Monday Memes
tagged by carnimiriel
i • d • i • o • syn • cra • sy
1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group.
2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity.
3. An unusual individual reaction to food or a drug.
List five of your own idiosyncrasies and then tag five friends to do the same.
1. I have really obsessive bathroom habits. No matter how many bathrooms are in a building, I always have to go to the same one every time, even if it's the other end of the building. If there's more than one stall, I always have to pick the same one. Anything else makes me uncomfortable. Also, I hate going, full stop. I've made myself sick refusing to go, and also refusing to eat so I don't have to.
2. I organise all my coloured art supplies in rainbow order. But I learned rainbow order as red to violet, rather than the other way round. All my coloured pencils, markers, paints, everything are in a very specific order, and if they get out of order I have to dump them all out and start over again. I used to despair of lending my sets to people in school because they always fucked it all up and that meant more work for me. Oh, I also have to have very specific orders for my DVDs (alphabetical), my books (arranged by type first, and then by theme, so that there's a spectrum of subject material and each book has SOME association to the two books on either side), my clothes (rainbow-y order as well), my CDs (similar theme to my books, though I really need to reorganise them as I've bought so many new ones since I originally set up the system), etc.
3. I colour-code my school life. I have a different-coloured notebook for every class, and each notebook has a pen and a highligher that goes with it, for writing in my dayplanner and such. I also colour-code my notes, writing the majority of them in black but then vocab words in one colour and important theories in one colour and assignments in one colour and so forth. If I screw up on this (i.e. forget the system), I have to tear out the page and recopy it.
4. When I have movie marathons, I need them to link. So like, I'll watch one movie, and then the next movie I watch has to have something in common with the previous movie, both thematically/stylistically, and like, an actor overlap. If I can't find something that fits the bill, the marathon's over. I'm less stringent when I'm watching with other people, but I still like to put a break between movies if I can't find an overlap.
5. If I'm working on a project, my desk has to be arranged just so, with everything organised at 90° angles to each other and in a very neat system so I can get at everything easily but it also doesn't look like clutter, or else I can't concentrate and my thought processes are all disjointed. However, I can't work on an entirely bare surface either -- I need the supplies I need all around me right at my fingertips.
[Not tagging, but if you want to do it, please do!]
Also, the
1. My earliest proper memory (i.e. visual and sound rather than just a general sense of something) is of my father with a patch over his eye after getting metal splinters in it when he was working down in the shop. I was too young to be disturbed by it though and I started working in his shop when I was about four. My dad and grandfather put together a tool set for me and it was my favourite toy. (I was not your typical little girl, though I did love to wear dresses.)
2. I've lived in five houses, one temporary apartment, six dorm rooms, and two flats. I can still picture the floorplans of all of them, including the house we left when I was not quite five. They're spread out over six cities, two states, one province, and two countries.
3. I love to travel, but I hate to look like a tourist. I actually refused to go up the Eiffel Tower when I was in Paris. I much prefer to break away from a tour group or whatever and experience the culture from the inside -- get to know locals, eat at cafés off the beaten path, learn enough of the language before I go so that I don't stick out like a sore thumb, etc. This isn't always an option -- the majority of my travelling in Europe has been with a tour group (last summer -- Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Liechtenstein, Germany, the Czech Republic), or else in highschool when I toured with the Texas Ambassadors of Music (we played/sang concerts in England, France, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, and took trips through Liechtenstein and to Italy).
4. I taught myself to play piano. My dad plays, and I used to curl up under the piano to listen to him. Especially Chopin and Beethoven. I wanted to play violin, so that's what i had lessons in, and then I was in band (French horn) and chorus and took voice and percussion lessons, but never actually had time or money for piano lessons, so I taught myself. The first song I learned was actually the Moonlight sonata, because I was determined to be able to play it. I couldn't read bass clef when I started.
5. I'm very allergic to shellfish, and anything that comes out of the ocean, unless it's very fresh, makes me ill. I do like the taste of snow crab though, but can only eat about a mouthful of it, maximum. I can sometimes stomach cheese fried wontons if they're made with imitation crab.
6. I have ridiculously sensitive skin. It gets irritated by just about everything, but ESPECIALLY latex. I'm severely allergic. Incidentally, I found this out when I was in bio lab and wearing gloves to handle lobster bits for an assay, and my hands swelled up massively.
7. I'm scared of bees. And wasps. Wasps moreso. I'm getting better at standing still when a bee approaches me, but wasps...gaaah. I can't concentrate when there's one in the room with me because I'm always afraid if I take my eyes off it for a second it'll sting me.
8. I have a really shitty memory. My problem in theatre especially was always that it was so hard for me to memorise my lines that I never got comfortable enough with them to properly get into character. Memorising dates is a nightmare, and I have to read something over three or four times before it sticks. HOWEVER, I can memorise songs really easily, harmonise with them the first time I hear them, and repeat them back. Of course, nine times out of ten I've no idea what the lyrics are and am just vaguely moving my mouth. I don't pay attention to lyrics unless I look them up and have them right in front of me.
9. Disaster movies make me panic. When I watched The Day After Tomorrow the first time, on a bright summer day, I freaked out because I didn't have a fireplace so obviously i was going to freeze to death.
10. I always wanted to paint murals in my bedroom, have each wall be a different nature scene -- the arctic on one wall, the rainforest, a beach, a deciduous forest...the night sky on the ceiling complete with glow-in-the-dark stars arranged into proper constellations, maybe the sky on my birthday. And my bathroom would be an underwater scene. I am still determined to do this someday.
11. I can't draw with a pencil. I'm shite at it. I was terrified when I took drawing my junior year of college, because not only did I feel I was a crap artist, but we had to work in huge scale (18x30 and up). However, I found that I muuuuuch prefer working in large scale, and that my media of choice are vine charcoal, chalk pastels, and graphite. (YAYE messy!)
12. I actually like Dickens. I get the o.O look a lot at this, but I think he was a brilliant author. Yes, he was wordy and unnecessarily convoluted at times, but if I got paid by the word I'm sure I would be too. I love his stories though. A Tale of Two Cities is one of my favourites. Though really I just love books about the French Revolution. The Scarlet Pimpernel is a book I could read a million times and never get tired of.
13. I feel like I should know a lot more than I do, and hate that I don't. They say that grad school necessitates honing your BS skills. Which I think I'm getting somewhat decent at. But I hate making things up when really I don't know anything about them because it only makes me feel more ignorant. But still I can't seem to stop doing it and just admit that no, I don't have any idea.
14. My ex-boyfriend and I had the most boring sex known to man. It went beyond Tab A Into Slot B. It was like reading a To Do list.
15. That said, I have a list of all the things I've always wanted to try, and it's about half a mile long. One day I'll be comfortable enough in my own body and my own sexuality to try them all.
16. I love dancing, even though I'm sure I look like an idiot doing it. I want to learn every single kind of dance there is, though I'm sure I'll be mediocre at all of them, at best.
17. I have a hard time being confident in my own abilities to do something. I need acknowledgment from others to feel like I've done it right or else I get all nervous and uncomfortable and stress out about it.
18. Of course, that's depending on other people, and I HATE feeling dependent. I hate feeling like I'm burdening people with my problems, and I don't ever feel like I'm worth it to dump things that are bothering me on others. I love being there for people and helping them and making them happy, but I have a really really hard time letting that be two-sided because I honestly don't think I'm worth it. I'm working on it though.
19. I'm a total sybarite. I love luxury so very much. And it irritates me that I can't afford to be decadent all the time. (You really only need one look at my flat, where I am living on a student's budget, to know what I mean.)
20. I like to talk about myself, but I feel guilty doing it. Ha. *hides*
Wow, so that just killed an hour and a half. *chuckles* Happy Monday, everyone. ♥ I love you all very very much and I hope you have a spectacular week.
(Also, I start classes tomorrow. EEK.)
OH, also. Two things.
1. Bed Rest, which is James/Sirius porn and written for my poor ill petulantgod.
2. A rec: Abracadabra, by Lyricality: Charlie/Wonka slash (but not chan) and GAH it's absolutely gorgeous. The tone is spot on and the descriptiveness is lovely and reading it left me absolutely breathless. Thanks to nimori for reccing it to me. *adds to favourites post haste*
i • d • i • o • syn • cra • sy
1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group.
2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity.
3. An unusual individual reaction to food or a drug.
List five of your own idiosyncrasies and then tag five friends to do the same.
1. I have really obsessive bathroom habits. No matter how many bathrooms are in a building, I always have to go to the same one every time, even if it's the other end of the building. If there's more than one stall, I always have to pick the same one. Anything else makes me uncomfortable. Also, I hate going, full stop. I've made myself sick refusing to go, and also refusing to eat so I don't have to.
2. I organise all my coloured art supplies in rainbow order. But I learned rainbow order as red to violet, rather than the other way round. All my coloured pencils, markers, paints, everything are in a very specific order, and if they get out of order I have to dump them all out and start over again. I used to despair of lending my sets to people in school because they always fucked it all up and that meant more work for me. Oh, I also have to have very specific orders for my DVDs (alphabetical), my books (arranged by type first, and then by theme, so that there's a spectrum of subject material and each book has SOME association to the two books on either side), my clothes (rainbow-y order as well), my CDs (similar theme to my books, though I really need to reorganise them as I've bought so many new ones since I originally set up the system), etc.
3. I colour-code my school life. I have a different-coloured notebook for every class, and each notebook has a pen and a highligher that goes with it, for writing in my dayplanner and such. I also colour-code my notes, writing the majority of them in black but then vocab words in one colour and important theories in one colour and assignments in one colour and so forth. If I screw up on this (i.e. forget the system), I have to tear out the page and recopy it.
4. When I have movie marathons, I need them to link. So like, I'll watch one movie, and then the next movie I watch has to have something in common with the previous movie, both thematically/stylistically, and like, an actor overlap. If I can't find something that fits the bill, the marathon's over. I'm less stringent when I'm watching with other people, but I still like to put a break between movies if I can't find an overlap.
5. If I'm working on a project, my desk has to be arranged just so, with everything organised at 90° angles to each other and in a very neat system so I can get at everything easily but it also doesn't look like clutter, or else I can't concentrate and my thought processes are all disjointed. However, I can't work on an entirely bare surface either -- I need the supplies I need all around me right at my fingertips.
[Not tagging, but if you want to do it, please do!]
Also, the
1. My earliest proper memory (i.e. visual and sound rather than just a general sense of something) is of my father with a patch over his eye after getting metal splinters in it when he was working down in the shop. I was too young to be disturbed by it though and I started working in his shop when I was about four. My dad and grandfather put together a tool set for me and it was my favourite toy. (I was not your typical little girl, though I did love to wear dresses.)
2. I've lived in five houses, one temporary apartment, six dorm rooms, and two flats. I can still picture the floorplans of all of them, including the house we left when I was not quite five. They're spread out over six cities, two states, one province, and two countries.
3. I love to travel, but I hate to look like a tourist. I actually refused to go up the Eiffel Tower when I was in Paris. I much prefer to break away from a tour group or whatever and experience the culture from the inside -- get to know locals, eat at cafés off the beaten path, learn enough of the language before I go so that I don't stick out like a sore thumb, etc. This isn't always an option -- the majority of my travelling in Europe has been with a tour group (last summer -- Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Liechtenstein, Germany, the Czech Republic), or else in highschool when I toured with the Texas Ambassadors of Music (we played/sang concerts in England, France, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, and took trips through Liechtenstein and to Italy).
4. I taught myself to play piano. My dad plays, and I used to curl up under the piano to listen to him. Especially Chopin and Beethoven. I wanted to play violin, so that's what i had lessons in, and then I was in band (French horn) and chorus and took voice and percussion lessons, but never actually had time or money for piano lessons, so I taught myself. The first song I learned was actually the Moonlight sonata, because I was determined to be able to play it. I couldn't read bass clef when I started.
5. I'm very allergic to shellfish, and anything that comes out of the ocean, unless it's very fresh, makes me ill. I do like the taste of snow crab though, but can only eat about a mouthful of it, maximum. I can sometimes stomach cheese fried wontons if they're made with imitation crab.
6. I have ridiculously sensitive skin. It gets irritated by just about everything, but ESPECIALLY latex. I'm severely allergic. Incidentally, I found this out when I was in bio lab and wearing gloves to handle lobster bits for an assay, and my hands swelled up massively.
7. I'm scared of bees. And wasps. Wasps moreso. I'm getting better at standing still when a bee approaches me, but wasps...gaaah. I can't concentrate when there's one in the room with me because I'm always afraid if I take my eyes off it for a second it'll sting me.
8. I have a really shitty memory. My problem in theatre especially was always that it was so hard for me to memorise my lines that I never got comfortable enough with them to properly get into character. Memorising dates is a nightmare, and I have to read something over three or four times before it sticks. HOWEVER, I can memorise songs really easily, harmonise with them the first time I hear them, and repeat them back. Of course, nine times out of ten I've no idea what the lyrics are and am just vaguely moving my mouth. I don't pay attention to lyrics unless I look them up and have them right in front of me.
9. Disaster movies make me panic. When I watched The Day After Tomorrow the first time, on a bright summer day, I freaked out because I didn't have a fireplace so obviously i was going to freeze to death.
10. I always wanted to paint murals in my bedroom, have each wall be a different nature scene -- the arctic on one wall, the rainforest, a beach, a deciduous forest...the night sky on the ceiling complete with glow-in-the-dark stars arranged into proper constellations, maybe the sky on my birthday. And my bathroom would be an underwater scene. I am still determined to do this someday.
11. I can't draw with a pencil. I'm shite at it. I was terrified when I took drawing my junior year of college, because not only did I feel I was a crap artist, but we had to work in huge scale (18x30 and up). However, I found that I muuuuuch prefer working in large scale, and that my media of choice are vine charcoal, chalk pastels, and graphite. (YAYE messy!)
12. I actually like Dickens. I get the o.O look a lot at this, but I think he was a brilliant author. Yes, he was wordy and unnecessarily convoluted at times, but if I got paid by the word I'm sure I would be too. I love his stories though. A Tale of Two Cities is one of my favourites. Though really I just love books about the French Revolution. The Scarlet Pimpernel is a book I could read a million times and never get tired of.
13. I feel like I should know a lot more than I do, and hate that I don't. They say that grad school necessitates honing your BS skills. Which I think I'm getting somewhat decent at. But I hate making things up when really I don't know anything about them because it only makes me feel more ignorant. But still I can't seem to stop doing it and just admit that no, I don't have any idea.
14. My ex-boyfriend and I had the most boring sex known to man. It went beyond Tab A Into Slot B. It was like reading a To Do list.
15. That said, I have a list of all the things I've always wanted to try, and it's about half a mile long. One day I'll be comfortable enough in my own body and my own sexuality to try them all.
16. I love dancing, even though I'm sure I look like an idiot doing it. I want to learn every single kind of dance there is, though I'm sure I'll be mediocre at all of them, at best.
17. I have a hard time being confident in my own abilities to do something. I need acknowledgment from others to feel like I've done it right or else I get all nervous and uncomfortable and stress out about it.
18. Of course, that's depending on other people, and I HATE feeling dependent. I hate feeling like I'm burdening people with my problems, and I don't ever feel like I'm worth it to dump things that are bothering me on others. I love being there for people and helping them and making them happy, but I have a really really hard time letting that be two-sided because I honestly don't think I'm worth it. I'm working on it though.
19. I'm a total sybarite. I love luxury so very much. And it irritates me that I can't afford to be decadent all the time. (You really only need one look at my flat, where I am living on a student's budget, to know what I mean.)
20. I like to talk about myself, but I feel guilty doing it. Ha. *hides*
Wow, so that just killed an hour and a half. *chuckles* Happy Monday, everyone. ♥ I love you all very very much and I hope you have a spectacular week.
(Also, I start classes tomorrow. EEK.)
OH, also. Two things.
1. Bed Rest, which is James/Sirius porn and written for my poor ill petulantgod.
2. A rec: Abracadabra, by Lyricality: Charlie/Wonka slash (but not chan) and GAH it's absolutely gorgeous. The tone is spot on and the descriptiveness is lovely and reading it left me absolutely breathless. Thanks to nimori for reccing it to me. *adds to favourites post haste*