25 Random Things About Me

Okay, I'm doing this "25 Things" deal because I've seen so many people on facebook do it. I'm not going to "tag" anyone, but I do enjoy reading other people's lists. So, if you haven't made one and want to, go ahead and do it. I'll probably sit and read it and enjoy it.

Here goes:

1. I was the only girl in my grade school class from Kindergarten through 3rd grade and then again from 6th through 8th grade.

2. My sister and I shared a bedroom until I was in 5th grade. We would talk to each other until late into the night sometimes. I remember we would make plans to live next to each other when we grew up and have dinners and barbeques over at each other's houses.

3. I have two best friends with whom I have been close since high school. Maria lives in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Lelani currently lives in Wisconsin not far from where we grew up, though she did go to college in Pennsylvania and also lived in Vermont for a while.

4. I have lived in the following cities: Princeton, WI; Madison, WI; Eau Claire, WI; Arlington, VA; and Alexandria, VA.

5. I love the show "Seinfeld". I know they call it the show about nothing, but at the same time I still find a way to relate it to everything.

6. I like drinking bloody marys. I like it when they basically show up as a meal in a glass along with a beer chaser. That seems to happen back in Wisconsin. I don't see them presented quite the same way in DC.

7. I grew up in the Midwest, but for some reason, thought of myself as being more aligned with the ideology of people on the West Coast. I wound up living on the East Coast.

8. When I was growing up, my parents competed in an annual trivia contest that played on a local radio station. It was 21 hours of trivia and my dad would collect books from libraries all around to have on hand to look up answers and call in. This was back in the day before everyone had the internet. I'd look forward to it every February. It was practically another holiday to me...one where we'd get to stay up all night and eat Twizzlers and Chex Mix.

9. During my junior and senior years of college I lived in an apartment with 5 other girls. It was a really weird apartment. I think it was some sort of office that got converted into an apartment. We had an "Exit" sign that lit up our living room.

10. I taught myself how to play the guitar when I was 13. I'd been playing trumpet since I was in 3rd or 4th grade. I thought for a while that I wanted to have a career related to music. When I was 16, I took private trumpet lessons with a professor in Oshkosh, because my high school band teacher thought I should. Then the professor kicked me out of the lessons because I wasn't practicing as much as he wanted me to and because my musical ability wasn't improving as quickly as he wanted.

11. I like cooking, and I want to get better at baking.

12. Before I got married/engaged, I didn't want an engagement ring. I told Jake to get me something practical. Then, I backtracked and said that if Jake wanted to give me an engagement ring to show that we were engaged, he could. I think I confused him so much that he wound up giving me a ring, a trip to NYC, and a laptop as engagement gifts.

13. I gave Lelani a cheap gaudy ring from Claire's when I asked her to be my maid of honor. It was over a candlelit dinner of Domino's pizza.

14. When I die, I really don't want to be embalmed.

15. When the war in Iraq broke out, I was on vacation in Paris. There were huge protests there.

16. When I was little, I threw up in the movie theater while watching the Disney movie Cinderella.

17. I once went trick-or-treating with two friends on Labor Day. I think we seriously confused an old lady.

18. I wish I were better at speaking Spanish. I took four semesters in college. I understand a lot of what people say to me when they speak in Spanish, but I am never confident enough to actually keep a conversation going.

19. I never liked watching sports all that much until I went to Badger football and hockey games in college. I still don't like watching any sporting events as much as I liked watching those games in person with the crowd chants and the band playing.

20. I tend to be an early riser. I always got up on the weekends before my college roommates. I always beat Jake out of bed, too.

21. When I lived in Madison, I was a participant in a study about emotional regulation. I had to go in for 3 MRIs and get shown a series of images. I got paid a few hundred dollars.

22. I have a scar on my left arm from donating plasma for money while I was in college.

23. I hated swimming lessons as a kid. I remember my mom bribed me into going to my swim lessons one summer by telling me that if I went to all the lessons, she would buy me Super Mario Bros. 3 for the Nintendo.

24. I don't remember the day my sister was born, but I remember the day my brother was born. My great-grandpa had died recently, and we were cleaning out his house. My parents left for lunch and didn't come back. My grandparents took us over to their house and we watched the Miss America pageant on tv. My dad showed up in the middle of night to wake us up and say, "It's a boy!"

25. I never got a traffic ticket until I moved out East. Then, I got two in one year. One was for an illegal U-turn here in Virginia, and the other was because I was going too slow in the left lane of the highway while in New Jersey.