Randomized

Feral Mom has tagged me to reveal 8 random things about myself. I thought it would be an easy assignment, since practically everything about my life seems random; the catch, though, seems to be to come up with 8 moderately interesting random things about myself, and that's a lot harder. Here goes:

1. When I was 11 years old I took a ride in the GoodYear blimp. My mom had gotten two tickets for my dad for Christmas, and since the reserved date fell the week between our birthdays, he took me as his guest. The cabin only held seven people, including the driver (pilot?), and we shared the space with a family of four. I don't recall anything about the parents, but the kids I remember. The older boy, who was about my age, kept asking things like, "What's the maximum speed attainable?" and "Is this cabin pressurized?" (The answers, as I recall, were "about 45 mph" and "no.") The younger boy, who was maybe six years old, was in possession of what looked to me like a very expensive, very professional camera and kept leaping up to snap photos, occasionally obscuring my view out the window. I didn't ask or do anything because I was pretty much scared shitless -- when you're bobbing along at 40 miles an hour hundreds of feet up in the air, it's hard not to notice every little gust, and it was a cold, blustery day. We floated around for an hour or so; then, because we were the last flight of the day, we got to see the blimp being "docked." You may have noticed that there are a couple of ropes hanging off the front of the blimp -- well, when the workday is over, a couple of guys come running out of the GoodYear office and grab those ropes, then tie them to a big flagpole so the blimp doesn't float away at night. It's all terribly professional.

2. My brother and sisters and I all have dimples, but our parents didn't. Wait -- secret sister Karen doesn't have them, either! Perhaps she is a fake!

3. The first thing I can remember wanting to be when I grew up was an artist. The second thing I can remember wanting to be when I grew up was a writer. The third thing I can remember wanting to be when I grew up was... an interior decorator? Where did that come from?

4. I discovered a latent talent a few years ago when Norman gave me the first two seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD: I have the ability to watch enormous amounts of TV in one sitting. Not movies, mind you, but TV. Since watching all seven seasons of Buffy, I have consumed a couple of seasons of Northern Exposure, all of Grey's Anatomy, Veronica Mars, Deadwood, and House. I've just started Dexter, and I've got Weeds and the first season of Friday Night Lights a-waiting. I'm not proud of this skill, but I make the best of it.

5. I was named after Anne of Green Gables and this blog was named after Twin Peaks (newly out on DVD -- I predict a marathon in my near future!).

6. My first celebrity crush was on Alfalfa of The Little Rascals. Man, could that kid sing!

7. I bite my fingernails. I have stopped biting them many times over the years but have always started again, partly out of habit but mostly because I can't stand the feel of my nails when they get long. That tiny bit of extra weight at the end of each finger is unbearable and feels unnatural. I don't like the look of long fingernails, either, especially on men. I started biting my nails when I was a wee bairn, shortly after I stopped sucking my thumb, and I suppose I'll still be doing it when I'm an old lady.


8. I am allergic to almost anything that's natural: cats, dogs (that's a mild one, fortunately), bunnies, goose down, dust, most kinds of wool, and a lot of native trees and grasses. Apparently the thing I'm most allergic to in all the world is hamsters -- when I was tested for allergies a number of years ago, I was injected with some sort of essence of hamster ("hamster venom," Sean called it), and my arm swelled up, turned bright red, and itched like crazy. Fortunately, I don't come in contact with the little buggers all that often.

Thanks for the tag, Feral! I'd like to learn 8 random things about Lucy, Norman, and Trooperdog.