25 Random Things About Me

I got tagged with this over at Facebook and thought I'd double-post it here. I think anyone who reads my blog has already been tagged with it.

Except my mother. Mom, you're tagged.

So is anyone else who hasn't been forced into this yet.

25 Random Things About Me:

1. I’m a good bit better singer than I let on. I’m just shy and am stuck at baritone (rather than a tenor or bass), so most music, church music at least, isn’t written with a part that quite fits me. I can sing the Phantom of the Opera quite respectably in the shower. I will never sing it for you at all.

2. I was a picky eater when I was young, but now, I can try almost anything and like it. Last year, I even developed a taste for kimchi.

3. My boxers are strange. For years, my sister and mother have thought it is funny to buy me the gimmicky boxers Old Navy sells (especially holiday themed ones), and that saves me from having to buy any boxers for myself. So that’s pretty much what I own. They double as a humorous chastity belt.

4. I have a curse on me.

5. I don’t throw away plastic utensils. I wash them and use them just like my regular silverware. People never fail to notice when they visit my house that my pantry and silverware drawer are half-filled with plastic throw-away items.

6. My biggest fear is of infants. Of dropping them, that is.

7. I once lived off of cheese and biscuits for a month. It is impossible to make me constipated.

8. Back in college, I would keep a notebook beside my bed because I’d wake up in the middle of the night with essays fully formed in my mind and write them down. If I didn’t get them written down right away, I wouldn’t remember anything the next morning.

9. I twice have written twenty-five page research papers in a single day. I made clear “A”s on both of them.

10. You know those stereotypes about how English teachers are grammar Nazis, spotting and ridiculing your every error. I’m sort of one of those. Be warned. I never miss taking note of your mistakes. (Though I’ll miss mine all the time.)

11. I mean no offense to anyone else, but Emmy Rossum is the most beautiful woman in the world. (I can now think of all kinds of good jokes concerning showers and The Phantom of the Opera.)

12. I think some of my students consider me the cool teacher. That means if you are a teacher and are not considered cool, you’re in a sad state. That bar is evidently set very, very low.

13. I’ve seen the “Beach Games” episode from season three of The Office over fifty times. Any time I’m feeling down, I just watch it again. It’s a good episode.

14. I almost never cuss or feel the urge to do so...unless I’m teaching my college classes. Believe me, I can restrain myself (96% of the time or so), but I’m always shocked about what I just wanted to say. And it’s not when I get angry either. I think I just like to shock them.

15. I don’t like my spaces to be too dirty...or too neat. I clean them constantly, but if things are too ordered, it bothers me, and I purposefully find a way to clutter things up a little. Despite the clutter, I’m extremely hygienic.

16. I’m a devoted reader of the New York Times. The bad rap it gets from so many is just utterly ridiculous. Oddly enough, David Brooks, a conservative writer, is my favorite columnist.

17. I’m nervous in crowds. I’m an extremely talkative person unless I’m in an enclosed space with a number of people; then, I shut down. I have to escape any crowd intermittently in order to stay sane.

18. I like spiders. When I was little, they were drawn to my bedroom for some reason and would just crawl over me and everything. I remember killing flies to thrown in spider webs to feed them. I don’t like knocking spider webs down.

19. I’m a decent cook and like doing it. But I absolutely cannot stand to do the dishes. I would cook two or three times as much as I do if I didn’t have to wash the dishes.

20. When I was tested for allergies, the doctor said that I had the most intense reaction to airborne allergens (cedar especially) that he had ever seen.

21. Despite those constant allergies, I pretty well never get sick. I haven’t been to a doctor since 2004.

22. I’m a lot more superstitious than any rational person should be. I, for instance, had to reach down to my floor and knock on wood after writing that last item. I think this superstitious streak is because I was born with that curse on me.

23. I’ve never been out of the country, but I plan to spend a year doing something crazy outside of the US before I die. What and when is yet to be determined.

24. I like my job a lot and generally like living in such a small town. If there were more people around who were close to my age, I’d probably stay.

25. Major emotional moments never make me cry—especially if someone else around me is crying. I’ve just never been one to really break down very much. But silly, cheesy things on tv (like Brett Favre’s wife telling him she loved him in a clip on MNF recently) make me tear up instantly all the time. I can’t stand to watch Sports Center because of all the “make a wish” sorts of stories they do.