So a couple people have tagged me to do this. If I've tagged you, it means I want you to write a similar blog post/facebook note. Because I think you're cool. (Or, if you're one of the people who tagged me, I've tagged you to show off the fact that I've finally done this!)
So, yeah, the idea is to list 25 facts/quriks/habits/etc. pertaining to me. Here they are.
1) I am verbose. I try to be concise, but I like to talk about things. This will likely be relevant throughout the rest of this post.
2) I have had my janitablog.blogspot blog/account for four and a half years now. I loved it and used it constantly at first. I still love it, but I barely use it anymore. I feel kind of bad about that. =(
3) I semi-recently acquired a Dreamwidth blog account, which you can find at http://janita.dreamwidth.org. A site invitation fell into my lap, so I decided to get my name while it was available. I think there are three posts on that blog, two of which are about the layout. Layouts on Dreamwidth are much more complicated than on Blogger. Actually, a lot of things on Dreamwidth are much more complicated than on Blogger. I'm starting to wonder why I bothered getting the account...
4) My vision is really horrid. I wear contact lenses for sever myopia, and I put glasses overtop of those for my mild astigmatism when I need them and remember them. My optometrist and I tried really hard to find a brand of torric contact lenses that worked for me so that I could correct both problems with just contacts, but we were unsuccessful. I have a pair of glasses that corrects both my myopia and my astigmatism, but I lose so much peripheral vision when I don't wear my contacts that it annoys me. Come to think of it, my optometrist recently had a stroke and is no longer working, so I have to find a new one. Dang...
5) I'm no good at playing the piano. I took lessons as a kid, and I could probably improve with considerable effort, but my piano profficiency course in first year university was like torture for me. Completing it supposedly gives me grade 3 on the RCM scale, but it was a mandatory pass/fail course, so it's not worth much.
6) I was a very literal child. I didn't understand the concept "figure of speech." The example I give most often of this is that, when I was very young, I thought that "making love" consisted of two people sitting around, cutting hearts out of construction paper. They were literally *making* love. It was therefore a shock to discover that you were supposed to be naked while making love--I didn't see why, and I thought it was rather inappropriate.
7) I've always thought that, if anybody could read my mind, I'd sound like a broken jukebox. I live with constant "earworms." And, for the most part, I don't mind. The only times it bothers me is if I don't like what's stuck in my heaad. Very seldom do I get annoyed with a song or something simply because it's been repeated too many times. Right now I have the music from the Finish diswasher detergent commercial stuck in my head. It's relatively inoffensive.
8) I am a night owl. I enjoy doing things at night because there aren't any deadlines or appointments. Nothing gets in my way. Well, except the morning. I do not suffer from insomnia. I did briefly, actually, but it was because I kept waking up early, not because I couldn't get to sleep. But, anyway, yeah, I'm productive at night, just like a lot of my friends, with whom I hang out online on IM and whatnot. ^_^
9) I work alone. This is related to number eight. I focus best when I don't have to worry about other people, so at night, when everybody else is in bed, I'm in my element. I'm happy to be social with other people while I'm working, so long as I don't have to deal with them in relation to my work. I find it really difficult to co-ordinate my thought process with other people, so group work just doesn't go well for me. It was always my least favourite part of school. If I wasn't a musician, I'd get myself a t-shirt that says "Does not play well with others."
10) I am a very private person. This is related to number nine, in that I work alone because I don't like other people knowing what I'm doing. It's rather stupid, really. For no good reason that I've ever really been able to articulate, I don't like other people knowing much about me or messing with my stuff. Obviously, there are many exceptions to this, such as friends and Peter, but my default setting is to just not tell people things and to keep my stuff away from people who might go through it or even move it around. I do think it's simpler in some ways because a lot of people just don't need to know some stuff, but I can't shake the feeling that this means I'm screwed up in some way.
11) I still cringe at gaffes I made 20 years ago. I am 25 years old. Nothing I did at the age of 5 should embarrass me, but some of it still does. I'm surprised I even remember any of it... ^_^
12) I eat a lot of cold cereal. It is my go-to food. If I'm hungry and I don't feel like making anything, I'll have cereal. This happens remarkably often. Raisin Bran and Mini Wheats are the most common kinds I'll eat, but I also like Just Right, Honey Nut Cornflakes, and Oatmeal Crisp. Occasionally, I'll eat my mom's Life cereal, though, ironically, I don't much like it. My cereal-eating habit makes Peter shake his head.
13) I have a partially eidetic memory. My father and siblings are the same way. I can usually be counted on to remember things. I have to actually take something in in order to remember it, though, so stuff like history, which I never really studied, I just don't know about. It makes an interesting contrast with stuff I have studied. And by "interesting," I mean it makes me look like an idiot. ^_^
14) I watched Sailor Moon when I was a kid. Like, 11-13 years old. It's where I picked up the ^_^ emoticon that I've been using occasionally in this post. It's pretty much the only anime I ever watched, but a lot of people who see me use that emoticon assume I watch all kinds of anime. I had Sailor Moon trading cards and everything. It was Pokemon for girls, but before Pokemon really came onto the scene. Ah, my awkward adolescence. ^_^
15) My mom tried to force me to take Home Economics in junior high school. I wanted to take Drama instead. I have never been in the habit of letting my parents force me to do anything, so I fought tooth and nail against taking Home Ec. My mom made me pass a test of what she thought I should learn from the course before she let me take Drama. The test included how to make baking powder biscuits. Because there's no such thing as recipes. My mother is a strange woman in some ways...
16) I love pickles, but I avoid any other pickled foods. The thing I love about pickles is the texture of the pickled cucumber flesh. Because of this, I prefer to eat pickles whole, rather than sliced. Other foods just aren't the same when pickled. I'm not a huge salt fan (I prefer sweet things), so the brine doesn't appeal to me all that much. It took me a long time to develop any kind of a taste for pickles. When I was a kid, Jenilee used to eat my pickles because I didn't like them. Jenilee would eat anything, though, so I'm not sure that anecdote is evidence of her more developed palate.
17) When I started university, I discovered an unexpected love for music theory. Though my favourite part of music was and still is conducting, I would have been interested in doing a degree in music theory. Sadly, though, that was only possible at the U of A if I did Theory and Composition, and I didn't want to compose. A lot of junior/senior high kids think of theory as that annoying bookwork they get punished with when they keep goofing around, but it's actually quite wonderful. I am toally a geek...
18) When I was on vacation in Mexico the summer I turned 12, there was a hurricane a ways down the coast that was causing large waves where we were in Cancun. My parents and I were wading in the surf on our way back to our room one day when, seemingly out of nowhere, a huge wave hit us (well, mostly me), and washed away my glasses. This was before I started wearing contact lenses, and it was only halfway through our two-week vacation, so I was blind for about a week.
19) In high school, a lot of people knew who I was. I went to a pretty big high school (over 2000 students in three grades), and I had no idea who most people were. It was always weird to have somebody say they'd seen me perform in band at some school function, or in the play or something. It was like being popular, except I was a keener instead of being cool. ^_^
20) Something else that happened in high school is that my school had a lockdown drill after 9/11. I thought this was bullshit, so I decided to protest it. I had Drama class at the time the drill was scheduled, which was a largely unsupervised class, so when the announcement for the lockdown was made, I went into the "rotunda" (big open space in the middle of the school) in front of the office. One of the teachers came out and told me to go to class, and I yelled at him for a bit about how stupid the whole thing was before I sat myself down and refused to move. I was alone for this. My Drama teacher knew where I was, mind. I don't think he made any of his students stop whatever they were doing for the lockdown. When the drill was over, I went back to class. I didn't have to go talk to the principal or anything like that (probably because they were busy at the time), but one of the administration cornered my Drama teacher later to ask him why I wasn't in class for the lockdown drill. He defended me, saying that my ancestors had had enough experience with fascism. He had no idea who any of my family members were, of course. He told me all of this after school that day when he was tweaking my costume for the play. Looking back, I can't believe I got worked up enough to do that, but I love my Drama teacher so much. =)
21) My favourite TV show of all time is ReBoot, one of the earliest CGI series. My favourite character from the show is AndrAIa. The show started airing when I was 10, but it still rocks my socks.
22) For my current job, I had to learn how to drive a standard transmission. I'm a school liason/sales rep for a musical instrument repair shop, so I drive around to schools all day. The company has a car for this purpose, but it's a standard. I was taught mostly by the guy I took over from, who was 21 or 22. It made me feel rather silly to be taking driving lessons from a guy who was younger than me.
23) I have read the Twilight books, and I didn't hate them. Actually, I kind of like them. Please note that this is a moderate opinion. I bought the first one when I was living in England and my computer was sent in for repairs, so I was bored stiff. I read it twice, then bought the other books as I went through them. They have their issues, certainly, but there's some neat stuff in there. The movies are vastly inferior to the books, of course.
24) I haven't bothered to get a haircut in over a year. I've been meaning to since the summer, but I've always been wanting to get a salon dye job to make my hair silvery-gray, so I've been postponing getting it cut until I dye it, which I have been postponing for various reasons. Currently, it's because I'm post-Christmas broke, so I think I'll cave and just get a cut without getting it dyed. My hair is almost down to my waist now, which is kind of crazy.
25) My drink of choice at Starbucks is a triple grande non-fat latte. If I'm in the mood for something sweet, I get a grande non-fat caramel macchiato. On the rare occasion that I'm looking for something low in caffeine, I get a grande non-fat earl gray tea misto with vanilla syrup. The Starbucks giftcard I got for Christmas has already been used up. ^_^
That's all! I hope you've enjoyed this extremely long entry! I don't even want to guess at how long it took me to write. =)
