100 things about me

I guess this blogging thing has started to affect my brain, because I’ve jumped another blogger bandwagon. What the hell, like I tell myself about the rest of this drivel, at least my kids will have something to know me by, assuming the North Koreans don’t nuke the Internet.

1. My herbs and spices are in alphabetical order. I cut the ends off bay leaves so they’ll fit in my jars.
2. I love starch, dairy foods and melted cheese (not raw). Fettuccine alfredo is almost ideal. My favorite food in the universe is Pizzeria Uno deep-dish cheese and tomato pizza.
3. I can’t stand stupid people who don’t care that they’re stupid.
4. I converted to Judaism in 1998 even though I’m an atheist (my rabbi said it was OK).
5. I love Macs and deplore Windows.
6. I especially enjoy desktop publishing.
7. I am a huge Boston Red Sox fan.
8. I’ve watched the Oscars every year since about 1978. One year I had to watch it in my father’s car on a little TV that ran off the cigarette lighter because our power was out.
9. When I was 10, my parents got divorced and my mother moved 3,000 miles away.
10. My husband was my first real boyfriend.
11. I am a sleep hog. It's just uncivilized to get out of bed before 9 a.m. on a weekend.
    
12. I really love snowstorms but I hate cold and windy winter days, especially if it’s also sunny.
13. In my life I’ve owned or co-owned two dogs (Duchess and her son Bruno) and five cats (Rover, Boots, Kitty, Snoozy and Milo).
14. I loved the Bay Area but didn’t have the guts to leave my family and New England and move there permanently.
15. The first time I ever got drunk was on Cape Codders at age 19. Beer came later.
16. My favorite movie is “The Poseidon Adventure.” Someday I’ll write a humorous essay about why.
17. My favorite way to vacation is to lie on sand in front of an ocean that’s the color of Aim toothpaste.
18. Sailing makes me quite seasick, even though I did a lot of it as a kid.
19. I am a Titanic buff but I couldn’t stand the movie because of the sappy fictional love story.
20. Medicine and the human body have always fascinated me, but I didn’t have any talent in chemistry or physics or the willingness to study long hours and be ruthlessly competitive, so I didn’t become a doctor.
21. I have a lot more self-confidence than I did in my 20s and 30s.
22. I like driving in the snow because it’s exciting and I’m good at it.
23. I also have a good sense of direction and time.
24. The first speaking part I ever got in a play was the lead, when I was in my mid-30s. Imagine my surprise.
    
25. I love to read and would spend about half my waking hours doing so I could.
26. I read Newsweek cover to cover, but I don't like watching news on TV any more unless it’s about a disaster or other major breaking event.
27. I love irreverent and obnoxious humor.
28. I’ve sometimes offended people with my irreverent and obnoxious humor.
29. I know lots of Monty Python dialogue by heart.
30. Sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if I had moved to England as a kid.
31. I have absolutely no ability to draw.
32. I love the smell of damp pine trees in the spring.
33. My younger daughter is much less emotionally inhibited than I am, which makes me very happy.
34. I can’t stand shopping for clothes for myself unless it’s online.
35. I love shopping for clothes and other stuff for my kids.
36. I used to eat Budget Gourmet frozen dinners but now I love to cook and am reasonably good at it.
37. I love reading and hearing people’s stories. I’d love to do StoryCorps with someone.
38. I like dancing to cheesy '70s and '80s tunes.
39. The first album I bought that wasn’t by the Beatles was the Bee Gees’ “Main Course.”
40. I need to live in a quality city (i.e., with high education, culture and population level).
41. I have a hard time getting on board with new ideas until I’ve thought about them for a while.
42. The only kind of fruit I really like is pears, and Macintosh apples if they’re just off the tree.
43. I’m glad my parents gave me an old-fashioned yet interesting and dignified first name.
44. I have never had the desire to get a tattoo.
45. I sometimes think about becoming a vegetarian, but it would be hard to give up chicken. Also I don’t like vegetables all that much.
46. When I was in high school, I had a major crush on Gregory Peck and I taught myself how to use the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature at a large city library so I could make a scrapbook with photocopies of magazine articles about him.
47. I think penguins are inherently funny and cute, and cows are just plain funny.
48. I love all kinds of music except modern jazz, opera and rap.
49. I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I don’t like Mozart, because everyone thinks he was a genius but his music makes me think of men in tights and wigs sitting around eating cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.
50. The first car I owned was my father’s VW Jetta. I had it for six months and then totaled it in a snowstorm.
51. I wish I could speak Spanish or play an instrument well, but I don’t have the patience to put in the time and practice.
52. I did no extracurricular activities in high school because I was very shy. I never would have gotten into a decent college today.
53. I knew I’d reached some sort of milestone when I got a Dustbuster one Christmas and was genuinely thrilled. Sort of like when I bought my first vacuum cleaner and fawned over the attachments.
    
54. I always thought I was fat until I had kids. Now I don’t care so much anymore.
55. Partly because my mother encouraged and corrected me a lot, I’ve always been a good writer. Colleagues think I write clearly because I have a very low tolerance for vagueness and bullshit.
56. I’m a pretty good vocal mimic. My best impressions are the car in “The Jetsons,” Sid the sloth in “Ice Age,” and a lawn sprinkler.
57. I have never eaten an organ meat or anything with tentacles, and I never will.
58. I have to agree with friends who say we had the most fun wedding ever.
59. I’ve never been to Russia but I’m pretty sure I would hate it.
60. Dirty bathrooms give me the major creeps.
61. My father plus being a journalist made my cynical.
62. I once had a job squirting the jelly into jelly doughnuts. I quit after two days because I had to get up before dawn. Time to make the doughnuts...
63. I wish I had gotten to know my grandparents better, or my uncle before he died in his early 30s.
64. The few movies that have made me cry include “The English Patient,” “Shadowlands” and “Schindler’s List.”
65. A lot of things in my daily life remind me of plots from ‘70s sitcoms.
66. I also know way too many lyrics to ‘70s songs.
67. I haven’t got a clue who most of the current celebrities are and I don’t care that they’ve gotten divorced or pregnant or whatever.
68. I love even severe hot weather and humidity, as long as there’s shade and a fan and I don’t have to move around too much.
69. I’d love to go back to my high school and take some of the English and history classes I didn’t take before.
70. I have recurring dreams about being in a play and not being able to remember my lines or even find the right script backstage, only this time it’s being staged in my junior high school auditorium.
71. I have recurring dreams about going back to college for one more semester because I never finished, and/or forgetting until finals week that I had enrolled in a math or science class but had never gone.
72. I love taking photographs but don’t seem to have the time, and I’m intimidated by the amount of photos that need to be put into albums.
73. I wonder how much of the stuff that has happened to us is still stored away somewhere in our memories. I wish we could access our entire memories and make them searchable like Google.
74. I took acid once and hated it. I snorted coke several times and liked it, but I probably wouldn’t do it again.
75. I have the same birthday as Orville Wright, Bill Clinton, Tipper Gore, Jonathan Frakes, Ring Lardner Jr., Ogden Nash and Johnny Nash.
76. I smoked cigarettes for about 12 years. Now I chew lots of Trident Crystal Frost Freshmint.
77. As a little kid, I was proud of being able to blow bubbles. I got a dime for my allowance each Sunday and spent it on 10 pieces of Bazooka Joe bubble gum. My mother was not pleased.
78. I inherited my father’s wide feet. There’s considerable space between my big toes and the ones next to them.
79. I think fishing is boring and hunting for sport is despicable.
80. My favorite 20th-century writers in English are Iris Murdoch, Kurt Vonnegut, Ian McEwan and David Lodge.
    
81. My senses of smell and hearing are acute. My eyesight sucks. I fervently hope I don’t ever have to switch back from contacts to glasses.
82. I want to go to Central America and South America some day.
83. I would have the worst time ever at a NASCAR race or a pre-wrestling match, though I might enjoy listening to the other audience members for a while.
84. I was never a member of any sports team until I played company softball starting in my 20s. I’m a terrible player but I love the game.
85. As a teenager, I enjoyed reading cautionary young-adult novels about street gangs and drug addicts. I never read “Little House on the Prairie” or anything like that.
86. I was a major tomboy as a kid and I still hate dressing up girly. I never played with dolls but my stuffed animals had detailed histories, eventful days and rich inner lives.
87. I don’t like sodas and liquors that are brown.
88. I drink milk with almost every meal.
89. I always notice mistakes in signs, brochures, etc. and then feel like a picky nerd and don’t say anything to whomever I’m with, unless it’s a case of using quotation marks for emphasis instead of quotation. My biggest grammatical gripes are using an apostrophe for the possessive “it’s” and incorrect conjugation of the verb “to lie” (as in where someone says they’re going to go lay down for a while).
90. I read the Boston Globe comics pages avidly and I really care what’s going to happen next in “Doonesbury” and “For Better or for Worse.”
91. I didn’t drink coffee until I was in my 30s. I still don’t like the taste all that much, but now I have to drink it every morning or I’m a zombie
92. I dislike guns on principle but was a pretty good shot with a pistol the couple of times I tried. Also, I secretly wanted a BB gun when I was a kid.
93. I’ve set foot in every state in the continental U.S. except Montana, North and South Dakota, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin and Michigan, but I’ve only been in Canada once to change planes, and never to Mexico.
94. The hardest and (almost) lowest-paying job I ever had, but also the most fun, was as a reporter/assistant editor.
95. I still fantasize about smacking down the girls who teased me in junior high and have hopes that they live in trailers with abusive husbands.
96. I’m addicted to shopping online for inexpensive things, finding exactly what I want and then getting a present in the mail.
97. Department stores give me mental hives because they remind me of casinos (no windows or clocks, baffling layout), and I hate their prices and getting lost. If I have to go to a bricks-and-mortar store, I’d much rather it be Bed Bath and Beyond.
98. I’m disgusted by the right wing and religious zealots, but I also wonder what the heck makes them think the way they do and how they formed their opinions.
99. I want to learn how to ski (and to have the money to indulge in it with my family) so I don’t hate winter as much.
100. I sometimes wish I’d been born into a Jewish or Italian rather than WASP family.