100 things about me

 

1. Books fill my house, both on shelves and in heaps and cartons.

2. I have two dogs, both are mixed breed and come from the local animal shelter.

3. I’m not planning to attend, but 2007 is my 25 year college reunion.

4. I went to a women’s college, Mount Holyoke in central MA.

5. I’m childless by choice.

6. I have two cats, they come from the same litter from a feral mom. They are friendly, however, and like to cuddle.

7. I’m really short for someone who had good nutrition growing up.

8. I spent four years in a tight brace (a Wilmington Jacket) that went from just under the arms to my hips. I was being treated for scoliosis and I wore the brace 23 hours a day to force my spine back into position.

9. I was reading at a college level by 5th grade.

10. During the years that I was being treated for scoliosis I read an average of three books a day.

11. I used some of my hours out of the brace to go horseback riding.

12. I’d like to be an alpaca rancher.

13. My husband and I have been together for nearly 19 years.

14. I’m a tech writer by profession.

15. My hair is long, straight, and fine. I keep it my natural color, which is near-black with a silver streak just off of the center of my forehead.

16. I wear an XL or XXL/18 or 20, depending on whether the size runs large or small.

17. I love cicadas. During the last 17-year emergence I would walk down the road picking them up and putting them in trees and bushes, so they would die where it was cool instead of on concrete or macadam.

18. I grew up walking distance from an art museum, so I developed strong tastes in art fairly young.

19. I like Pre-Raphaelites, Art Nouveau, and illustrators whose pictures look like the part of the story they are depicting. I also like most Asian art, most African art (but especially ancient Egypt), and most Meso-American art.

20. I dislike most schools of art that look like the paint was thrown at the canvas, or are just big blocks of color.

21. I love theater.

22. I have season tickets to one of the local Shakespeare theaters.

23. I think it’s ridiculous to spell theater, “theatre”.

24. I was born right on the cusp of Scorpio and Libra, but there was a complication with my breathing and by the time I took my first breath it was Scorpio time.

25. I like beads and making jewelry.

26. It’s a good thing beads are smaller than books, because I really can’t resist them.

27. Okay, I confess, I have four boxes full of beads of all types.

28. I couldn’t control my credit card debt, so now I purchase everything with cash, which I replenish once a week.

29. I want to get a new-to-me used car this year. (Even though it means I’ll have a monthly car payment again.)

30. I love station wagons.

31. I tolerate my current car, which was affordable but is a sedan.

32. I usually drive a car into the ground before getting another one. The car I have now is my fourth in nearly 30 years of driving.

33. I’ve had one new car. I’ve concluded that it just isn’t worth the extra money to be the first owner.

34. I’ve been to England and Eire, but not Scotland (yet).

35. I love cloth of all kinds, and have lots of it, though never enough…

36. I like to sew, but I prefer to make historical garments rather than, say, work clothes.

37. I have two quilts in progress, one in WV and one in VA.

38. I’ve realized that the one in WV is actually pretty hideous – there are so many different fabrics that it’s hard to see the orderliness of the patchwork. I think I must have been manic when I was working on it.

39. I also spin yarn, mostly with a drop spindle, but I have a spinning wheel.

40. I collect pictures of people spinning.

41. I used to weave, but space issues have kept my loom folded since we moved into our house.

42. I’m bi-polar, as well as clinically depressed. I’m medicated for both.

43. I hate taking vitamins, but I do it to keep my husband happy.

44. I’m the oldest of my siblings.

45. I have two nieces, 9 and 5.

46. I sometimes enjoy cooking.

47. Most of my cookbooks are for international cuisines, though I do have The Joy of Cooking.

48. I’m over a foot shorter than my husband.

49. I let the animals get up on the furniture.

50. I wish I had more friends, but I’m not very good at starting or maintaining friendships.

51. I like the paint chip cards you can get in home improvement stores.

52. I once reupholstered an easy chair. It was not as hard as I expected, but it did take some specialized tools.

53. I like dark chocolate. Back when Hershey’s Special Dark was the only type you could get, I’d fight with my Dad to get the few Special Dark in the bag of Halloween miniatures.

54. Halloween is my favorite holiday.

55. I love The Nightmare Before Christmas.

56. I like malted milk balls and chocolate covered cherries.

57. I rarely drink coffee at work, because it’s a pain to make.

58. I have lots of tea at work, and I always look for tins to keep the different types in. My biggest tea tin is in the shape of a pink elephant.

59. I have toys on my desk. Most of them are Pabo figures of pirates, but I have the Fightin’ Eleanor of Aquitaine, D’Artagnan, and the Ice Witch from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (courtesy of McDonalds).

60. Also thanks to McDonalds I have the doll version of Capt. Jack Sparrow.

61. My favorite movie maker who no one else has heard of is Peter Greenaway (Prospero’s Books, Drowning by Numbers, Pillow Book, The Cook, The Thief…)

62. My favorite color is red.

63. I like to work with polymer clay, particularly the Premo brand. Mostly I cover small boxes and make jewelry.

64. I have a dozen matchboxes waiting to be covered. The best type of box is the type of tin that mints come in. I can’t get enough of those.

65. My holiday tree has many more skeletons on it than the average tree. Also more mermaids, and many, many more sheep.

66. One of my guilty pleasures is cherry Jell-O with canned peaches in it.

67. I like reading about archeology.

68. I read comic books, primarily those in the “Vertigo” line from DC.

69. I’m female, straight, and monogamous.

70. I like to make small block prints. This is usually called “eraser carving” though I don’t always use erasers as the printing black.

71. I’ve been inside the oldest roofed structure in the world (Newgrange, in Ireland).

72. I like spicy food, particularly hot peppers.

73. I keep a bottle of Tabasco sauce at my desk.

74. I like sushi, and always order eel, herring, and salmon roe.

75. I like pickled herring on crackers, too. Sometimes I get the type in sour cream.

76. I like creamed chipped beef on toast. Someone has to…

77. I like caviar, and get the cheap grocery store variety as a treat. Goes great on scrambled eggs.

78. I haven’t been able to eat scallops since an unfortunate incident of food poisoning decades ago. Which is a shame, because I like shellfish in general.

79. I’ve eaten (musk) rat. It was terrible.

80. When I make mac and cheese I like to put tuna fish and pickled hot peppers in it, then add a little A-1 Sauce at the table.

81. My religious path is eclectic neo-pagan, with a leaning towards vodou.

82. My magical practice is hoodoo. It’s practical, flexible in material requirements, and very adaptable.

83. I like to live near running water. The houses I grew up in, and our retirement house, all have streams on or near the property. My current house is on a creek that was forced underground in the 1930s – and yes, with enough rain it comes back up, right at a join in our foundation.

84. When I dream, I’m usually a black dog. My mother also experiences dreams this way.

85. I like mix tapes. I like to pick a theme, usually a book or movies, and pick out music that matches it. I also like to make collages for the covers. The one bad thing about switching to mp3s is that there is no point in making a collage for a playlist.

86. I like paper, all types of paper. I use it to cover boxes and to make small books.

87. I collect kid’s picture books with pretty illustrations. I keep some for myself, and give the others to my nieces. I buy most of them used.

88. I have no bump of direction.

89. I don’t like to shop at a malls if I can help it. I feel overwhelmed by the quantity of stuff in one place, and pretty soon start to feel guilty about being an over-privileged American.

90. Despite anything appearing above, I am not a goth.

91. I’m still on dial-up.

92. I don’t watch TV. I used to, but about 15 years ago we moved into an apartment so small there was no room for a TV, so we got out of the habit. When we got a house we were too cheap to buy a TV set, then when we were given a set we didn’t want to pay for cable, so we just never got back into it. We really don’t have time, anyway.

93. I like wool socks. In cold weather I like to wear them to bed.

94. In hot weather I sleep in the nude, and usually without a top sheet.

95. I don’t have enough closet space, so I use the trunk of my car as auxiliary storage space.

96. My big extravagance in the last year was buying an 8-foot table to do crafts on.

97. I get pedicures more often than manicures.

98. One of my favorite artists is Joseph Cornell.

99. I like musicals, and just saw “Into the Woods” for the first time.

100. I am tattooed on my right upper arm and my back. I have tattoos of a mermaid, Thoth, a labyrinth, the Lady of the Beasts, Scythian horseheads, and a great blue heron. Eventually I plan to have a half-sleeve on my right arm, and possibly one on my left also. I don’t intend to get any tatts in places that aren’t coverable until after I retire.