25 Random Things About Me, in Random Order

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Yes, I got tagged with this in Facebook originally. As long as I was free-associating, I thought I'd put it up here, in my ongoing quest to be myself.

1. I would want Jodie Foster to play me in my bio-pic.


2. I have never learned to do cartwheels. Probably won’t, at this rate.
   
   
3. Once upon a time, I could name all of Henry VIII’s wives in order, and tell you how each marriage ended.
   
   
4. I was born on Election Day.


5. My mother voted absentee a few days before that, having given up on the belief that she would ever have me because I was born a month overdue.


6. I’ve worn glasses since I was 5. I had radial keratotomy when I was 20, which corrected my vision for a while, but it didn’t last. I wear contacts most of the time because I'm vain.


7. Back when I worked as a Kelly temp, I typed around 110 words per minute with almost zero errors.
8. I used to be a member of Mensa. At the first meeting I attended, I met the man who would become my first husband (but not my last, nor my second-to-last). Draw your own conclusions about my intelligence.


9. My dad’s birthday is Nov. 3. Mine is Nov. 6. My oldest daughter’s is Nov. 12. If she ever has children, she has to have one born Nov. 24 to continue the pattern.


10. I think my daughters are really, really amazingly wonderful.


11. My longest one-day bike mileage (so far) is 94, when we did Tour des Lacs in 2007. (This is a beautiful ride from Spokane into Idaho and back. If you're a cyclist, come check it out!)


12. I used to read enormous amounts of science fiction and fantasy, and at one point subscribed to 3 science fiction magazines (Asimov's, Analog, and Aboriginal, which no longer exists).


13. Every single time I have ever tried to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey all the way through, I have fallen asleep.


14. When my second mother-in-law died of lung cancer I was there with the rest of the family. It was amazing and intense and exhausting, and after she died she was so beautiful, like marble.


15. I was captain of our High School Bowl team. This was a quiz show hosted by a local TV station, kind of like Jeopardy.


16. When I tore my hamstring a few years ago doing yoga, it sounded like a rifle shot. (Yes, I still do yoga.)


17. When I bought my first PC in about 1986, I stayed up late many nights writing DOS *.BAT files for fun.


18. I object to raisins in cookies. They are just masquerading as chocolate chips to deceive the nearsighted.


19. I’m subject to vertigo attacks that make me feel as if I have the drunk whirlies, without benefit (or enjoyment) of alcohol.
    
    
20. Sometimes when I sleep, my eyes are open—just a little. This is apparently very creepy. At a sleepover birthday party in my childhood, two of my friends thought I was dead.


21. My college nickname was Greenie because there was a Barb Green going through sorority rush at the same time and I was Barb Greene-with-an-E.


22. I went to a Seventh Day Adventist school for first grade because my birthday was after the cutoff date for Idaho public school. Once I was a bona fide first grade graduate, the public school could take me for second grade. Go figure.


23. Unless I go back to before I started 4-H and Bluebirds in about second or third grade, I can’t remember a period in my life when I was not involved in some kind of group, committee, board, or other volunteer or civic activity.


24. As far as I know, I’m not allergic to any foods or medications. I’ve had morphine once and it nauseated me but that’s about it.


25. I once had a poem published in one of those books they try to get you to buy after accepting your work for publication. I may still have my copy somewhere around here….
    


26. Bonus item: I am (finally) married to the love of my life, after learning a lot (I hope--and he hopes!) in my first two marriages. Third time IS the charm, for me at least.