- I have lived virtually all my life in one county in one state. Except for a stint in San Diego as a baby (it was my dad's home port in the Navy) my home address has always been in Madison County, Alabama.
- I was a Hospital Corpsman in the U.S. Navy Reserve.
- Having said that, I have never been outside the continental United States.
- I have been to or through Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Louisiana, Texas, Colorado, and California. That's 17 states.
- I collect (and read!) books on or by Theodore Roosevelt. I currently have more than 40 and a few were printed during his administration (1901-1909).
- Same thing for C. S. Lewis, although I have no copies from his lifetime (1898-1963). Current count: 60.
- I know all those dates by heart. Dates are extremely important to me and they must be as accurate as possible.
- Actually, that applies to all historical facts and trivia.
- I am a pack rat. Especially books and magazines. My study is like the Dead Sea. Stuff flows in but it doesn't flow out (except to the garage).
- I was Student Council Representative of the Year my senior year of high school. It was just because I was the only rep with perfect attendance. Meaning I had no life.
- I lettered in cross country my junior year.
- I try to read a book every two weeks.
- However, I always ending up reading four or five books at once, at varying speeds, and end up taking a month on most of them. But it averages out!
- I have been a huge fan of the Alabama Crimson Tide since 1973.
- Same notation for the Miami Dolphins. But not as nearly as obsessive.
- Dan Marino is my favorite athlete of all time. He was heart-stoppingly exciting to watch.
- I am also a Los Angeles Dodgers fan. This mystifies everyone I know since I have no association with L.A. But I picked all my favorite teams when I was a kid and the Dodgers were red hot and highly visible in the late '70s.
- This leads me to another fact. I have no stomach for people who switch favorite teams every several years. Real sports fans are not fairweather fans. Unless you have a child who starts to play for another team (and maybe not even then because he/she won't play for them forever), you are not allowed to switch allegiances.
- This is one reason why, when the Houston Oilers moved just up I-65 to Nashville, I did not (like many did) drop my team for the Titans.
- My first favorite baseball player was Rollie Fingers. Solely for the moustache.
- I hate, loathe, despise, and detest hunting.
- And fishing.
- I'd rather just walk, sit and watch the wildlife, take photos or read a book when I'm outdoors.
- The first book I ever finished in a day was a Hardy Boys book, "The Cabin Island Mystery." I never read another Hardy Boys book after that. I assumed I had outgrown them!
- I will never read a full-sized novel in a day. I like to read them in real-time, like I'm watching a movie. I feel like people who speed-read fiction cannot possibly be getting all the intended meanings, allusions, and emotions out
of the book. - I love the students I work with and I am pretty cool with most of the slang they use nowadays. But I really get hung up on misuse of the word random. It is used not just interchangeably with but instead of perfectly descriptive words that have nothing to do with randomness such as spontaneous, silly, weird, and arbitrary. This drives me nuts.
- I love to eat breakfast for dinner. You can taste it better then!
- Plain M&Ms.
- Peanut butter should have its own food group.
- Bacon, too.
- I ALWAYS have a song stuck in my head. Always. All day long. Even if I know only the chorus or a snippet of a verse, I will have it stuck in my head for days or weeks at a time. Whenever you see me, stop me and ask what song is in my head at the time. There will be one. Right now, it's "Anyway" by Martina McBride.
- For the past two weeks it's been Bono's cover of "I Am the Walrus."
- I hum a lot. A LOT. I hum very loudly in noisy places like malls and supermarkets.
- Yes, I always sing along with the radio or CD in the car.
- I also get words and names stuck in my head, usually complex or odd-sounding ones.
- Before you ask: Thrombolytics.
- This month, I will be married 20 years.
- How did we make it? We CHOSE to. It's really that simple. Extremely challenging and seemingly impossible sometimes - but it's always that simple: "This is the choice I make."
- I have seen Superman: The Movie (the original Christopher Reeve film) more than 45 times. 30 of those times were when I was a teen.
- Yes, I say the dialogue along with the movie. "Do you know why the number 200 is so vitally descriptive of both you and me? It's your weight and my IQ. Now think, people, think!"
- I have 160 Star Trek books. If I read one every quarter starting today, I would finish them when I'm 82.
- I always wanted to believe I could be Captain Kirk. I fall into leadership positions (usually by default) and I am a big picture kind of guy. But I always feel I'm in way over my head, I avoid confrontation at all costs, and am a terrible disciplinarian.
- I always felt more like Spock inside: The smart, analytical, emotionally repressed but faithful right hand man.
- It goes without saying that I never dated in high school.
- I was only one pound over the minimum weight requirement for entrance into the Navy. I gained 15 pounds in boot camp. Haven't stopped since.
- I wanted to be an artist. That's my primary talent. I am especially good at colored pencil. Haven't touched it in years.
- I make corrections to administrative web pages for a living.
- I now channel my creativity into leading our church's drama team.
- Any kid of yours who comes to me and says they want to pursue a career in the arts will be encouraged by me. If you don't want them to hear that, if you want them to get a nice, dependable desk job making $80K a year, then keep them away from me. But when they hit their 40s and feel miserable, I'll have little sympathy for you. Just let them try now and if they fail, they've got 50 years to fall back on something else. They can get over failure when they're single a lot easier than regret after they're locked into supporting a family.
- However, I think that in our entertainment-saturated culture too many kids (especially girls) want to be actors nowadays. Only a handful actually have the talent for it. Even fewer the drive for it. I've worked with scores of teenagers on our team and while lots of them were good, I've only seen maybe three or four who even had the potential to make it.
- I'm not stupid enough to say who those are.
Friday, April 11, 2008
100 Facts - Pt. 1
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5 comments:
I know you well, but I learned a few things. Awesome idea for a post. Where can I find the questions?
Actually, it's something that people get tagged to do on their blog. Just tell 100 random facts about yourself. That's it!
Looking forward to part 2! All very interesting. I'll be sure not to use the word "random" around you :)
Uh-oh, I may have to change my profile. I used the word random.
I misused it myself in my earlier comment!
Random is a perfectly good word. But it has a very specific statistical meaning: Lack of order, purpose, cause, regularity, or predictability. The facts I listed were filtered through propriety, my sense of humor, my perception of the likelihood of your not knowing them, and the notion of your finding them interesting. The instant I chose to include one fact but not another, it wasn't random. Only typing the first 51 things that popped in my head (without any filter or thought) would have even approached randomness.
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