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Sunday, January 11, 2009

Random Thoughts-



OK, here is my reply to Sarah on Facebook. The challenge is to post 25 random things about you. All you BLOGGERS, go nuts!!

(yes, that is me gathering corn at age 5).

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1. It doesn’t matter what time I go to bed, I’m awake and unable to sleep after sunrise. I love waking up with the sun, but on the very rare occasions when I get to bed at 2 a.m., it’s a drag.

2. In my 20s I was a part-time roadie for several Boston-area bands.

3. I love ducks. In my 30s I raised multiple families of domestic ducks, and invented the under-appreciated wintertime folk art of “Ducky Doodles”, for which you need 400 wild mallards, 20 pounds of cracked corn, and something pithy (or rude) you want to spell out in the snow.

4. I have a profound fear of heights (or, as somebody wise once pointed out, of edges).

5. My secret unfulfilled career ambition would be to write a daily cartoon strip.

6. About the same time I was raising ducks I also raised house finches, and one Christmas let them loose for a week so they could roost in the Xmas tree. They enjoyed themselves tremendously, and it was great fun to have them singing away in the tree, but (after cleaning up) I decided it was not an experiment which was worth repeating.

7. Amy & I amuse/embarrass/irritate people by breaking into duets of Tom Leher songs at the slightest provocation.

8. I love Summertime more than any other season.

9. Someday I want to spend a month chasing tornadoes.

10. I really cannot think of any other house, town or region I’d rather live in than where I live now.

11. In my one experience with group therapy, I managed to make every single member of the group hate me within 4 weeks. In the years since, I’ve come to take an odd, perverse pride in that accomplishment.

12. I’ve written two unpublished novels and a few unproduced plays. I want to get back to setting time aside each day for a new project, but keep putting it off.

13. I graduated high school in three years, took a “year off” before college, and became a living example of my guidance counselor’s warning to students that if you don’t apply to a college during your year off, you may wind up never going at all. To paraphrase Catherine Aird’s advice- "If you can't be a good example, then take pride in serving as a horrible warning."

14. I love parsnips.

15. I took 3 years of Latin in high school and am going to take it back up (someday). It’s a wonderful language.

16. I make a mean red sauce.

17. I love Zydeco music & dancing, of which, sadly, there is not much in Happy Valley.

18. I have what some have termed “a disturbing ability” to recite the lyrics to bad ‘70s and ‘80s songs.

19. We moved here in 2005, and I’m still unpacking boxes.

20. I want to create a medieval herb garden in the back yard.

21. I wish I had someone to play chess with on a regular basis.

22. As a kid I was pathologically shy, and as an adult am not a lot better.

23. I love tomatoes in any form (fresh, frozen, canned, dried) in any dish, at any meal.

24. In the 1st through 4th grades, between 1968 and 1972, I was schooled in a Pioneer Valley “Progressive” open-classroom school (the Common School), staffed by a mix of dedicated longtime teachers and UMass graduate students, where we painted a map of India on the floor, raised chickens in the classroom, and took a trip to New York where we stayed at teacher’s friends apartments.

25. I take much, much too much time over things like this, because I tend to overthink everything.

9 comments:

Catalyst said...

Oh, I don't think you're so shy.

Mrs. Chili said...

We are alike in numbers 7 (though, for Mr. Chili and I, it's Hunt for Red October quotes), 8, 16, and 18 (really, all Mr. Chili has to do to piss me off is hum a few bars of some terrible 70s song, because he KNOWS it'll be stuck in my head ALL FRICKIN DAY...)

I don't know if I can come up with 25 things that I haven't already said about me on my blog. Maybe I've been at this too long...

Commander Zaius said...

As a kid I was pathologically shy, and as an adult am not a lot better.

I was exactly the same way in school, got better in my twenties but find myself slipping back now. Can't quite explain it and maybe I don't want too.

Malach the Merciless said...

Very interesting, now if you send me some hair, my voodoo doll will be complete!

Mike said...

Interesting, but you can't be all that shy if you spontaneously break into Tom Leher songs.

I would only chase tornadoes if Helen Hunt was there helping me.

Hungry Mother said...

Good list! I do a lot of bird watching, but no bird raising; maybe I should take it up.

Moooooog35 said...

What's a medieval herb?

The Preacherman said...

Never do this on me own blog but being a cheeky git I do it here...

1)I have rarely been entirely sober for more than a few days since 1976
2)I have eaten chicken vindaloo washed down with beer for breakfast many times
3)I blew up my parents garage with their car in it and the street had to be evacuated
4)I ran over Glen Matlock (Sex Pistols) riding downstairs on a drinks tray in 1977
5)I shagged a famous person before she was famous
6)I flooded my parents street and five homes had to be evacuated
7)I fell off my bar stool after being head butted on the nose and didn't spill a drop of my beer on the way down
8)I was once rescued from a fight with three men who had assaulted a woman by an ex member of the Mujahadeen in Staines, England.
9)I once woke up in a front garden in West Ham and was given breakfast by an old lady
10)I was a Police Cadet
11)I was a bus driver
12)I was a Financial Advisor
13)I once drank a hotel in Eastern Germany dry of a particular brand of beer - Kostriger
14)I have tried every form of chemical available up to 1983
apart from injecting anything
15)I once sold my body to an older woman
16)I was once asked for a refund by an older woman
17)I am addicted to vodka
18)I am addicted to sex
19)I have a tendancy to be addicted to things
20)I love Subbuteo Table Football
21)I had a schoolboy trial for Manchester City FC at 15 years old
22)I arrived for a trial at Manchester City FC drunk
23)I crashed a large bus into a police car
24)I am constantly amazed at being alive
25)I idolise Homer Simpson

There's random....

Malicious Intent said...

adorable pic of you picking corn. And everyone knows that is the ONLY way to truly enjoy it. Pick and in a pot of hot water immediately, or toss on grill.

1.I have some sleep issues too. Cannot sleep once light out and once awake no going back...I realize I am in pain!

2.I was a roadie too, although I think I played a different role.

3. I raised ducks too! Mallards...they were great. Until one day I forgot to clip wings and they ended up in the neighbors pool. Well it did look like a pond.

4.I generally don't like heights or "edges." Tall buildings scare me...but I was ok flying in that blackhawk, go figure.

5. Before I lost the ability to draw with my hands, I wanted a daily cartoon strip. A paper even came out and did a story on me....but alas it was not meant to be.

6. We always found baby robins and brought them home, raised them and let them fly around the house. Yeah, same problem.

7. I ain't touching that one.

8. Summer and Fall here. Winter would be nice if we got some frigg'n snow!

9. OMG, I so want to do that too. They are fascinating, what an adrenaline rush. They do tours for that now I think.

10. I just cannot think.

11. I am proud of you for that.

12. I have a book in my head. I want to write but do not consider myself good enough to do a book. However blogging helps me practice...it's like the last great art form I have not conquered yet.

13.I think I was in high school for 5 years. I liked it that much. Nah, had major medical problems one year and only way to catch up was to start that year over.

14. I prefer them mashed myself.

15. I use to know quite a bit of Latin from all of the science classes I took. Since I have an incurable case of CRS...it has been lost forever.

16. I make a nice red sauce.

17. Zydeco rocks, we have been toying around with a Zydeco band for our auction for years. This might be the year. Fun!

18. You scare me that you remember the 70's, because if you did it right, you shouldn't remember shit. 80's are easy...same song, different lead singer.

19. I am never moving again.

20. I have an herb garden, but I want to use the herbs....so it's not medieval...they would be yucky & old otherwise.

21. It really is sad that the art/game of chess is not seen played that often. Kids in my neighborhood all knew how to play and we did often. Sadly that damn CRS has erased the moves.

22. Wallflower, not.

23. Is love for a vegetable (actually it is a fruit) normal or healthy?

24. Your school was more fun than mine. We had the first generation of "busing" where they moved kids from their feeder patterns to just mix city kids with suburbia kids. Problem was, suburbia kids didn't know about racism, but the city kids did and kicked our asses all the time just because they could.

25. It's ok, I have OCD too.