10 things you don’t know about me
Having been tagged over the last week by Harper Thorpe, Indira Reddy, Kittie Phoenix, Terijo, and Jason Stelzner 🌹🍁, I figured it was time for me to write my own one of these. Since I live my life as an open book, finding 10 things that most don’t know about me was hard. I mean you already probably know I have a kid but didn’t give birth — that I have lived in 3 countries — that I have a weird background — that I do social media. So, what to write about? I finally found 10 things that weren’t too deep or too strange… Here goes!
One: I have relearned how to walk more than a dozen times in my life
A life of knee surgeries does that to a person. Every time the pain got too much to handle, every time the effort became too much, the hip would take the weight. Swinging my leg instead of having the muscles do what they should. Do it too long… back to PT. Add in bracing one or the other for months at a time… you get to learn to walk again.
Two: There are foods I just can’t eat.
Coconut and beans — those make sense. I know they will make me sick. But bell peppers? They are just wrong. No food should taste that bad. No food should interfere with every other taste. Almost as bad? Coffee. How can something that smells so good taste so bad? It’s another case where it doesn’t matter what you do to it, that aftertaste is still there.
Three: I am our family’s memory.
Hubby dearest and our son — they don’t remember appointments and birthdays. Though there are things they can both recite you chapter and verse on. For the larger family, I am the repository of the family pictures — or at least for those that survive. Pictures of my mom’s family. Pictures of my dad’s family. Pictures of the three of us growing up. (Sadly, there are few of us after we moved back to the states.)
Four: I love a new suitcase.
I can’t afford to replace mine very often. And hubby dearest never wants to get rid of the old ones. But to me, a new suitcase means new adventures. New things to discover. New people to meet. (And maybe… a bit of new clothing to make myself ready….)
Five: I have been known to take 300 pictures (10 rolls of film) in a day.
Back in the day, before the digital camera, I had a pair of Minolta x-700 camera bodies and a few lenses to go with them. Both were always loaded and almost always at hand. It was part of who I was. I used one of them so much that I wore it out! I have used a few of the pictures for stories at one time or another. The prints and the negatives are both long gone — they take too much space — but the best of the images are on a hard drive now thanks to a scanning project by my husband.
Now, I marvel at the images I can get with my digital camera. I don’t get out to take pictures very often anymore, but when I do… well, I still take way more pictures than you might expect.
Six: I love playing casual games
I grew up playing cutthroat Hearts, Scrabble, Yahtzee, Racko, Solitare, and so many other games. I still love playing them, but now I am much more likely to play on the computer than in real life. I kept in touch with my mother for the last 8 years of her life by playing an online version of scrabble. We almost always had a game going. Kept us talking, even when times are rough. Now, I play close to 30 different Scrabble-equivalent games just about every day. (Where? Words with Friends2 and Scrabulous.) I love any game where I don’t have to react immediately all the time. (Think Match 3 type games, trivia games, etc.) I may not play as well or as fast as I used to be able to, but I still love playing!
Seven: I love words — new ones, old ones, punny ones, etc.
I post a “Word of the day” on Facebook and Twitter most week days about 4:pm California time. I go for words that will cause people to react and comment. The project started 9 years ago as an outlet for a team I was leading and I never stopped. My love of words comes from my mother. It is why I love reading, writing, and playing word games. My love of puns comes from my dad.
Eight: I have never been able to pick favorites
Growing up, when anyone asked my favorite color, I would answer “rainbows”. That didn’t change much when I became an adult. Purses, bags, etc. are of a signature color… usually red, since it is Bruce’s favorite color. Blue and green have had their turn, but I always go back to red.
Authors, movies, music, computer platform… same thing. I have three favorite authors, three favorite movies, multiple favorite musicians. Oh, you want to know who?
Authors: L.M. Montgomery, Anne McCaffrey, Mercedes Lackey… there are lots of others below that, but that list has been the same for years.
Movies: Princess Bride, Love Actually, Labyrinth…. There are others I can quote from memory, but these three are my go to movies.
Musicians: Bowie, Prince, Fleetwood Mac, John Denver, Lady Gaga, Air Supply, and so many more…
As for computer platforms… I am platform agnostic. That may come as a surprise, considering the fact that I am a former Microsoft MVP, but it shouldn’t. We have computers here at home of almost every current operating system. Back when I did support and training for a living, it would drive people nuts that I could close my eyes and walk through the process to do almost anything Office on either Mac or PC.
Nine: I love stuffed animals
You may have met only Scott and Bobbi, but they have lots of brothers and sisters. At one point I had over a hundred stuffed animals. As we have downsized, so has the collection. I still have 30ish, but they are all small enough that they fit in one box when we move.
Two of the animals always come with us when we travel. Scott has been all over the US. Bobbi used to travel with us too, but he’s an old retired bear now and stays home. (Who comes with besides Scott? That changes from trip to trip.)
Ten: We have hosted some strange URLs
Hubby and I have had all kinds of unique web sites over the years. ComputerHistory, OutdoorCook, PowerPointAnswers, OnPPT, Mindlessfluff, VitaminCH, the list goes on. Many of these are long gone, but they live on in our hearts. Each of them has their unique story, their own unique reason for being.
In the early 2000’s, we had a webserver in our house and a commercial level connection. I look back now and marvel at the fact that that connection was slower than the one I get on my mobile now. We still have a virtual server, it just doesn’t live with us anymore. (At the moment we have 2, but that’s another story.)
So that’s 10 things you probably didn’t know about me.
Who to tag next… decisions decisions…. Dennett, you have a great story to tell, share please. Gosia, I know, you are focusing on one liners, but do one of these please. Zev, Fierce Force 💃🏼, Sherry Kappel, I would love to hear your stories too. Oh — and Patsy Starke hasn’t done one either!
