Jason at All the Billion Other Moments just tagged me to post 16 things about myself. Having just done the same thing on Facebook but with 25 things, I figured I’d just copy the post, and let you, the reader, choose which 16 of the 25 you consider worthy of your attention. Since you have to read all 25 in order to select the best 16 things, however, the savings of time may be limited. I may have posted about some of these things before, in which case, disregard them in determining your 16 favorite things about me.
1. I like barbecue-flavored potato chips to an unreasonable degree, and therefore almost never eat them.
2. I’m not terribly introspective (thus opening this list with an item about chips), but I do enjoy talking about myself. Just in a very superficial way.
3. I hope that if/when the singularity comes, it at least comes at a time when it gets me out of having to do something unpleasant.
4. I’d really like some chocolate chip cookies right about now.
5. Please walk faster and talk faster, because you’re making me crazy.
6. I’ve been blogging for over a year.
7. I started blogging to ease myself back into writing for pleasure. I started a novel two weeks later, and finished the 500-page first draft in October. So much for easing into it.
8. I started the rewrite in December, and so far, it’s much harder.
9. I was never much of a cook, and have not improved with age.
10. When I was a kid, I was convinced New York City was going to get nuked by the Russians, and researched a plan to use the basement as a shelter.
11. Part of me has continued to be that pessimistic all along.
12. The last time I can remember crying was in April, 2001, when Unfocused Girl was about six weeks old. I was in the Tampa airport, called home from the road, and the Siren told me that UG’s blood test had come back and her liver was starting to work. There would be no bypass surgery, no transplant, just six more months of regular checkups until the liver specialist at Children’s finally told her not to come back until she graduated from medical school.
13. The time before that was during the movie Armageddon. The Siren and I were flying home from Paris, and I’d had a lot of champagne.
14. In the four months after Junior was born, I was hardly ever home, either working late or out of town. Unfocused Girl was so mad at me that she didn’t call me “Daddy” for months. Instead, she called me “Rusty.”
15. I haven’t had a rum and Coke in more than 20 years, and that isn’t going to change.
16. As the clients were dropping the Senior Partner and me off at the airport earlier this week, I accidentally quoted The Rocky Horror Picture Show (“Say good-bye to all this, and say hello to oblivion.”), which I believe I saw 14 times at the 8th Street Playhouse during high school, plus a couple of times in Chicago during college. Nobody caught the reference.
17. I have no vocal talent whatsoever. Despite that (or perhaps because of it), I *really* enjoy karaoke, and I had solos in two musicals while in college, plus a duet as a mad scientist with a six foot tall redheaded fembot.
18. For another (non-singing) role my senior year of college, I lost 25 pounds in two months to play a homeless guy.
19. I always wanted to be a math geek, but it was too much work. Instead, I was just a regular geek.
20. My FB friends include one person I went to school with from nursery school through eighth grade, two people I went to school with from kindergarten through eighth grade, including the best man at my wedding, one person I went to school with from kindergarten through high school, as well as more than one person I know only over teh intertubes.
21. The Siren and I named Junior after our favorite author.
22. I have started the Chicago Marathon five times, and finished it four times. I finished it in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2003. In 2006, I had knee problems that stopped me running at my 19 and stopped me walking at mile 21. I had never had knee pain before that day, and I have had it off and on ever since. I have run five half marathons and numerous shorter races since, but haven’t tried another marathon.
23. I have read more books about Theodore Roosevelt than any other non-fiction subject, all as the result of being assigned an excerpt from his autobiography in American Civilization in college.
24. I read Thomas Pynchon’s V. in 1992, and five minutes after I finished it could hardly have told you anything about it. Seventeen years later, I don’t remember anything about it at all.
25. I read 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, and We in middle school. *Those* made an impression.
I’m not going to tag 16 people — if you’re interested in talking about yourself, consider yourself tagged. Please leave a link in the comments if you tag yourself.
The Unfocused Life 
Thanks for playing along.
Seems like we have similar experiences/habits with the writing.
I like to go fast and furious during the first draft, but editing is slow and laborious (not that I dislike it exactly, it’s just not fast).
Sorry, I cannot choose. I may have to do another one myself since I’ve been accused of cheating. Which I don’t understand since rules were made to be broken. Worked for Blago, right? He’s king of the world (in his head) now.
I hope you had a lot of champagne, there is no other excuse for crying during Armageddon!
Okay, the crying during Armageddon thing. First, I did have a *lot* of champagne, before and during the movie. We flew Air France in the late 1990s, and they just kept bringing us splits of Veuve Cliquot (this was coach — I have know idea what they were drinking in first). Second, the part that got me was when the team of roughnecks is heading for the shuttle, and the one guy’s kid — who doesn’t know who his father is — is watching on TV and says to his mother, “Look, mom, it’s that salesman” and the mother starts crying and says, “That’s no salesman, that’s your daddy.”
Okay, it was more of a tear-jerker after a lot of champagne.
Anyway, I thought that part was pretty good, but it didn’t make up for Bruce Willis *SPOILER ALERT* staying behind so that dumbass played by Ben Affleck could marry his daughter. That was really annoying.
#10 cracked me up. How far did you get with your plans?
Well, we never got nuked, so I didn’t have to get too far. I had plans for building a water filter to get the fall-out out of it, and I’m pretty sure I had the materials to build it. I don’t ever hauled stuff down to the basement, it was more about knowing what to grab if and when. Hefty bags, for example, would never have occurred to me, but they have many uses.
Re: no. 10: And we currently have potassium iodide pills in our basement in case of nuclear attack. I didn’t buy them.
Doesn’t everybody?
Rusty! Gak, I’m sorry, that must’ve been hard. But you don’t happen to remember the, uh, forgettable period I had in high school where I tried to get everyone to call me that? Rusty. That, I decided, was my nickname. And no one took the bait (thankfully).
S. – I’d completely forgotten. In my case, Rusty is the name of one of the engines in the Thomas the Tank Engine universe. At least he’s a very kind and generous engine, even if he is a diesel and not a steamie.
Of course, I remember *now*.