There was a meme going around Facebook a while back where you were asked to write “25 Random Things About Yourself, Then Tag Someone Else to Do It”. This was one of the posts that got lost in the transaction from my old web host to the new host. So, I thought I might copy this over for the sheer joy of your reading pleasure. So, here’s 25 random things about me (most of which I suspect people might not have wanted to know)
- I have stood on the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem and watched the Sun rise over the Mount of Olives.
- I’ve been programming computers for almost 30 years.
- I wonder why it took me 15 years to realize that I would be much happier if I finished my Ph.D.
- I am allergic to coffee and marijuana.
- My mother is amazed by the fact that I like to work in my yard and to garden given how little effort I put into helping in the yard and garden when I was little.
- Only one baby picture of me survived the fire that destroyed my parent’s mobile home when I was five years old.
- I hate vacuum cleaners as result of my brother always making me vacuum the house when he babysat my sister and I when we were growing up. This explains why I get along so well with the Dust Bunnies in my home.
- I am terribly afraid of bees, hornets, and wasps due to an emotionally scarring experience at a family picnic when I was 4 years old.
- However, it was that same picnic where I first learned to fear bees that resulted in my fascination to this day with trains.
- I was a complete and total emotional train wreck during most of my undergraduate years at Sewanee.
- Of all the courses I took at Sewanee, I have found that the acting classes have best prepared me best to work in academia due to fact that I treat every lecture as a performance.
- I suspect that I’m like every other graduate of Sewanee who’s is working on or has completed their Ph.D.: I wonder if I could ever join the faculty?
- As much as I love to read science fiction novels, I really cannot stand most of the science fiction on television and in the movies.
- People always seem to underestimate the comic genius of The Three Stooges.
- I spent New Years Eve of the Millennium Year 2000 in a trauma center in my hometown awaiting gall bladder surgery. You see the most fascinating things in a trauma center on the New Years Eve of the Millennium.
- I have spent extended periods of time in London, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Mexico City.
- I have been to every state except for New Hampshire and Vermont. I intend on rectifying this deficiency once I complete my Ph.D.
- I have a great fear of heights.
- Someday I hope to be invited to lunch with Nero Wolfe and see the orchids in the greenhouse on the roof of his brownstone.
- Someday I hope to be able to play Shakespeare’s merry rogue, Falstaff.
- It is difficult to write, it is damned difficult to write well.
- Guilty admission time: I really like The Benny Hill Show.
- I will continue to practice until I can consistently make a good pan of biscuits.
- Someday travel plans: go back to the Holy Land, visit the Isle of Lewis in Scotland, again drink a pint in a country pub in England, ride the train over the Andes in Chile, drink wine in the wineries of South Australia, and see the Taj Mahal.
- I have been greatly blessed by all of those whom I’ve had the great fortune to have met over the years, hope to be able to meet the rest of you, and wish you all “Bon Chance” and “Auf wiedersehen” wherever you may go and whatever you may do.