100 Random Facts About Me

You know, in case you have an extra few minutes you won't mind never getting back.

1. I'm addicted to Diet Coke.

2. I took 10 years of piano lessons.

3. I took 7 years of guitar lessons.

4. Between the ages of 12 and 16, I learned how to play the clarinet (and all its lower-toned counterparts), the saxaphone (and its lower-toned counterparts), and the trombone. Loved the trombone.

5. I love to sing. Most don't love to hear me sing.

6. I love, love, LOVE to dance. I'm not trained or anything, I just love gettin' down wit' my bad self.

7. The first movie I saw in the theater was "Follow That Bird."

8. The first time I saw "E.T." I ran out of the room crying when it was thought that E.T. died. I had to be coaxed back in by my mom with reassurance that E.T. did not, in fact, die.

9. I was born on September 10, 1979 at 6:58 a.m.

10. My dad played my birth time, 6:58, as his Daily Lotto numbers for a full 16 years.

11. I hate feet. All feet. They freak me out. Except baby feet, I love baby feet.

12. I get a headache if I go for more than 24 hours without showering. You laugh, but my head hurts if my hair's too dirty.

13. I suffered from pretty bad migraines before I had my first child. They went away with my pregnancy with her. Since having my son, they've come back.

14. When I was little, I wanted to be a pediatrician. Then I discovered that science was my 2nd worst subject in school.

15. Math ran the slot of "Worst Subject in School."

16. My senior year of high school, I opted out of pre-calculous to take Art III. I never took Arts I or II.

17. I was born and raised Catholic.

18. I left the Catholic church when I was 18 and started attending the Church of Christ.

19. I abandoned all Christianity and became an Agnostic when I was 20.

20. My dad passed away on August 20, 1996, just three weeks shy of my 17th birthday.

21. My uncle, his brother, passed away on August 19, 1995, one year and one day earlier, of the same exact form of cancer.

22. I love reading Dr. Seuss to my kids.

23. I love cold weather.

24. I kill every plant I attempt to keep. I even killed a cactus.

25. I wore braces from 1992 through 1994. It closed the gap between my two front teeth. I was horrible about wearing my retainer and now, 15 years later, the gap is back. Damn.

26. I love carmelized and sauteed onions. I HATE raw onions.

27. I'm a Republican but I support gay marriage and think the Right's defense of and reasons for banning it are absurd.

28. I started off college majoring in psychology. Switched to English during my sophomore year.

29. The older I get, the darker my natural hair color gets.

30. I wish I was more girly.

31. I spent 10 days in London, England and Edinburgh, Scotland when I was a freshman in college.

32. I absolutely love the Pacific coastline. Beats the pants off the Atlantic coastline.

33. My first CD ever was Bryan Adams "Waking Up the Neighbours."

34. I got it with my first CD player, built into a JVC boombox, for Christmas in 1993.

35. I can't wear cheap jewelry, it causes my skin to break into an itchy rash.

36. I'm very prissy. I hate getting dirty.

37. On the right day, I'll make a total ass out of myself in public for the sake of a laugh.

38. I sing in grocery stores. Pretty loudly.

39. I was a pack-a-day smoker for five years. Marlboro Lights, mostly.

40. I graduated high school in a class of 83 people.

41. I love music, all decades, almost all genres.

42. I consider very little rap to be music. I prefer old-school rap, like, pre-2000.

43. "Drops of Jupiter" always makes me smile. It reminds me of the lazy, drunk summer before I met my husband.

44. My eyes are hazel, but change color depending on what I'm wearing or if I'm crying.

45. I have allergy problems almost year-round.

46. I was a high school cheerleader.

47. I love watching reruns of '90s TV shows. "Roseanne," "Home Improvement," and "Friends," mostly.

48. I never really liked "Seinfeld." Blasphemy, I know.

49. I've never ridden a public bus. The Happy Bus doesn't count.

50. I slammed the middle finger on my right hand in my dad's truck door when I was seven. The nail hasn't grown right since.

51. I've lived in the Bay Area for 5.5 years. Thursday will be the first time I've driven over a trans-bay bridge by myself. My husband always does the driving!

52. I adore sad songs, especially sad country songs. Ever hear Vern Gosdin's "Chiseled in Stone" or George Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today?" You should. That is, if you're in the mood to be sad.

53. I have four little, girly tattoos, all flash art. I want to get a huge back piece done, or possibly something on my arm.

54. I was the choir accompanist for four years in high school.

55. I have a fantastic long-term memory. My short-term memory sucks.

56. I wish I'd grown up in the 40s and 50s. So idyllic and simple.

57. I miss smoking.

58. I hope to someday furnish my house with Pottery Barn furniture. Ha ha. Better start playing the lottery, huh?

59. I have no patience for stupid people. Seriously. They fry my brain.

60. I hate wine. I can't stand the taste of it. Give me a beer!

61. I gnash my teeth when people confuse "redneck" with "white trash." THEY'RE NOT THE SAME!!!

62. When I was younger, I worshipped the sun.

63. I'm a obsessive shampoo & conditioner tryer. I still haven't found the perfect combination for my hair. I'm open to suggestions.

64. I can't go into animal shelters unless I know for sure I'm taking an animal home with me. Otherwise, I'll spend the day feeling guilty and crying.

65. I have no hobbies. How sad is that?

66. Celebrities I can't stand: Rosie O'Donnell, Paris Hilton, and Oprah Winfrey. See tomorrow's blog to find out why.

67. Every time I get address labels from St. Jude's, I feel guilty as hell for using them when I can't afford to donate money.

68. I love riding beach cruisers in beach towns. I've actually only done this once, in Cape May, New Jersey, but it was fantastic!

69. I used to have seven piercings in my left ear and six in my right ear. Now I'm down to one in each lobe and I rarely wear earrings in them.

70. I keep a change cup on my kitchen counter and when I have about $7.00, I buy hubby and I a pint of ice cream. Bad idea, healthwise? Yep. Tasty? You betcha.

71. I'm the nosiest person you'll ever meet. I'll ask intrusive questions, I'll snoop, I'll spy...and I'm pretty damn stealthy about it too. I know it's rude, but I can't help it, I need to be in the know.

72. For all my talk about how strained my relationship with my mom is, I'm scared to death of her dying. I don't want to be parentless and I sometimes get angry that she had me so late in life that I'll be losing my mom when I'm in my 30s.

73. I hate speaking in front of large crowds. Thankfully, I haven't had to do this since college. I clam up, I stutter, I turn nine shades of red, and I have enormous brain farts.

74. I had the typical, small-town life growing up and I wish I could make my husband see that our kids would benefit from that kind of life.

75. I miss seeing the colors of the fall in the northeast. It's just not the same out here.

76. I love traveling. I wish I could do it more often.

77. I'm not afraid to create a scene if there's been an injustice. It's only happened a few times but on all those occasions, I was loud.

78. I'm very curious about Big Brother. Not the TV show. You know. The Eye in the Sky. The Man. I would kill to be a fly on the wall in certain rooms of the CIA.

79. I kind of want to be a Mythtern. You know, work with the Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel. How fun would that be?

80. I have a small obsession with office supplies. I can't go into a Staples, Office Max, or even the office supply aisle at Wal-Mart without getting a high off the reams of paper and ballpoint pens.

81. One of my guilty pleasures: "reality" shows on MTV marketed towards teens and college students. "Parental Control" and "Next" are among them.

82. I really enjoy taking pictures. I'm not particularly good at it but I love capturing faces.

83. I don't like ice with my fountain drinks. Two reasons: It waters down the soda and if I'm paying $1.50+ for a drink, I'm getting my money's worth. No sense using up cup space with ice.

84. I secretly, in a non-malicious way, wish that one of our fish would die. It's the Moor in the tank, and since day one he's had a swim bladder problem, and all he does is float around, upside down, at the top of the water. I don't have the heart to flush a living fish, but it's annoying to see him taking up space, sucking in oxygen that would better serve the more lively fish.

85. I love TV. It's such an easy escape. For a few hours every night, my mind catches a break from all the stress and worry in my life and I watch a few dramas, some comedy, and some real-life stuff that make me laugh. I love laughter and I feel you can never have too much laughter in your life.

86. I always pictured myself working in some city high-rise, living in a shoebox apartment in some major metropolis, eating Chinese take-out every night.

87. My kids are the best decisions I ever made. They're beautiful, smart and funny and they are truly the lights of my life.

88. I'm a grammar and spelling snob. I even joined the Facebook group: "I judge you when you use poor grammar." I also get annoyed when people misuse words they obviously don't understand.

89. Margarine seriously disturbs me. Anything that's supposed to resemble butter should melt after two minutes in any microwave. Margarine won't. That, or my microwave has a fundamental opposition towards margarine. Oh, and I don't normally buy margarine. I prefer real butter. Sometimes, though, the budget only allows margarine.

90. I'm one of those abides-by-every-traffic-law-known-to-man people. I annoy myself sometimes.

91. I do a crossword puzzle every day. We get two newspapers and I do the crosswords in both of them, sometimes the Word Jumble, and the Asimov Test. Rob does the Sudoku.

92. My wedding rings are yellow gold. I wish we'd gone with platinum.

93. I wish we didn't have a checking account. But then we'd have to remember to pay all our bills and chances are because we pay all but one bill online and chances are, we'd forget.

94. I can recite the script, in sync with the movie (it has to be playing) "Dirty Dancing." Same can be said, more or less, for "Office Space."

95. I love board games, especially Monopoly. The problem is, I always lose, and I'm a pretty sore loser.

96. I bowl and play pool best when I've been drinking.

97. I believe, 100%, in spirits and the afterlife. I've spoken to them in dreams and believe that they're around us all the time and "communicating" to us in other non-verbal ways.

98. When I was really little, two of my older cousins told me that if they stuck a piece of paper in our grandma's 8-track player that the world would blow up. I believed them. I ran out to the driveway and hid behind my grandparent's station wagon.

99. Said cousins labeled me the Queen of England, I think because of my penchant for always getting them in trouble. I was the youngest (in the geographic area; we had two younger cousins in New York) and I got teased a lot and tricked into a lot of things and so I did a lot of ratting out. Heh.

100. I played softball and volleyball in elementary school and junior high. I was pretty good at both but I quit both when I was 15 - figured I wasn't good enough for high school level sports - and I always wish I'd tried.