100 Things Meme
Sep. 22nd, 2003 01:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bktheirregularSnurched from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yahtzee63 and rheanna27:
100 Things About Me Meme
(in no apparent order)
1) I was born within sight of the George Washington Bridge in 1971.
2) I was born one year and one day after my parents met in a bar for the first time.
3) Calling me a bastard may be an insult, but it's technically correct.
4) Growing up, I was always looking smaller than most people in my age group, until I reached college.
5) From my father, I got prematurely graying hair, which has mostly stayed on my head. I wear it short.
6) I've worn both contacts and glasses, though only once at the same time. It's a mistake one quickly realizes.
7) I got myself fitted for contacts solely to allow me to wear sunglasses when the occasion called for it.
8) I've experimented with wearing a short beard, but never got past the itching.
9) I'm just shy of six feet tall, and try and maintain my weight under one hundred eighty pounds.
10) I've never had a steady girlfriend.
11) Looking back, I've had chances to rectify that, all squandered by my cluelessness.
12) I was a target of abuse by my schoolmates through seventh grade in public schools, and was enrolled in a private school thereafter to limit the psychological damage. (This was before Columbine, though I imagine that what the two killers were put through wasn't much worse than what I endured.)
13) The dog did eat my homework once, in sixth grade; I taped the pieces back together and submitted them to the teacher, earning minor distinction as the only person in grade school to *prove* that the dog had eaten his/her homework.
14) My entire life, I have lived within twenty miles of New York City, except for time spent at college.
15) I once bumped into Bill Bradley in the Senate Office Building, and was amazed at how tall he was.
16) I joined my hometown's ambulance corps in high school to satisfy a graduation requirement of community service.
17) My first summer job was working for the billing department of a hospital, between junior and senior years of high school.
18) I made enough money at that job to buy my first car, which cost less than two thousand dollars.
19) I had to pay another thousand dollars to fix a critical flaw in that car's steering shortly after buying it, though.
20) Every car I have ever owned has been a Plymouth or a Dodge.
21) I began college at Dartmouth, concentrating on mathematics and hard sciences.
22) I finished college at Fordham, studying political science, philosophy, and law.
23) I listed my religion as Greek Orthodox, before I realized I had the option of listing "none of the above".
24) I learned Greek in an Orthodox Church-sponsored after-school program, but was pulled from the program when my parents learned the seventh and last year was dedicated to bible study exclusively.
25) I consider myself an agnostic, not an atheist.
26) I wear a size 42 jacket, size 34 pants, and have a sixteen-inch neck.
27) The first show I can remember being a serious fan of was TNG.
28) When I started college in 1989, I got my first computer: a Mac SE with two floppy drives and a 10-MB external hard disk. It would lock up regularly.
29) My hatred of Valentine's Day crystallized in my first year of college, when I got stood up at the last minute for a dance.
30) The only fanfiction I have read anywhere besides the Internet was in a Star Trek "Strange New Worlds" compilation.
31) I have never smoked a cigarette in my life.
32) I have never taken contraband drugs in my life.
33) I made up my mind on 31 after the first time I answered an ambulance call and saw a man with emphysema, whose lifespan at that moment stood at four hours.
34) My fears on 32 were likewise cemented by ambulance duty, after seeing a cocaine user in the throes of paranoia, and mechanically breathing for a user of opiates who could not breathe on her own.
35) My home town has had as many as three country club golf courses at once, none of which listed me as a member, and all of which I have visited as an ambulance tech.
36) I have an irrational fear of moving machines (boats, aircraft, cars etc.) being abandoned while in motion and continuing on their way without any control.
37) I am phobic about wasps of any species, and any stinging insect that invades my personal space is in mortal peril.
38) I have taken a swim in the Dead Sea, and observed that if you stand up straight in the water of the Dead Sea, you float above your shoulders. If you lie on your back, it is almost like being on a soft mattress.
39) I have observed Bastille Day fireworks on the River Seine, which are even more spectacular than what you see in New York on the Fourth of July.
40) I am only three degrees of separation removed from Adolf Hitler. (My father submitted a brief on nuclear-powered rockets to Wehrner von Braun, and states that at that time, he shook the hand that shook the hand of Adolf Hitler. Connections to other historic figures are likely that way as well.)
41) I have been to Kennedy Space Center more times than Disney World.
42) I have never broken a bone.
43) I have never had a cavity.
44) I neglected to wear my seatbelt once in my life as a driver, and that one time I was involved in a car crash that experts told me, had I been belted into the driver's seat, I would have likely died.
45) The crash above left me unable to walk for a week, but did not break any bones in my body. The only physical remnant is a glyph-like scar on the back of my left hand.
46) If all the miles I have traveled in airplanes were added up, they would take me around the world at least ten times, and probably more.
47) Through my life, I have spent more hours in Boeing 747's than in trains of all types, subways included.
48) The branch of my family from which I draw my name landed in New Bedford, Massachusetts, before the American Revolution.
49) I believe I can safely assume that none of my ancestors ever owned a slave.
50) I have had dinner in a house that was once a German commandant's garrison on an occupied Greek island.
51) I have piloted two different boats between the islands of Paros and Sifnos, in the Aegean Sea.
52) I was a fan of the New York Yankees when they were a losing baseball team. (Yes, there was a time when the Yankees were a losing team.)
53) I wrote an original novella my first year in college. It wasn't very good in hindsight.
54) My first "published" (on the Web) fiction was in 2001, for the Buffy fandom.
55) I only discovered the Buffy fandom through a crossover I read with the X-Files.
56) The desktop computer I use was built by myself from scratch.
57) After that, I took spare parts I had lying around and built another computer.
58) Both of them work fine.
59) After college, I took a volunteer job at the local county police academy, and was quickly hired as a part-time clerk, then moved to a full-time position as soon as the academy received a Federal grant for community policing.
60) That job brought me into contact with officers from nearly a hundred police departments in New York and New Jersey, and introduced me to several members of the Port Authority Police Department who would later die in the World Trade Center.
61) I learned of my acceptance to Seton Hall Law School by a phone call informing me I'd been granted a scholarship.
62) I discovered Babylon 5 by watching on a two-inch LCD television in a dorm room in Washington, D.C.
63) I was shocked the first time J. Michael Straczynski responded to a comment I'd made on the Usenet boards by name.
64) The first words I ever spoke were witnessed by a man who would later be beaten out for the Hugo Award by Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.
65) One film I could watch again and again: The Shawshank Redemption.
66) One film everyone seems to like that I can't stand: An Officer And A Gentleman.
67) One film I have watched more times than I would have if I'd had a choice: Top Gun.
68) I once saw Patrick Stewart on Broadway, performing his "Christmas Carol" one-man show. That is my preferred point of reference when mentioning Mr. Stewart to my parents, who also saw the show and were as impressed as I was.
69) I have seen Penn and Teller twice in the theater in New York, and got my program signed by both of them; I interacted with Teller, who does talk when not performing, and at first impression seems to be a nice fellow.
70) I read a number of books at a very young age, because they were actually editions written for people learning English as a second language, that had belonged to my cousins. Three that come to mind: "The Guns of Navarone", "On the Beach", and "From the Earth to the Moon".
71) After reading "On the Beach", I developed a sense of discomfort regarding any apocalyptic fiction. This was only reinforced when "On the Beach" came out.
72) I don't like chocolate. Several people have offered this fact as proof that I am a space alien.
73) To this day, I couldn't say with any certainty whether O.J. Simpson did it. I base this on my own observation of my own gloves, which were of a design very similar to the ones in question, and which I once pulled on without thinking while wearing protective surgical gloves. On noticing this, I tried to contort my hands to the point where the gloves would not fit, and was not able to do so.
74) Newspapers and magazines: I read the New York Times, and when in Europe, the International Herald Tribune.
75) When I was 15, I got a moped so I could commute to school. (In New Jersey, one can get a moped license at fifteen.) I rode it throughout my junior year of high school, despite one crash. When I got my first car, however, I never looked back.
76) Most treasured possession: When I had it, my 1989 Dodge Daytona-Shelby. It had just about everything I could ask for in a car: glass roof panels for an open-air feeling when driving, removable so it was the next best thing to a convertible; powerful turbocharged engine, with a stick shift, that would still get better than twenty miles to the gallon; front-wheel drive, with which I could drive the car in snows that would render most sports cars immobile; and a hatchback with generous cargo space. The car was destroyed in the accident mentioned in 45 above, and I have been searching for one like it ever since.
77) I went to law school while working a 40-hour-a-week job, going directly from the workplace to the classroom four nights a week.
78) I don't drink coffee or tea.
79) My beverage of choice is Coca-Cola Classic, though I'm not incredibly picky.
80) I'm more an evening person than a morning person.
81) At the same time, when necessary, I can go from fast asleep to wide awake within two minutes, probably learned from my time with the ambulance, when the rules called for the ambulance to be rolling five minutes from the time the crew was paged.
82) One time, while writing a paper in law school very close to a deadline, I took caffeine pills to stretch out my working time after an all-nighter. They didn't work, and their effect was harsh enough that I have not done it since.
83) I do not drink alcohol on a regular basis, though I will on occasion have a drink when with friends.
84) I use Microsoft Word when trying to type an outline on the fly; I found the Word outline tool to be the best tool for taking notes in classes, and my lecture note files apparently became legendary among my classmates. For all other tasks, I prefer WordPerfect; in fact, my desk at my last job had a hand-made sign proclaiming "I Hate Microsoft Word".
85) I believe that striving for absolute perfection is a laudable goal, but unattainable.
86) I still have trouble classifying rap as music.
87) The music I devour includes movie soundtracks; my favorite composers in that forum are John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Hans Zimmer. I also like classical music, particularly Beethoven and Handel; my favorite rock music comes from Billy Joel and Mellencamp.
88) I have made copies of nearly every CD I own to use in my car CD player; I once lost a dozen CD's stolen out of my car, and have no desire to repeat the experience. I rely on fair use rules, in that the CD's I have burned, I own.
89) My eyes are nearsighted, but my right eye is much more so than my left.
90) I have one brother; my mother and her sister and her brother each had two children, both male.
91) Somehow, even though brown eyes are genetically dominant and my mother has brown eyes and my father has blue, my brother and I both wound up with sorta greenish eyes.
92) I was informed at college that I sleep with my eyes open.
93) I currently own six pairs of shoes (two pairs dress shoes, one black, one brown; one pair black not-quite-dress shoes; two pairs of boat shoes, one pair in good condition, one pair falling apart; one pair black sneakers) and one pair of boots, which, as I think of it, is more footwear than I imagined I'd ever need in my life.
94) I can tie a basic necktie knot, but not a bow tie.
95) I know of at least one Nobel laureate who lives in my hometown, and he is aware of me because of the time his wife took ill and he called for an ambulance. He already knew my father, and apparently recognized me.
96) I am named directly for my father, except I was given a different middle name because my mother thought having a Roman numeral after one's name would be overly pretentious.
97) That middle name was one of the factors that earned me so much torture in grade school.
98) While working at the police academy, I once entered a firearms simulator competition being given at a national Expo being held at the academy site, and never having shot a bullet from a firearm in my life, I posted a better score in the simulator marksmanship contest than many active-duty police officers.
99) Even after hanging out with police officers for well over a decade, and working on the grounds where police officers are trained for seven years before being laid off, I have never fired a bullet from a gun.
100) I have only purchased two comic books in my life. Both of them were X-Men comics. I don't rightly know why.
Crashing now, I think.
Close entry.
yahtzee63 and rheanna27:100 Things About Me Meme
(in no apparent order)
1) I was born within sight of the George Washington Bridge in 1971.
2) I was born one year and one day after my parents met in a bar for the first time.
3) Calling me a bastard may be an insult, but it's technically correct.
4) Growing up, I was always looking smaller than most people in my age group, until I reached college.
5) From my father, I got prematurely graying hair, which has mostly stayed on my head. I wear it short.
6) I've worn both contacts and glasses, though only once at the same time. It's a mistake one quickly realizes.
7) I got myself fitted for contacts solely to allow me to wear sunglasses when the occasion called for it.
8) I've experimented with wearing a short beard, but never got past the itching.
9) I'm just shy of six feet tall, and try and maintain my weight under one hundred eighty pounds.
10) I've never had a steady girlfriend.
11) Looking back, I've had chances to rectify that, all squandered by my cluelessness.
12) I was a target of abuse by my schoolmates through seventh grade in public schools, and was enrolled in a private school thereafter to limit the psychological damage. (This was before Columbine, though I imagine that what the two killers were put through wasn't much worse than what I endured.)
13) The dog did eat my homework once, in sixth grade; I taped the pieces back together and submitted them to the teacher, earning minor distinction as the only person in grade school to *prove* that the dog had eaten his/her homework.
14) My entire life, I have lived within twenty miles of New York City, except for time spent at college.
15) I once bumped into Bill Bradley in the Senate Office Building, and was amazed at how tall he was.
16) I joined my hometown's ambulance corps in high school to satisfy a graduation requirement of community service.
17) My first summer job was working for the billing department of a hospital, between junior and senior years of high school.
18) I made enough money at that job to buy my first car, which cost less than two thousand dollars.
19) I had to pay another thousand dollars to fix a critical flaw in that car's steering shortly after buying it, though.
20) Every car I have ever owned has been a Plymouth or a Dodge.
21) I began college at Dartmouth, concentrating on mathematics and hard sciences.
22) I finished college at Fordham, studying political science, philosophy, and law.
23) I listed my religion as Greek Orthodox, before I realized I had the option of listing "none of the above".
24) I learned Greek in an Orthodox Church-sponsored after-school program, but was pulled from the program when my parents learned the seventh and last year was dedicated to bible study exclusively.
25) I consider myself an agnostic, not an atheist.
26) I wear a size 42 jacket, size 34 pants, and have a sixteen-inch neck.
27) The first show I can remember being a serious fan of was TNG.
28) When I started college in 1989, I got my first computer: a Mac SE with two floppy drives and a 10-MB external hard disk. It would lock up regularly.
29) My hatred of Valentine's Day crystallized in my first year of college, when I got stood up at the last minute for a dance.
30) The only fanfiction I have read anywhere besides the Internet was in a Star Trek "Strange New Worlds" compilation.
31) I have never smoked a cigarette in my life.
32) I have never taken contraband drugs in my life.
33) I made up my mind on 31 after the first time I answered an ambulance call and saw a man with emphysema, whose lifespan at that moment stood at four hours.
34) My fears on 32 were likewise cemented by ambulance duty, after seeing a cocaine user in the throes of paranoia, and mechanically breathing for a user of opiates who could not breathe on her own.
35) My home town has had as many as three country club golf courses at once, none of which listed me as a member, and all of which I have visited as an ambulance tech.
36) I have an irrational fear of moving machines (boats, aircraft, cars etc.) being abandoned while in motion and continuing on their way without any control.
37) I am phobic about wasps of any species, and any stinging insect that invades my personal space is in mortal peril.
38) I have taken a swim in the Dead Sea, and observed that if you stand up straight in the water of the Dead Sea, you float above your shoulders. If you lie on your back, it is almost like being on a soft mattress.
39) I have observed Bastille Day fireworks on the River Seine, which are even more spectacular than what you see in New York on the Fourth of July.
40) I am only three degrees of separation removed from Adolf Hitler. (My father submitted a brief on nuclear-powered rockets to Wehrner von Braun, and states that at that time, he shook the hand that shook the hand of Adolf Hitler. Connections to other historic figures are likely that way as well.)
41) I have been to Kennedy Space Center more times than Disney World.
42) I have never broken a bone.
43) I have never had a cavity.
44) I neglected to wear my seatbelt once in my life as a driver, and that one time I was involved in a car crash that experts told me, had I been belted into the driver's seat, I would have likely died.
45) The crash above left me unable to walk for a week, but did not break any bones in my body. The only physical remnant is a glyph-like scar on the back of my left hand.
46) If all the miles I have traveled in airplanes were added up, they would take me around the world at least ten times, and probably more.
47) Through my life, I have spent more hours in Boeing 747's than in trains of all types, subways included.
48) The branch of my family from which I draw my name landed in New Bedford, Massachusetts, before the American Revolution.
49) I believe I can safely assume that none of my ancestors ever owned a slave.
50) I have had dinner in a house that was once a German commandant's garrison on an occupied Greek island.
51) I have piloted two different boats between the islands of Paros and Sifnos, in the Aegean Sea.
52) I was a fan of the New York Yankees when they were a losing baseball team. (Yes, there was a time when the Yankees were a losing team.)
53) I wrote an original novella my first year in college. It wasn't very good in hindsight.
54) My first "published" (on the Web) fiction was in 2001, for the Buffy fandom.
55) I only discovered the Buffy fandom through a crossover I read with the X-Files.
56) The desktop computer I use was built by myself from scratch.
57) After that, I took spare parts I had lying around and built another computer.
58) Both of them work fine.
59) After college, I took a volunteer job at the local county police academy, and was quickly hired as a part-time clerk, then moved to a full-time position as soon as the academy received a Federal grant for community policing.
60) That job brought me into contact with officers from nearly a hundred police departments in New York and New Jersey, and introduced me to several members of the Port Authority Police Department who would later die in the World Trade Center.
61) I learned of my acceptance to Seton Hall Law School by a phone call informing me I'd been granted a scholarship.
62) I discovered Babylon 5 by watching on a two-inch LCD television in a dorm room in Washington, D.C.
63) I was shocked the first time J. Michael Straczynski responded to a comment I'd made on the Usenet boards by name.
64) The first words I ever spoke were witnessed by a man who would later be beaten out for the Hugo Award by Arthur C. Clarke and Isaac Asimov.
65) One film I could watch again and again: The Shawshank Redemption.
66) One film everyone seems to like that I can't stand: An Officer And A Gentleman.
67) One film I have watched more times than I would have if I'd had a choice: Top Gun.
68) I once saw Patrick Stewart on Broadway, performing his "Christmas Carol" one-man show. That is my preferred point of reference when mentioning Mr. Stewart to my parents, who also saw the show and were as impressed as I was.
69) I have seen Penn and Teller twice in the theater in New York, and got my program signed by both of them; I interacted with Teller, who does talk when not performing, and at first impression seems to be a nice fellow.
70) I read a number of books at a very young age, because they were actually editions written for people learning English as a second language, that had belonged to my cousins. Three that come to mind: "The Guns of Navarone", "On the Beach", and "From the Earth to the Moon".
71) After reading "On the Beach", I developed a sense of discomfort regarding any apocalyptic fiction. This was only reinforced when "On the Beach" came out.
72) I don't like chocolate. Several people have offered this fact as proof that I am a space alien.
73) To this day, I couldn't say with any certainty whether O.J. Simpson did it. I base this on my own observation of my own gloves, which were of a design very similar to the ones in question, and which I once pulled on without thinking while wearing protective surgical gloves. On noticing this, I tried to contort my hands to the point where the gloves would not fit, and was not able to do so.
74) Newspapers and magazines: I read the New York Times, and when in Europe, the International Herald Tribune.
75) When I was 15, I got a moped so I could commute to school. (In New Jersey, one can get a moped license at fifteen.) I rode it throughout my junior year of high school, despite one crash. When I got my first car, however, I never looked back.
76) Most treasured possession: When I had it, my 1989 Dodge Daytona-Shelby. It had just about everything I could ask for in a car: glass roof panels for an open-air feeling when driving, removable so it was the next best thing to a convertible; powerful turbocharged engine, with a stick shift, that would still get better than twenty miles to the gallon; front-wheel drive, with which I could drive the car in snows that would render most sports cars immobile; and a hatchback with generous cargo space. The car was destroyed in the accident mentioned in 45 above, and I have been searching for one like it ever since.
77) I went to law school while working a 40-hour-a-week job, going directly from the workplace to the classroom four nights a week.
78) I don't drink coffee or tea.
79) My beverage of choice is Coca-Cola Classic, though I'm not incredibly picky.
80) I'm more an evening person than a morning person.
81) At the same time, when necessary, I can go from fast asleep to wide awake within two minutes, probably learned from my time with the ambulance, when the rules called for the ambulance to be rolling five minutes from the time the crew was paged.
82) One time, while writing a paper in law school very close to a deadline, I took caffeine pills to stretch out my working time after an all-nighter. They didn't work, and their effect was harsh enough that I have not done it since.
83) I do not drink alcohol on a regular basis, though I will on occasion have a drink when with friends.
84) I use Microsoft Word when trying to type an outline on the fly; I found the Word outline tool to be the best tool for taking notes in classes, and my lecture note files apparently became legendary among my classmates. For all other tasks, I prefer WordPerfect; in fact, my desk at my last job had a hand-made sign proclaiming "I Hate Microsoft Word".
85) I believe that striving for absolute perfection is a laudable goal, but unattainable.
86) I still have trouble classifying rap as music.
87) The music I devour includes movie soundtracks; my favorite composers in that forum are John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Hans Zimmer. I also like classical music, particularly Beethoven and Handel; my favorite rock music comes from Billy Joel and Mellencamp.
88) I have made copies of nearly every CD I own to use in my car CD player; I once lost a dozen CD's stolen out of my car, and have no desire to repeat the experience. I rely on fair use rules, in that the CD's I have burned, I own.
89) My eyes are nearsighted, but my right eye is much more so than my left.
90) I have one brother; my mother and her sister and her brother each had two children, both male.
91) Somehow, even though brown eyes are genetically dominant and my mother has brown eyes and my father has blue, my brother and I both wound up with sorta greenish eyes.
92) I was informed at college that I sleep with my eyes open.
93) I currently own six pairs of shoes (two pairs dress shoes, one black, one brown; one pair black not-quite-dress shoes; two pairs of boat shoes, one pair in good condition, one pair falling apart; one pair black sneakers) and one pair of boots, which, as I think of it, is more footwear than I imagined I'd ever need in my life.
94) I can tie a basic necktie knot, but not a bow tie.
95) I know of at least one Nobel laureate who lives in my hometown, and he is aware of me because of the time his wife took ill and he called for an ambulance. He already knew my father, and apparently recognized me.
96) I am named directly for my father, except I was given a different middle name because my mother thought having a Roman numeral after one's name would be overly pretentious.
97) That middle name was one of the factors that earned me so much torture in grade school.
98) While working at the police academy, I once entered a firearms simulator competition being given at a national Expo being held at the academy site, and never having shot a bullet from a firearm in my life, I posted a better score in the simulator marksmanship contest than many active-duty police officers.
99) Even after hanging out with police officers for well over a decade, and working on the grounds where police officers are trained for seven years before being laid off, I have never fired a bullet from a gun.
100) I have only purchased two comic books in my life. Both of them were X-Men comics. I don't rightly know why.
Crashing now, I think.
Close entry.