've been reading through
other people's on-line journals lately, and I found something fun that
I haven't really done in the three years I've been on here. Some journalists
have lists of random, silly facts about themselves. I figure I could try
the same thing, if only so I could have something to write about other
than the baby for a change.
One note on the spelling of today's title: I have a video game for the
PC entitled "Qwirks" -- it's a close cousin of Tetris (actually, it was
supposedly created by the creator of Tetris, so I guess it's more like
a brother or sister). I thought that name would be suitable for today's
entry, since it is decidedly -- qwirky.
For instance -- I have never smoked a cigarette in my life, but to satisfy
my oral fixation, I bite my nails. Always have. I probably still have some
of those plastic letters -- the ones that preschoolers stick on magnetic
boards to make words -- that I chewed up beyond recognition.
I can't eat cereal with milk. I think it's disgusting. I can drink milk
by the gallon, but I hate when the cereal gets soggy. I used to hate sleeping
over at friends' houses because I knew that, in the morning, I was probably
going to have to eat cereal with milk. I don't dunk Oreos in milk, I don't
dunk donuts in coffee -- I like to segregate my foods into states of matter.
I've collected baseball cards since I was 5 years old. I remember specifically
my first pack of 1978 Topps cards -- still have most of them, but they're
kind of beat up (one dis-advantage to starting children on the hobby
when they are so young). I rarely buy cards anymore, and when I do, it's
often by the box, but I still have somewhere around 20,000 of them, on
two ends of the continent (here in San Diego and back in my old bedroom
in Pittsburgh).
I won the spelling bee in our school in 8th grade. I can
even remember the winning word -- "aerial". Somehow, I also won 2nd
place in a poster contest in elementary school, even though I have absolutely
no talent in drawing or painting.
I played little league for three years. Except for a couple innings
of a game that was so lopsided that it didn't matter anymore, I spent all
of that time in the outfield (or on the bench). Now in the seven-year-old
league, you don't really get a lot of action in the outfield. It wasn't
so bad my second year, when we went 10-3. My third year, we went 1-12.
I had no interest in little league after that.
In fact, I seem to always team up with losers. I remember a gym class
basketball team that went winless. I even joined an intramural flag football
team that played after school. We had some really burly players -- not
that I was one, but we were definitely promising. We went 0-5.
I'm not exactly an extrovert, which any reader has probably picked up
on already. But an extreme example is this -- I had three different
roommates during college. I barely spoke a word to any of them.
Of course, a good portion of that would be because I spent almost every
weekend at home, instead of partying and getting drunk.
I just realized that, instead of being a random list of quirks, this
entry is showing how pathetic I really am. Therefore, I'm going to
shut it down now, before I reach the level of low-life scum.
