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janradderThis was done for Facebook but I decided to post it here as well.
I'm not tagging anyone for this, but here are the rules anyway:
Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
(To do this, go to "notes" under tabs (+) on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)
All-righty -- here we go!
1. When I was in second grade, I noticed water pouring from the roof of the school during recess. It was winter, but warm, so all the snow that had collected on top of the roof was melting and streaming over the edge. I thought the best thing to do was stand underneath the falling water and tell anyone who passed by that I was taking a shower. The playground aide stood by and watched me as I pretended to lather up and rinse my hair, until recess was over. Then, she took me to the office and the principal called my mother.
2. In fifth grade, I ordered a book at school that would teach me how to disco dance. I hoped that if I could learn how to dance just like John Travolta, the kids at school might want to by my friend when they saw what a good dancer I was. When the book came, I was so embarrassed, I hid it in my notebook so no one would see and when I got home, I stuck it on my bookshelf, unopened, so I never did learn to disco dance.
3. I've never bought into the whole CD craze and still only own a few of them. I'd much rather listen to and buy vinyl, so I do.
4. When I was in college, I went with Haddayr to the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade dressed as a "fresh" zombie, complete with a torn neck and copious amounts of blood. Afterwards, we went to a nearby pizza joint where I sat in a window looking onto University Avenue, eating pizza until the owner asked me to leave because I was driving away business.
5. I've suffered from sometimes debilitating migraines since I was eleven. I've got medication that gets rid of them but, in addition to getting rid of the migraine, it also gives me heartburn, makes me feel slightly-drugged and causes me to need to pee about every ten minutes or so.
6. The worst job I ever had was working at a Wawa Food Mart in Waterbury, CT. Not only was the name an embarrassment, my fellow employees treated me like I was an idiot because I didn't know the price of every object in the store on my first day and I got to wear a brown polyester uniform that was covered in pills because it was so old.
7. At that same job, just before closing one night, I was asked to take all the unsold newspapers, cut off the tops and collate them for record keeping, then toss the rest of the paper. Because I didn't look at the dates, I cut off the tops of all the weekly papers as well as the daily ones. I didn't realize my mistake until I was done and I never told the manager.
8. I did a triathlon about a year and a half ago and would like to do another, but I haven't made the time commitment to train so I haven't.
9. When I lived in NYC, I used to turn the Astor Place cube nearly every time I walked past it into the East Village. Late at night, when no one is sitting underneath, you can get it spinning pretty fast, especially if you have some help,.
10. Though all my classmates in grade school agreed I was a real-life Charlie Brown, when my sixth grade class put on a play version of A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS, the teacher cast the roles by having us pick a number between one and ten which was how I lost out on the role of Charlie Brown to another kid. Because the part of Charlie Brown was cast last, there were no other parts left, so I was given the role of Franklin and performed onstage in blackface. Sadly, I am not making this up.
11. My high school job was working at a film company called Generic Films, in Waterbury, CT. I did lighting, special effects and editing for the B-movies PSYCOS IN LOVE, GALACTIC GIGOLO, and CEMETERY HIGH. I'm proud to say that one of the scenes I edited in PSYCHOS made a film critic to throw up during the screening.
12. I had no intention of ever going to my junior prom but I did wage a write-in campaign to have "Toolin' for Anus," by the Meatmen as our prom theme. Though the campaign was successful (it garnered more votes than any of the listed choices), the song was quietly disqualified and, even though I and several other students marched down to the vice principal's office to protest its disqualification, the prom theme, in the end, was "Knights in White Satin." I still think "Toolin' for Anus" would have been better.
13. When I was a teacher at Head Start in Minneapolis, I tried to organize a union and was illegally fired for it. Two and a half years later, after going to trial and continuing the organizing drive, the case was settled. There is still no union at the Minneapolis Head Start, but I now have a drum set and Haddayr and I got to spend a month in the UK and Ireland.
14. When I was three or four, I cried at the end of every episode of MR. ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD because I didn't think he was going to come back the next day. When Mr. Rogers died, I watched the show and cried for nearly the entire thirty minutes.
15. When I was younger, I loved to explore old, abandoned houses. My friend and I would drive around Connecticut looking for them and stop to break into any we found. This led to a state trooper stopping us after we'd left one of the houses. I talked our way out of a ticket or worse by telling him I was scouting locations for Generic Films and giving him a business card. Afterwards, the cop drove straight across the street and up a hill into a cemetery. There was no road there, so he drove on the grass, and as the car started to slide down because the hill was too steep, the cop turned the wheel sideways so that the car dug out four huge ruts in the hillside. Then he gunned the engine, tearing up more dirt and grass, let the car slide all the way to the bottom and drove off on the street.
16. In third grade, I announced to my class that I was going to write a book called THE SMILING SNOWMAN and that it was going to go into the school library. I never wrote the book because I could never get past the first line -- "It was a warm and sunny day."
17. I played bass and sang in a band called Mi6. Our first EP made the top ten lists of several MAXIMUM ROCK AND ROLL writers in the early 90's.
18. My earliest memory is of my first birthday. I remember that we had cupcakes (maybe Hostess, but maybe not) and on top of each cupcake was a candle stuck into a clown candle holder. What I remember most is seeing the orange glow of the lit candle when the lights were out and my family sang happy birthday to me.
19. I collected comics until the early 90's when I racked up a bill of over $400 for just a few months worth of titles. I haven't bought a comic since -- I just check out the trades from the library.
20. When I write, I need to have something to drink -- either coffee or water (or sometimes tea). This means I have to get up and pee a lot when I write.
21. I am full of self-doubt and insecurity.
22. I took Polish language courses for almost a year when our boys were younger but I had to give it up because I couldn't find the time to study. I hope to get back to it someday when the boys are older and I have more time.
23. I love to cook, so much so that I prepare a traditional Polish eleven course meal each year for Christmas Eve (that takes me most of the month of December to prepare). Unfortunately, like many things in my life, I just don't have the time or energy to do as much fancy cooking as I'd like.
24. I have tinnitus in both ears, from a combination of playing in a loud band and genetics. Because of that, I sometimes have a hard time hearing what people are saying, especially in noisy places, so, often, I just smile and nod when people talk to me at parties without having any idea of what they said.
25. When I was coming home from Generic Films late one evening back in high school, there was a bearded man on an old bicycle riding in circles in the intersection near my house. Though it was 3 AM, he rode round and round on his bicycle, wearing a top hat and a ratty black suit, as if he were a chimney sweep. He smiled at me and gave a little wave as I drove past him. I'm still not sure if he really was there.
I'm not tagging anyone for this, but here are the rules anyway:
Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
(To do this, go to "notes" under tabs (+) on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)
All-righty -- here we go!
1. When I was in second grade, I noticed water pouring from the roof of the school during recess. It was winter, but warm, so all the snow that had collected on top of the roof was melting and streaming over the edge. I thought the best thing to do was stand underneath the falling water and tell anyone who passed by that I was taking a shower. The playground aide stood by and watched me as I pretended to lather up and rinse my hair, until recess was over. Then, she took me to the office and the principal called my mother.
2. In fifth grade, I ordered a book at school that would teach me how to disco dance. I hoped that if I could learn how to dance just like John Travolta, the kids at school might want to by my friend when they saw what a good dancer I was. When the book came, I was so embarrassed, I hid it in my notebook so no one would see and when I got home, I stuck it on my bookshelf, unopened, so I never did learn to disco dance.
3. I've never bought into the whole CD craze and still only own a few of them. I'd much rather listen to and buy vinyl, so I do.
4. When I was in college, I went with Haddayr to the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade dressed as a "fresh" zombie, complete with a torn neck and copious amounts of blood. Afterwards, we went to a nearby pizza joint where I sat in a window looking onto University Avenue, eating pizza until the owner asked me to leave because I was driving away business.
5. I've suffered from sometimes debilitating migraines since I was eleven. I've got medication that gets rid of them but, in addition to getting rid of the migraine, it also gives me heartburn, makes me feel slightly-drugged and causes me to need to pee about every ten minutes or so.
6. The worst job I ever had was working at a Wawa Food Mart in Waterbury, CT. Not only was the name an embarrassment, my fellow employees treated me like I was an idiot because I didn't know the price of every object in the store on my first day and I got to wear a brown polyester uniform that was covered in pills because it was so old.
7. At that same job, just before closing one night, I was asked to take all the unsold newspapers, cut off the tops and collate them for record keeping, then toss the rest of the paper. Because I didn't look at the dates, I cut off the tops of all the weekly papers as well as the daily ones. I didn't realize my mistake until I was done and I never told the manager.
8. I did a triathlon about a year and a half ago and would like to do another, but I haven't made the time commitment to train so I haven't.
9. When I lived in NYC, I used to turn the Astor Place cube nearly every time I walked past it into the East Village. Late at night, when no one is sitting underneath, you can get it spinning pretty fast, especially if you have some help,.
10. Though all my classmates in grade school agreed I was a real-life Charlie Brown, when my sixth grade class put on a play version of A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS, the teacher cast the roles by having us pick a number between one and ten which was how I lost out on the role of Charlie Brown to another kid. Because the part of Charlie Brown was cast last, there were no other parts left, so I was given the role of Franklin and performed onstage in blackface. Sadly, I am not making this up.
11. My high school job was working at a film company called Generic Films, in Waterbury, CT. I did lighting, special effects and editing for the B-movies PSYCOS IN LOVE, GALACTIC GIGOLO, and CEMETERY HIGH. I'm proud to say that one of the scenes I edited in PSYCHOS made a film critic to throw up during the screening.
12. I had no intention of ever going to my junior prom but I did wage a write-in campaign to have "Toolin' for Anus," by the Meatmen as our prom theme. Though the campaign was successful (it garnered more votes than any of the listed choices), the song was quietly disqualified and, even though I and several other students marched down to the vice principal's office to protest its disqualification, the prom theme, in the end, was "Knights in White Satin." I still think "Toolin' for Anus" would have been better.
13. When I was a teacher at Head Start in Minneapolis, I tried to organize a union and was illegally fired for it. Two and a half years later, after going to trial and continuing the organizing drive, the case was settled. There is still no union at the Minneapolis Head Start, but I now have a drum set and Haddayr and I got to spend a month in the UK and Ireland.
14. When I was three or four, I cried at the end of every episode of MR. ROGERS' NEIGHBORHOOD because I didn't think he was going to come back the next day. When Mr. Rogers died, I watched the show and cried for nearly the entire thirty minutes.
15. When I was younger, I loved to explore old, abandoned houses. My friend and I would drive around Connecticut looking for them and stop to break into any we found. This led to a state trooper stopping us after we'd left one of the houses. I talked our way out of a ticket or worse by telling him I was scouting locations for Generic Films and giving him a business card. Afterwards, the cop drove straight across the street and up a hill into a cemetery. There was no road there, so he drove on the grass, and as the car started to slide down because the hill was too steep, the cop turned the wheel sideways so that the car dug out four huge ruts in the hillside. Then he gunned the engine, tearing up more dirt and grass, let the car slide all the way to the bottom and drove off on the street.
16. In third grade, I announced to my class that I was going to write a book called THE SMILING SNOWMAN and that it was going to go into the school library. I never wrote the book because I could never get past the first line -- "It was a warm and sunny day."
17. I played bass and sang in a band called Mi6. Our first EP made the top ten lists of several MAXIMUM ROCK AND ROLL writers in the early 90's.
18. My earliest memory is of my first birthday. I remember that we had cupcakes (maybe Hostess, but maybe not) and on top of each cupcake was a candle stuck into a clown candle holder. What I remember most is seeing the orange glow of the lit candle when the lights were out and my family sang happy birthday to me.
19. I collected comics until the early 90's when I racked up a bill of over $400 for just a few months worth of titles. I haven't bought a comic since -- I just check out the trades from the library.
20. When I write, I need to have something to drink -- either coffee or water (or sometimes tea). This means I have to get up and pee a lot when I write.
21. I am full of self-doubt and insecurity.
22. I took Polish language courses for almost a year when our boys were younger but I had to give it up because I couldn't find the time to study. I hope to get back to it someday when the boys are older and I have more time.
23. I love to cook, so much so that I prepare a traditional Polish eleven course meal each year for Christmas Eve (that takes me most of the month of December to prepare). Unfortunately, like many things in my life, I just don't have the time or energy to do as much fancy cooking as I'd like.
24. I have tinnitus in both ears, from a combination of playing in a loud band and genetics. Because of that, I sometimes have a hard time hearing what people are saying, especially in noisy places, so, often, I just smile and nod when people talk to me at parties without having any idea of what they said.
25. When I was coming home from Generic Films late one evening back in high school, there was a bearded man on an old bicycle riding in circles in the intersection near my house. Though it was 3 AM, he rode round and round on his bicycle, wearing a top hat and a ratty black suit, as if he were a chimney sweep. He smiled at me and gave a little wave as I drove past him. I'm still not sure if he really was there.
