability to love gracefully
-a nonjudgemental approach to others
7 Thing I Hope to Do before I Die:
-GO TO EUROPE
-possibly take a decent amount of time off just for Quaker things
-do positive scientific research (biochemistry or immunology would be nice)
-live in a place where you can't hear a constant hum of cars
-visit Alaska
-possibly visit Africa
-go sky diving
7 Things I Say Often
-"indeed"
-"how's it goin'?"
-"you doin' ok?"
-"it happens"
-"I can't I've got [insert class, lab, club soccer, or some other obligation here] to go to soon"
-"take a deep breath, you'll get through it; you can do it!"
-"Taje! Go to bed! Promise me you'll go to bed before 4am this time, ok?"
Something similar to googling your name + "needs"; go to www.googlism.com and type in your name. Here's some of mine:
claire is moving london
claire is a city of bridges
claire is a communications agency specialized in new media
claire is beginning a journey
claire is a small community of about 7 (one of my favorites)
claire is a northeast atlanta neighborhood that features a great mix of home styles
claire is a private elementary school that has the following objectives (another favorite)
Thanks for giving me an excuse to take a break and do something different!
Love and Light,
Claire
What was I doing 50, 40, 30, 20 and 10 years ago? (This is a game you can't play yet, Amanda, but someday you will be old enough).
50 years ago (1955): I was 8 years old and in the third grade. I lived with my parents in a 2-bedroom-trailer parked in a trailer park in Sheridan, New York (somewhere up in the far west corner near Buffalo). My father was a construction worker and was helping build a leg of the New York State Thruway. Sometimes a truck crane would go by the trailer park or the school I went to, and my father would be driving.
My school was a one-room schoolhouse (no kidding!) that housed grades 1 - 4. Older kids went to nearby Silver Springs to a larger more centralized school. My sister and I walked about a mile to school every day. Along the way we sometimes had to pass a field with a tethered bull in it and this seemed very frightening. (Actually, we always had to pass the field but it only sometimes had a tethered bull in it). I suffered from migraine headaches at this period - often waking early in the morning with unbelievable throbbing pain in my head, weird visual effects, overwhelming nausea, violent vomiting, and soaking sweat. It would last a few hours, then I would get better and go shakily to school for the afternoon session. My life plan? Grow up to be a minister.
40 years ago (1965): I was eighteen years old and had just started college in SUNY Albany. The university's new campus was under construction and the dorm I was assigned to was behind schedule, so my roommates and I were housed at no additional expense (and no discount) at a Thruway Motor Inn. One of my roommates was a Goldwater Republican and a Christian Scientist. I was a civil-rightsy liberal pacifist atheist. I stayed in close contact with this roommate for many years and still count him as a friend. He has become much more liberal politically and I have turned much more conservative religiously (at least in the Quaker sense of "conservative"). My life plan? Become a high school math or science teacher.
30 years ago (1975): I was 28 years old. I still had no undergraduate degree, having dropped out of SUNY Albany in the middle of the first semester of my Junior year. I had well over 10 arrests, mostly on very minor charges connected with demonstrations, on my record. Over the intervening years I had discovered God, been married and divorced, lived in two communes, become a Christian (or begun to become one, let's be honest), worked for War Tax Resistance, worked for the Quakers, endured some scary times of unemployment, been burgled and robbed, been indicted and tried for draft resistance (and released on probation). Now I was back in school (Hunter College), was falling in love with a stunningly beautiful and deeply spiritual Catholic woman (Janet Accetta), and was getting involved in 15th Street Quaker Meeting. I went around wearing a Quaker-style black hat. My life plan: Graduate, become a high school Social Studies teacher, get married.
20 years ago (1985): I was 38 years old and finally a college graduate (though that hadn't finally happened until 1979). I was married to the afore-mentioned Janet Accetta, we had a four-year-old boy named Nicholas, and I was working as a computer programmer for a hospital. There had been some health issues in the family, and this had taken a toll on me (even though I wasn't the one who endured the illness itself). In less than a year (sometime in 1986) I would begin a major mid-life crisis, tormented by the thought that I was becoming become middle-everyghing: middle-aged, middle-class, middle-of-the-road, and mediocre. (At the time, for some reason, I thought that the approaching BIG-40 was middle age. I recognize it now as late-youth.) My Life Plan? none in sight, except to somehow become a better father, better husband, and better member of my Quaker Meeting. I began seeing a therapist and continued doing so for 3 or four years.
10 years ago (1995). I was 48 years old. This was the year that I bought the car I still drive today. Janet and I were (and are) still very much together. She, by then, was a hospital social worker. Our son, Nick, was going to high school. My father and Janet's father had both died. There are no words for the impact their illnesses and their deaths had on us.
I was a low-level manager in the information services department at New York hospital, with several people reporting to me. I was getting paid more than I had ever dreamed of earning, but I was also knee-deep in debt for complicated reasons I won't go into here (it wasn't wild extravagant living, though, I will say that). My life plan? Keep on doing what I was doing until 65. Retire my debts, retire myself, devote my post-retirement years to good works.
Five years ago (2000). I was 53 years old. My mother had died: another great grief but somehow more bearable than when my father had died (less suffering for her? more preparation for me?). Nick was out of high school, but not at all settled on a life direction (wonder where he got that from?) I had served 3 years as clerk of 15th Street Meeting. I lost my job in January 2000 because of downsizing in the consulting company I had jumped to from New York Hospital. I nearly had to go bankrupt because of my debts and lack of saving. But a new job came along just in time (in March). It also helped that Janet was still working, too, at that time. My life plan? No plan at that time. Just trying to find the next step forward.
Now:
Still employed where I was 5 years ago. Pretty active in the Meeting (currently on Minsitry and Worship Committee), starting to do some blogging. Janet is unemployed and we're struggling, but I guess we're more used to it. Our current lifestyle is modest, but we spend extravagantly on interest payments for the past (at which time our life style was also modest, so it's a little hard to figure out).
My Life Plan? Proceed as way opens.
2:42 PM
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