Random Things Meme

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Memes

Leah tagged me on Face­book to write 25 ran­dom things about myself, then Sam tagged me to come up with 16 ran­dom tid­bits. I’m not good at these things, but I’ll give it a try.

  1. I didn’t go to kinder­garten, but started first grade when I was 5 because my mother thought she had to put me in school.
  2. My first-​​grade teacher, Mrs. Forester, was very hard of hear­ing, so she yelled con­stantly. I was con­stantly pet­ri­fied that year, because in my fam­ily yelling meant some­body was going to get knocked around.
  3. I spent much of the 4th and 5th grades as a sub­sti­tute teacher for younger stu­dents, because one of my aunts was the school sec­re­tary and she chose well-​​behaved A stu­dents (always female, for some rea­son) for that pur­pose. The school or school dis­trict was appar­ently too poor or too cheap to actu­ally hire subs.
  4. My ear­li­est mem­ory is from the week after my sis­ter was born, when I was 23 months old.
  5. When my sis­ter and I were about 2 and 4 years old, a rabid Ger­man shep­herd jumped the fence around our back yard and chased us. It was less than a foot away from her when a neigh­bor used his hunt­ing rifle to kill it. She doesn’t remem­ber the inci­dent, but she’s still pho­bic about that breed. Me? I wanted to learn to shoot that rifle. NOW!
  6. I started ques­tion­ing Chris­tian­ity when I was about 8 years old. One of my cousins gave me a lit­tle Scor­pio pen­dant for my birth­day, which my mother promptly con­fis­cated, rail­ing about fortune-​​telling and witches. I asked her about the dif­fer­ence between “prophets” and “fortune-​​tellers” and found myself in the preacher’s office. I asked him about a spe­cific verse in the New Tes­ta­ment and was told that God hadn’t given him the under­stand­ing of that verse yet, so he ripped that page out of his Bible. Since Mother spanked us for even putting a Sun­day School book or church bul­letin on top of a Bible while car­ry­ing them, I was con­vinced that he was going to Hell straight­away — unless the whole church thing was balderdash.
  7. My first piano teacher, Mar­jorie Hall, had also taught my mother when she was a child. She was our church organist.
  8. My father has had seri­ous back prob­lems through­out most of my life. I learned to give back rubs very early, try­ing to ease his pain.
  9. My mater­nal grand­fa­ther, Daddy Boots, was a moon­shine run­ner in his younger years. Some of Daddy’s extended fam­ily ran stills across north Alabama and north Geor­gia, and it’s very likely that he worked for them. I’ve always found that highly amus­ing, since Mom’s fam­ily con­sid­ered Daddy to be “from the wrong side of the tracks” when they started dating.
  10. Our extended fam­i­lies were very closely-​​knit when I was young, but both fell apart fairly quickly after my grand­moth­ers died (both in 1987).
  11. My pater­nal grand­fa­ther was a union orga­nizer at the steel mill where he worked. He died when my father was 7, and the union did noth­ing to help the fam­ily, so Daddy has been vir­u­lently anti-​​union ever since.
  12. I came across the idea of being openly involved with more than one per­son at a time in Heinlein’s Time Enough for Love when I was 13. It made per­fect sense to me. I’ve been polyamorous ever since, though I have agreed to monog­a­mous rela­tion­ships from time to time.
  13. I adore huge dogs. Yes, in the house. It’s cruel to bring a dog into a fam­ily, then keep it out in the yard. They’re pack ori­ented! I miss hav­ing a big, fenced yard that’s suited to let­ting a big dog run around safely.
  14. I’ve always been a cat per­son, which is weird, since my par­ents have no use for them. They don’t think ani­mals belong in the house at all, but over the years I guess I wore them down. I hardly con­sider any struc­ture a home with­out a cat.
  15. I miss climb­ing trees. I don’t think any­one taught me to do it, but accord­ing to both my mem­o­ries and fam­ily sto­ries, if they couldn’t find me, the best place to look was gen­er­ally up. I used to spend hours perched up in trees, read­ing, as the best way to avoid my lit­tle sister.
  16. I spent much of my mid­dle school and early high school evenings and week­ends babysit­ting and act­ing as a “mother’s helper.” I even babysat a cou­ple of kids who were older than I was, but since I was ahead of them in school, that was a secret between me and their parents.
  17. I started work­ing at my father’s employer’s office after school and in the sum­mers when I was 12.
  18. I was involved in just about every­thing but art and sports in high school: march­ing and sym­phonic band, per­form­ing cho­rus, drama, debate, math club, Beta club, National Honor Soci­ety, Junior Civ­i­tan, Close-​​Up, model U.N., etc. I had no idea that any of it would mat­ter to col­leges — that was just a nice bonus.
  19. While hus­band v.2 was wor­ried about his draft num­ber, I was start­ing first grade. Hus­band v.3 had already served in Viet­nam and returned by then.
  20. Katie really is a mir­a­cle, Goddess-​​gift baby. I met a woman at a Mensa national gath­er­ing, and out of the blue she asked if she could per­form a heal­ing for me. I couldn’t find a polite way to say no, so I said yes. She spent sev­eral hours “pour­ing energy” into me. After­wards, I couldn’t find her, the room where we’d been, or any­one else who had noticed her. Not long after that, I was preg­nant with­out any fer­til­ity treat­ments, although mul­ti­ple doc­tors had insisted that there was no way I would ever con­ceive with­out them.
  21. I learned that I was preg­nant less than a week after con­cep­tion, because of the 24⁄7 sick­ness (that stayed with me through­out the preg­nancy). I thought I had a stom­ach flu, but it wouldn’t go away. I went to a doc-​​in-​​the-​​box to get a preg­nancy test just to make my hus­band stop talk­ing about a preg­nancy. I made them do the test three times to be sure!
  22. I’ve lost track of the num­ber of mis­car­riages I’ve had. I wanted more kids, but have finally resigned myself to the fact that I got a per­fect child the first time, and she’s going to be my only one.
  23. I’m a vocal snob. I find it phys­i­cally painful to be near some peo­ple when they’re singing, and have lit­tle to no patience with them. While I’d love to sing with a group again on a reg­u­lar basis, I’m totally dis­in­ter­ested in any group that doesn’t require strict auditions.
  24. I think I’ve for­got­ten how to cook. Odd, since I started cook­ing at a very young age and cooked din­ner every day until shortly before I met Sam. (He’s a bet­ter cook than I am, anyway.)
  25. I’m not cur­rently read­ing a book. I can’t remem­ber that hav­ing hap­pened at any time since I was in first grade.

I’m not going to tag peo­ple specif­i­cally, but if you want to play, please let me know so that I won’t miss your list!

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Read more | Comments (5) | January 18th, 2009

Meme: Reincarnation Placement Exam

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Humor, Memes

Your result for Rein­car­na­tion Place­ment Exam…

Gypsy Camp

59% Intrigue, 44% Civ­i­liza­tion, 66% Human­ity, 59% Crowded, 33% Busy.

You sing! You dance! You flee from the authorities!

You were a bit dif­fi­cult to place, because you like civ­i­liza­tion and human­ity — but when it comes to work, you don’t really fit into the sys­tem, the ruts and the rit­u­als, that mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion embraces. You like your own ways… your old ways.

We’ve placed you among a hardy Gypsy fam­ily. They’ll have you pluck­ing a vio­lin before you can talk, and danc­ing before you can walk. The road is your home, and your horses are mem­bers of your fam­ily. You get to wear lots of shiny things.

We expect that you’ll have a good life. Even if your peo­ple are sur­rounded by a world where they don’t really fit in, they have each other, an oasis of com­pat­i­bil­ity in an unbal­anced world. We know you’ll make the most of it!

Take Rein­car­na­tion Place­ment Exam at HelloQuizzy

Read more | Comments (2) | September 11th, 2008

American Accent Quizzie

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Memes

What Amer­i­can accent do you have?
Cre­ated by Xavier on Memegen​.net

North­ern. Whether you have the world famous Inland North accent of the Great Lakes area, or the radio-​​friendly sound of upstate NY and west­ern New Eng­land, your accent is what used to set the stan­dard for Amer­i­can Eng­lish pro­nun­ci­a­tion (not much any­more now that the Inland North sounds like it does).

If you are not from the North, you are prob­a­bly one of the fol­low­ing:
(a) A South­erner who hates South­ern accents and tries really hard to “talk right”; or
(b) A New Yorker or New Jer­seyan who doesn’t have the full accent

Take this quiz now — it’s easy!
We’re going to start with “cot” and “caught.” When you say those words do they sound the same or different?



Then again, it could be that I’m a south­erner who grew up in the metro Atlanta area, where we hear all kinds of accents. Or that I watched too much tele­vi­sion as a child, and broad­cast­ers use the same stan­dard. In any case, the author of the quiz seems to be a bit out of touch as far as the expla­na­tions of dif­fer­ent results go (and a bit defen­sive, as well).

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Read more | Comments off | August 29th, 2008

Wikipedia Meme

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Memes

Swiped from and :
Go over to Wikipedia and enter your birth­date and then pick 3 events, 2 births and 1 hol­i­day that occurred on the day of your birthday.

Okay – my birth­day is Novem­ber 12, 1966. Oddly enough, I couldn’t find any­thing that hap­pened on my actual date of birth. There were plenty of things that hap­pened on Novem­ber 12 of other years. I tried to pick rel­a­tively upbeat events.

Events:

  • 1847 — Sir James Young Simp­son, a British physi­cian, is the first to use chlo­ro­form as an anaesthetic.
  • 1981 — The Space Shut­tle Colum­bia becomes the first space­craft to be launched twice.
  • 1990 — Tim Berners-​​Lee pub­lishes a for­mal pro­posal for the World Wide Web.

Births:

  • 1929 — Princess Grace of Monaco, Amer­i­can Actress, Royalty
  • 1962 — Naomi Wolf, Amer­i­can author and feminist

Death:

  • 1916 — Per­ci­val Low­ell, Amer­i­can ama­teur astronomer, founder of Low­ell Obser­va­tory in Flagstaff, Ari­zona (b. 1855)

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Read more | Comments off | August 4th, 2008

Are You Internet Famous?

Posted by Cyn | Filed under Memes

What’s your number?

Mine is 684, so I’m not a Webrity.

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Read more | Comments (2) | July 25th, 2008

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