100 Things about Me

1. I have a twin sister who is three minutes older than I am.
2. People who don’t know us very well say that we look a lot alike.
3. We don’t look that all that much alike, however, according to family and close friends.
4. When we were little, we developed our own twin language.
5. I don’t remember any of it.
6. I played professional tackle football for three seasons, as an offensive lineman for the California Quake in Long Beach.
7. I hated tackling. I was a lousy tackler, truth be told.
8. I was, however, a great longsnapper. I was the only woman in our league who could consistently do a standard NFL-style 15 yard snap.
9. Most women can only snap 10 to 12 yards. This makes blocking punts very easy.
10. I never had a punt blocked.
11. I have a national championship ring, but didn’t get to play in the championship game because I was on injured reserve. (Something I still regret.)
12. I grew up in Southern California, and lived there all my life until I moved to Missouri in the spring of 2005.
13. I love my new home. The people here are so friendly.
14. We are building our dream house -- a concrete geodesic dome -- because it is more environmentally friendly than conventional building techniques.
15. We also like the fact that domes are tornado-proof.
16. They are also incredibly low-maintenance.
17. They are also just plain cool.
18. I don’t like coffee; I drink chai latte or green tea in the morning.
19. I have dark brown eyes and brown hair.
20. I spent one season as a blonde, but it looked really fake & was way too much work.
21. I went blonde only because my sister showed up at our family’s Thanksgiving dinner with blonde streaks.
22. Obviously, I had to be blonder than she was by Christmas.
23. I love seafood, especially shrimp.
24. I had terrible eyes (myopia & astigmatism) until 2002, when I had lasik surgery.
25. I now have 20/20 vision in one eye & 20/15 in the other.
26. I learned to knit when my grandma taught me at the age of eight.
27. I have my grandma’s funny knitting style, because she was a natural lefty that had been “corrected” to use her right hand.
28. Sometimes other knitters assume I am a newbie & try to show me the “right” way to hold the needles.
29. The biggest thing I have yet knit is an Einstein sweater-coat for myself (XL!)
30. I plan to open a yarn store someday.
31. I am half Irish.
32. I have three tattoos.
33. I learned to swim almost before I could walk.
34. I am a huge fan of all sports.
35. My favorite teams in “The Big Three” pro sports (basketball, baseball, football) are the Los Angeles Lakers, Los Angeles Dodgers, and my newly adopted home team, the Kansas City Chiefs.
36. I also love the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks.
37. I was at the game where they sealed their 2nd WNBA championship in 2002.
38. I currently have two cats, named Pyewacket & Friday.
39. One of my sillier dreams is to appear on “Jeopardy!” some day.
40. I would say, “Why yes, Alex, I played pro football for three seasons.”
41. My favorite pizza toppings are mushrooms & onions.
42. Everyone else in my family likes meat, meat, and meat on the pizza, no veggies.
43. I almost never get to order the pizza my way. It’s too much arguing.
44. I had crazy teeth as a kid & wore braces for seven years.
45. I love bluegrass music.
46. I can’t whistle.
47. I went to school at Pomona College, a small liberal arts school in Claremont, CA.
48. Hardly anyone has heard of Pomona.
49. Or, they get it mixed up with (much larger) Cal Poly Pomona.
50. My bachelor’s degree is in Studio Art.
51. I did a gallery show instead of a senior thesis.
52. My faculty advisor, Karl Benjamin, was a dead ringer for Ernest Hemingway.
53. I have a brown belt in Shaolin Kempo karate.
54. Arnold Palmer is my uncle.
55. I have worked in lots of different fields. I have worked as a cook, a librarian’s assistant, a jeweler, and a construction worker.
56. I was in the marching band in high school, playing flute & piccolo.
57. I used to sew all my clothes.
58. I wish I still had time to do that.
59. I am a medieval reenactor, and a member of the Society for Creative Anachronism.
60. I met my (former) husband in the SCA.
61. We have been married since 1989. (update: divorced in 2009)
62. We have two wonderful children who are my biggest joy (when they are not driving me crazy).
63. I have robo-feet – am 8mm screw in each ankle to correct a pronation problem.
64. I like to cook, but hate to clean house.
65. I love board games & card games.
66. My favorite game at the moment is "Cranium".
67. I am an obsessive reader.
68. I like to re-read books that are particular favorites.
69. I have re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy about once a year since 1978.
70. I have memorized big chunks of LOTR by now.
71. I can solve the Rubik’s Cube puzzle.
72. My average solve time is around two or three minutes. Won’t win a prize, but it’s respectable.
73. I have asymmetrical ear piercings – three on the left, one on the right.
74. I’m allergic to penicillin.
75. I am mostly a good driver.
76. I hate to parallel park, however, because I am pretty bad at it.
77. I love greasy-spoon breakfast foods – sausage, eggs, hash browns.
78. I like my eggs over easy.
79. My favorite color is green.
80. Three weeks before our wedding, my husband & his best man taught me to rappel.
81. The best man presented us with nicely framed photos of us hanging off cliffs at the rehearsal dinner. My mother was horrified that I had done this, exclaiming, “What if you had broken your leg? You would have had to walk down the aisle in a cast!” Whatever, Mom.
82. I worked as a computer programmer for 15 years.
83. I was laid off or downsized three times in the year after the dot-com crash.
84. I am a big-time trivia nerd, as is my sister.
85. She nicknamed me the "Trivia Imperatrix" (bad Latin for Empress of Trivia), because I outrank ordinary trivia queens.
86. It’s a house rule that we are not allowed to play on the same team in Trivial Pursuit.
87. I am hopelessly hooked on reality TV shows.
88. Survivor is still my favorite of the genre, although it’s gone steadily downhill since Thailand.
89. I had a non-speaking role in an episode of "American Family" with Edward James Olmos.
90. It was a football-themed episode, and at the end, a teammate & I hoisted Olmos on our shoulders and carried him off the field.
91. We almost dropped the poor guy on his head! He was pretty heavy.
92. I have a good uncial and a decent italic hand in calligraphy.
93. I absolutely adore anything made with funky veined cheese.
94. I have a totally killer dip recipe with Gorgonzola & green onions.
95. I love Ridley Scott movies.
96. I saw "Blade Runner" on opening night in 1982 at the Bruin in Westwood.
97. I can type 47 words per minute.
98. I don’t drink alcohol, except for an occasional glass of champagne at a wedding or on New Year’s Eve.
99. I drive a mini-van, but I try not to be too uncool about it.
100. I am still quite enchanted by fireflies.