25 Random Things

If you're a Facebook user, you may recall a lot of your friends in 2009 posted lists of "25 random things" about themselves as a Facebook note. A friend of mine, Gary, recently posted his list from that era and suggested others do the same. I think this is a great idea and I'd love to read others' lists if they're up for posting them.

I dug mine up and post it here. Of course I would, as it states in #1, I'm my own favorite subject, so I'm happy for the option to share this stuff about me. In rereading the list, I see that a lot has changed in the 3 years since I wrote this. My Dad and my favorite dog ever, Sally, have both died. Sally just over 2 years ago. My Dad in May of 2010. I no longer have a job (yay!).

Without further ado, my 2009 25 random things ....

1. I am my own favorite subject (so this kind of exercise is really fun!).
2. Because of #1, I often share too much information about my personal life to those I know only professionally or as casual acquaintances.
3. In my best moments, I wonder how Skip (my wife) has been able to put up with me for almost 28 years.
4. Even at 52, I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. By this, I mean I have never found a job that aligned with the things I’m passionate about. And, I also have trouble figuring out my passions.
5. I have an excellent vocabulary and love to use it to good effect. While I think this provides greater clarity in my speaking and writing, I suspect it often has the opposite effect, as the words I use are not always understood by my audience.
6. At times, I try to focus on what’s really important, such as the love of others and loving them in return. But, it’s really, really easy for me to get mired in the crap of daily life and forget how privileged I actually am.
7. My parents never thought I’d graduate from high school. I flunked 5 of my 6 classes freshman year (passed algebra with a D-). After I got suspended 7 times in my sophomore year for cutting classes, my parents sent me to private school. For some reason, I excelled there and managed to graduate when I was 16.
8. I live in the house I grew up in. For the first 10 years we lived here, that was totally intimidating to me, as my parents were frequent visitors and I worried what they thought of how we maintained it. I eventually grew out of that mindset and now mentally “own” it. We’ve now been here 20 years.
9. We have two dogs, piebald mini dachshunds. I always related to dogs as dogs, not pseudo-people. However, all that has changed with one of them, Sally, about whom I am absolutely besotted.
10. 2008 was the worst year of my life. Too many bad things happened to me and those around me; worst of all were my reactions to those occurrences. I look forward to the return of my resiliency in 2009.
11. Sad to say but my musical tastes pretty much calcified when I was in college.
12. I have huge respect for my dad, who is a real renaissance man. Now in his 80’s, with significant health issues, my respect continues to grow as I see how he grapples with those issues.
13. Speaking of health issues, I am continuously impressed with how Skip deals with her MS. She’s had it for over 20 years and it has robbed her of so much, yet she manages a positive outlook most of the time. In her shoes, I suspect I’d not deal with it with such grace.
14. I’ll read just about anything I can get my hands on.
15. My parents didn’t own a TV from the time I was 8 or 9 until I was in college. I think this helped me develop the love of reading that I have to this day.
16. I am at my best in the early morning. It’s strictly downhill from there.
17. My ears have been ringing for 30 years and my hearing, left ear especially, is not so great. Ironically, the cable box in the bedroom makes a low hum that I can hear and find quite annoying while Skip can’t hear it.
18. I have passed out from the violence in two movies, and almost passed out from a third. They are Le Chien Andelou, The Piano and the almost was Catch-22. I have a reputation for squeamishness about movies that is not entirely deserved as one of my favorite movies is Fargo, which has a lot of violence. However, I am very careful about screening movies for this before viewing them and find it’s best to watch a questionable movie at home, so I can easily stop it.
19. I am fortunate to have a job where I can work from home. To date, the most extreme thing that’s happened while I’ve been working at home was the time Skip fell out of her wheelchair and turned her ankle 180 degrees, breaking it in 3 places. When she called out to me for help, I was on a conference call that I was facilitating. Through instant messaging, I got a colleague to carry on and went to help Skip. When I got back on, no one knew I’d been away.
20. My mother thinks I’m too conservative.
21. I am a huge Red Sox fan, but perhaps don’t have the right temperament for baseball fandom. Even a good season usually has about 60 or 70 losses and each one is hard for me to take.
22. I have been fat since I was 5 or 6. I figure it’s in my genes. My mother’s father weighed 400 pounds and I’m distantly related to America’s fattest president. Lots of other fat folks in my family tree.
23. Starting in my teens, I developed the perspective that my size wasn’t a problem, instead it was society’s reaction to it that was a problem. My mantra: being fat isn’t inherently unhealthy, you can be fat and lead a healthy lifestyle. In my early 40s I had an epiphany: I was eating unhealthfully, my weight was creeping up year after year and decided I’d better shape up or I’d start feeling the effects on my health. Lost 98 pounds. Put a good portion of it back on in the last 6 years, but still working on the healthy lifestyle.
24. My favorite personality type to work with? Curmudgeons. You always know where you stand with them.
25. I’m a true child of the 1960s; I still have problems dealing with authority figures or being told what to do.