16 things I hate about me (only not really)
Meme time (taken from iowayehudit)!
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 16 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 16 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.
1) I can do a remarkably good impression of a cat vomiting...like, really good. This probably comes of growing up in a house which has pretty much always had anywhere from 1 to 4 cats in it at a time (1 to 2 of which were long-haired).
2) I have teeth like a shark. I really need to get in to the dentist about it one of these days, but basically at one point three of my teeth are in a row perpendicular to the rest of my teeth, no joke.
3) I have a small scar on my temple, from where I was running around excitedly as a kid (after my Uncle John and Aunt Mac had visited from Germany) and smacked the side of my head on our coffee table, which was perfect three-year-old head-smacking height. I had to go to urgent care and everything.
4) I played a LOT of video games as a kid - like 16 hours every weekend - and hence there are certain old-school Nintendo or Sega games that, once I get my reflexes used to them again, I can whizz through without even thinking about it, because I remember where every single baddie or treasure chest or whatever is. (Notable examples include Final Fantasy, Sonic and Knuckles' version of Sonic 3, and Mega Man 2 and 3 (though I still have trouble with Dr. Wily's dragon late in MM2, as I always have for my entire life).
5) The only part of my physical appearance I'm 100% satisfied with is my coloring, though I have often idly wondered what it would be like to have blond or red hair or blue or green eyes.
6) I have tried pretty much every category of craft known to man at some point or other. Seriously, there are only a handful I can think of off the top of my head that I haven't tried (I've never tried, uhh, lace tatting? Or tin-cutting?) This doesn't of course mean that I'm EXPERT at any of them, just that I've tried them at some point or other.
7) I, strangely, think that I'm much better at learning facts than skills, as long as the facts tie in to something I'm interested in. Since remembering facts is actually not as helpful in grad school as in undergrad - no one is testing you on dates, and if they want you to be able to remember something that happened in a book, it's more important that you have something to say about it than that you remember it accurately - this has entailed some not-as-successful-as-I'd-like attempts to change my learning process. But seriously, if you want a Buffy or Doctor Who trivia fact, I am your guy!
8) I still feel like I'm figuring what I want to be when I grow up - all I REALLY know is where I want to be when I grow up, which is obv. England - but if I had to choose a profession it'd probably be novelist, and since I was a little kid I always kind of figured that would be my eventual career. Unfortunately, that entails finishing a novel (or several) first, which hasn't entirely happened yet. But someday (someday soon, even)!
9) I am a massive scaredy-cat, probably because I have an overactive imagination. Stuff like this (linked from braaaiiins) scares the crap out of me, even if I know it's a hoax. I can't play a survival horror game by myself because I psych myself out so much I can't bring myself to go into that basement or dark hallway, and I can't watch horror movies by myself because I will pause and/or turn it off when it gets scary unless there are other people around. I remember when I saw an episode of the X-Files that my dad was watching when I was a kid and having nightmares for a week afterwards, and Gray-type aliens still give me the serious wiggins.
10) Curiously with the above story, I frequently and sometimes obsessively read about paranormal phenomena, aliens, disappearing flights, mysterious beasts, etc. The one that interests me the most is the Beast of Gevaudan (which I got into BEFORE the movie came out), and the one that scares me the most is Mothman (again, before the crappy movie).
11) And perhaps going some way to explain the above statement, I have a phobia of moths. Or more accurately, not of moths themselves - if they're staying away from me, I'm fine with them - but of moths flying AT me. Or really, any flying insect, moths are just the most prone to getting inside and then doing so.
12) I wish I were more willing to take risks than I am...my life to date has been very, well, safe and predictable, and while I wouldn't want to put myself willfully in danger or anything like that, I'd like to have a bit more excitement and uncertainty in my life.
13) I'm an agnostic, leaning towards atheist in my more pessimistic moments (which tend to be pretty rare). But I do think there is some kind of afterlife of some kind, just because of all my reading about life-after-death paranormal phenomena (after all, there's SO MUCH stuff there, and if even one hundredth of one percent of that stuff is actually true that's still something).
14) I collect small, vividly-colored decorative boxes.
15) I have a habit of absently "typing" out whatever word or phrase is on my mind with my fingers; I don't even notice I'm doing it, but if you see my fingers tapping together or tapping on my thigh, that's probably what I'm doing.
16) Part of the reason I'm so picky is that I have a keener sense of taste and smell than most people I know. Coconut, for example; I can pick up on the faintest traces of it in food, in things other people (like my omnivore parents) don't even realize have any coconut in them. I'm also more sensitive to food's texture; half the things I don't like, it's not because I don't like the flavor but because the texture feels bad in my mouth.
I'm not a big fan of tagging, so I'll say whoever wants to do this, should!
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 16 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 16 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.
1) I can do a remarkably good impression of a cat vomiting...like, really good. This probably comes of growing up in a house which has pretty much always had anywhere from 1 to 4 cats in it at a time (1 to 2 of which were long-haired).
2) I have teeth like a shark. I really need to get in to the dentist about it one of these days, but basically at one point three of my teeth are in a row perpendicular to the rest of my teeth, no joke.
3) I have a small scar on my temple, from where I was running around excitedly as a kid (after my Uncle John and Aunt Mac had visited from Germany) and smacked the side of my head on our coffee table, which was perfect three-year-old head-smacking height. I had to go to urgent care and everything.
4) I played a LOT of video games as a kid - like 16 hours every weekend - and hence there are certain old-school Nintendo or Sega games that, once I get my reflexes used to them again, I can whizz through without even thinking about it, because I remember where every single baddie or treasure chest or whatever is. (Notable examples include Final Fantasy, Sonic and Knuckles' version of Sonic 3, and Mega Man 2 and 3 (though I still have trouble with Dr. Wily's dragon late in MM2, as I always have for my entire life).
5) The only part of my physical appearance I'm 100% satisfied with is my coloring, though I have often idly wondered what it would be like to have blond or red hair or blue or green eyes.
6) I have tried pretty much every category of craft known to man at some point or other. Seriously, there are only a handful I can think of off the top of my head that I haven't tried (I've never tried, uhh, lace tatting? Or tin-cutting?) This doesn't of course mean that I'm EXPERT at any of them, just that I've tried them at some point or other.
7) I, strangely, think that I'm much better at learning facts than skills, as long as the facts tie in to something I'm interested in. Since remembering facts is actually not as helpful in grad school as in undergrad - no one is testing you on dates, and if they want you to be able to remember something that happened in a book, it's more important that you have something to say about it than that you remember it accurately - this has entailed some not-as-successful-as-I'd-like attempts to change my learning process. But seriously, if you want a Buffy or Doctor Who trivia fact, I am your guy!
8) I still feel like I'm figuring what I want to be when I grow up - all I REALLY know is where I want to be when I grow up, which is obv. England - but if I had to choose a profession it'd probably be novelist, and since I was a little kid I always kind of figured that would be my eventual career. Unfortunately, that entails finishing a novel (or several) first, which hasn't entirely happened yet. But someday (someday soon, even)!
9) I am a massive scaredy-cat, probably because I have an overactive imagination. Stuff like this (linked from braaaiiins) scares the crap out of me, even if I know it's a hoax. I can't play a survival horror game by myself because I psych myself out so much I can't bring myself to go into that basement or dark hallway, and I can't watch horror movies by myself because I will pause and/or turn it off when it gets scary unless there are other people around. I remember when I saw an episode of the X-Files that my dad was watching when I was a kid and having nightmares for a week afterwards, and Gray-type aliens still give me the serious wiggins.
10) Curiously with the above story, I frequently and sometimes obsessively read about paranormal phenomena, aliens, disappearing flights, mysterious beasts, etc. The one that interests me the most is the Beast of Gevaudan (which I got into BEFORE the movie came out), and the one that scares me the most is Mothman (again, before the crappy movie).
11) And perhaps going some way to explain the above statement, I have a phobia of moths. Or more accurately, not of moths themselves - if they're staying away from me, I'm fine with them - but of moths flying AT me. Or really, any flying insect, moths are just the most prone to getting inside and then doing so.
12) I wish I were more willing to take risks than I am...my life to date has been very, well, safe and predictable, and while I wouldn't want to put myself willfully in danger or anything like that, I'd like to have a bit more excitement and uncertainty in my life.
13) I'm an agnostic, leaning towards atheist in my more pessimistic moments (which tend to be pretty rare). But I do think there is some kind of afterlife of some kind, just because of all my reading about life-after-death paranormal phenomena (after all, there's SO MUCH stuff there, and if even one hundredth of one percent of that stuff is actually true that's still something).
14) I collect small, vividly-colored decorative boxes.
15) I have a habit of absently "typing" out whatever word or phrase is on my mind with my fingers; I don't even notice I'm doing it, but if you see my fingers tapping together or tapping on my thigh, that's probably what I'm doing.
16) Part of the reason I'm so picky is that I have a keener sense of taste and smell than most people I know. Coconut, for example; I can pick up on the faintest traces of it in food, in things other people (like my omnivore parents) don't even realize have any coconut in them. I'm also more sensitive to food's texture; half the things I don't like, it's not because I don't like the flavor but because the texture feels bad in my mouth.
I'm not a big fan of tagging, so I'll say whoever wants to do this, should!