Eight Random Facts

Tonight's blog is just for fun. A wonderful writer friend of mine, Edie Ramer "tagged" me to write eight random habits or facts about myself in my blog (or web site—whichever is appropriate). Then I get to tag eight other people so they can do the same.

You know there's that seven degrees thing, i.e. you're only ever seven people (or whatever) away from some hugely famous person or thing…I keep wondering if that's true and somewhere if you keep following all these various tags, someone is going to tag some outrageously famous and cool person like Sue Grafton, Tess Gerritsen, or the dynamic writing duo of Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer. Although if you really knew such an overworked, completely stressed out person, you wouldn't do such a thing to them.

That's not to say that the authors I'm going to "tag" aren't also outrageously cool and famous. Hmmm, I don't think I'm going to continue down that path because I can see far too many "open mouth, insert foot" opportunities. I'll just say that the folks I'm going to drag into this cauldron are people who either owe me a favor, have done something so egregiously bad to me that I'm now getting my revenge, or I just happen to know they have a blog or website and hope they won't be too upset.

My Eight Thingies

1. This bites: I hate lists. Oh, sure, I do lists for work and make copious notes for myself, but only when I'm losing my mind. Which is pretty much daily. So that's number 1. Grrrh.
   
2. I hate hot weather. It almost can't be too cold for me. Perhaps not entirely true—I'm not terribly fond of temperatures dropping into the minus numbers, but at least with the cold you can put another layer of clothing on. Unfortunately, there are only so many layers of clothing you can take off and once you're down to the skin, that's pretty much it. If you're naked and still hot, there's not much else you can do except get heat rash and a boat-load of chiggers because you're walking around without sufficient protection. So hot weather is out. [This is turning into a "what I hate" list—I need to do a 180.]
   
3. I love autumn. I get a huge burst of energy, both physically and mentally. I write volumes in the fall and early winter because I know come summer, I'm going to be a droopy, miserable little brat who just vegetates in the coldest room of the house and complains about having hot feet. (Which reminds me that I also hate made beds, i.e. beds with the sheets tucked in nicely, because I feel hog-tied when I get into them and spend hours trying to pull the sheets out so that my feet can be free and breathe.)
   
4. My husband thinks I'm an alien. He claims that anyone who thinks her feet need to breathe at night (see #3) and who can't tolerate another person putting their hand on the top of her head because it makes her feel like she's smothering is obviously not a human being from the planet Earth. Apparently, he has concluded that I breathe through my feet at night and through the top of my head during the day (like a whale—and I'm getting pretty much the same proportions, too). And all because I yank the sheets out so my feet aren't covered at night and I go bananas when he lays his hand on the top of my head (and that is not funny even if he does nearly pee in his pants with laughter when he does that). Nonetheless, I do actually breathe through my nose. As far as I can tell. That other stuff is just crazy and it beats me where he came up with those ridiculous ideas.
   
5. My cat has no respect for me. If I turn around to get something out of the fridge while I'm getting my meal together, when I turn back, the cat is either drinking my milk out of my glass or eating my food off my plate. He doesn't do that to my husband, although it could be that he objects to my husband's beer. It's getting to be a challenge to eat before the damn cat tries to shoulder his way in and grab the food right out of my mouth. And he's got really bad halitosis (the cat—not my husband). I'm not sure about the dogs, either. Lately, they've been eyeing my plate and leaning over, hoping to slobber enough onto my food to gross me out and make me give it to them. My husband is definitely the alpha dog, but our pack of dogs treat me more like I'm the zeta dog—cute and sort of nice to have around, but completely irrelevant when the alpha dog strolls in.
   
6. I am constantly amazed by Cops. And I'm amazed that I watch Cops.
   
7. I love technology. I love Wired magazine. Even my husband reads Wired and he's a freakin' biologist who moans that we should forget all this Windows/GUI stuff and go back to MS-DOS (I'm still mad at Xerox/Apple for introducing a GUI OS—when I first saw it, I wanted to sit and weep with frustration in front of the computer—and I loved computers. I don't know what the stupid pictures are, what to do with them, or how anything works and I despise it. I hate just randomly clicking on pictures that mean nothing to me and hoping it will turn out okay. Thank goodness Microsoft will now let you install a server with no GUI interface! Hip-hip-hooray!) Anyway, I wish I was rich enough to buy all the electronics and doo-dads I'd like. And I wish I had enough time to actually learn to use all the electronics I currently have. Wow, sorry, this was really off-topic.
   
8. I grow roses. A lot of roses. And I'm a birder (i.e. I go bird watching). And in college, I almost became a biologist. Weird. Thank goodness I came to my senses and just married one, instead.
   

So those are some bizarre-o factoids about me.

And now here are the eight poor authors who will now have to bare their souls in their blogs or websites:

Jenna Black

Kristina Cook

Caren Crane

Charlotte Featherstone

Lisa Fuller

Deb Marlowe

Susan Ralph

Mai Christy Thao