Loungekitten's Weblog

This page is a work in progress. . .

1. I am a “dog person,” mostly because I am allergic to cats.

2. As long as we’re on the subject of allergies, the one thing I am deathly allergic to is bee venom.

3. Oh, I really, really hate mayonnaise. Will not eat anything that has it as an obvious ingredient, like salad dressings and “sauces”. My reaction to the accidental ingestion of mayo or mayo-based food might seem overly dramatic to the casual observer, but I promise it’s necessary. For health reasons, I’m glad that I don’t like to eat it.

4. I won my high school’s spelling bee in my senior year, the only year I ever entered one.

5. I really love music. I have my favorite genres, but for the musical styles I don’t really care for there are always exceptions for a few songs that grab my attention.

6. I used to play the violin and the piano. I studied piano as a way of furthering my understanding of music theory. I really want to buy a violin so I can learn to play, again.

7. Since middle school, I’ve always sung in my school chorus/choir. I’m told my singing voice is nice.

8. I have lived in three states: Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Florida.

9. I am not a natural writer. One of my personal goals in writing this blog is to enhance my writing skills.

10. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting, and a Master of Science in Taxation. And now I am back in school, taking coursework that would earn me another degree in Chemistry and Biology.

11. One of my biggest pet peeves is gum-cracking. And don’t tell me you can’t control it or you don’t know how to chew gum without cracking it. Then don’t chew it, at least around me. If I can avoid gum crackers, I will – I even stand in longer checkout lines at stores to avoid a gum-cracking cashier.

12. I hate talking on the telephone. I really miss the nonverbal portion of communication with the other person. There are a handful of people I feel comfortable talking with on the phone, and that’s because I know them so well there’s virtually no difference between talking to them on the phone or talking to them in person.

13. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not a “cat person,” but I do not understand the appeal of LOL Cats. I’m not asking for an explanation, either. Like baseball players’ batting averages, rules of football that extend beyond knowing how the “downs” work, etc., I have decided that I need that space in my brain for more important things.

14.  I like the James  Bond films.  Even though I know their portrayal of women is really sexist.

15.  I also enjoy the Borne-Identity-Supremacy-Ultimatum series of movies.

16.  I am meticulous about taking care of my teeth.  It is a goal of mine to die (at a relatively old age, not tomorrow) with all of my own teeth.

17.  I would really love to move to Paris and live there for a year or two.

18.  And then maybe live in London for a year or two.

19.  And if I really loved either one of those places, I could see myself living there permanently.  Even though I am and American (and patriotic, at that), I don’t know if I was meant to be an American.  I’ve always felt like a fish out of water.

20.  I absolutely detest winter.  I hate snow.  Other than wearing my handknits, there’s no other reason for winter weather in my opinion.  And to be perfectly honest, forty or fifty degrees (Fahrenheit) is cold enough to wear some heavy sweaters.

21.  I am a firm believer in the courtesy wave.  It’s only polite to acknowledge when someone does something nice for you on the road, especially when everyone else is too busy talking on their cell phones to even notice that anyone else is driving on the road.

22.  Whenever I feel frustrated, I like to dance it out, Meredith and Christina style.

23.  I have what is known as a “lazy eye” (more accurately called antimetropia, and luckily not too severe of a case.  The condition actually converted to anisometropia as I got older). My mother swears that if I’d worn the eye patch she’d lovingly made for me while I was in grade school, my vision would be close to perfect now, instead of the grossly mismatched vision I have in each eye.  (For a while, one of my eyes was very nearsighted and the other was slightly farsighted and I only wore one contact lens.  I still have better vision than either of my siblings.)  I always remind her that when you are chubby, nerdy, and one of the only kids in class with divorced parents, the last thing you want to do in grade school is to draw more “attention” to yourself by wearing a homemade eye patch that is made of the fabric remnants your mom used to make kitchen appliance covers, with a flower pattern that matched the Harvest Gold color scheme that was so popular for kitchens at that time.

24.  My favorite flowers are tulips and calla lilies.  I also like peonies.  Orchids fascinate me, mostly because of their mimicry.

25.  I don’t think I could ever live far from the coast. Right now, I live as far from the ocean as I care to live.  I really love the beach and the ocean.

26.  In keeping with the water theme, the two sports I participated in while in high school were swimming and rowing.  Yes, I was lucky enough to go to a school with a crew team.

27.  I swore to myself that I would always be cool about music – that I would always keep an ear out for the new stuff and not get too nostalgic about or hung up on the old stuff.  Sure, I like and listen to music from when I was younger, but I keep adding to the collection and finding new favorites.

28.  I don’t like parades.  I especially do not like the Mummers’ Day parade on New Year’s Day, despite the fact that I’m from the Philadelphia area.  The only parade I would like to see is the Tournament of Roses Parade, because the floats in that parade are just amazing.

29.  I have a “step-twin”.  What is that you might ask?  Well, my dad got remarried when I was about 10 years old to a woman who had a son who was born on the same day that I was.  In the same hospital.  And we were the only two babies born in that hospital on that day.  He is about 8 hours older than me.  (No, our parents did not meet at that time, though my dad says he remembers “step-twin’s” dad taking pictures in the nursery.)  So we got to grow up together and share family birthday parties, etc.  Kinda like having a twin, but not really.

30.  I think I might know more people who were born on the same day as me than anyone else (well, except octuplets and those kinds of births obviously, so maybe I should qualify that and say unrelated people).  Other than the “step-twin,”  I know two other people born on the same day; one was a former co-worker, another was a classmate.

31.  I am the oldest of my generation on both sides of my family, i.e., I have no first cousins that are older than me.

32.  I don’t wear very much jewelry.  In fact, other than watches, for the past five years the only things I’ve really worn regularly are my diamond-stud earrings which I received as a gift when I finished my Master’s degree.  I only take them off when I clean them.

33.  I rarely wear makeup.  I go through phases when I make a concerted effort to wear some makeup.  Somehow, the routine gets derailed and I just can’t be bothered.  Even when I do wear makeup regularly, I use colors that are subtle.  I’ll go all out for special occasions and holidays, though.

34.  I love perfume, but I rarely wear any.  At work, they ask that we not use heavily scented products as some people may not like the odor.  I think this might be part of the reason the makeup routine falls apart so easily.  There’s very little ritual around my getting ready to leave the house.

35.  Even though I am part of the age group which saw the renewed interest in body art, I’ve never had any desire to get a tattoo.

36.  When I was 5, I stopped sucking my thumb cold-turkey because my mother told me I’d look like Bugs Bunny if I didn’t stop.  I don’t think she told my brother or sister that they had to stop, though.  Also, I’m the only one of my siblings that did not have braces.

37.  I am a “self-taught” reader – some time around 3 or 4 years of age I just began to read by myself.  I remember telling my mother while she was doing the dishes, and she didn’t believe me.  So I pointed to each word and I correctly told her what each word was and she dropped the dish she was washing!

38.  I have a semi-photographic memory.  I don’t get an exact picture of what I read in a book, but if you challenge me I can usually turn to the page and paragraph in the book where I read it.

39.  When I can’t sleep I conjugate verbs in French.  Not because it’s boring, but because it’s a routine that lulls me to sleep and I wouldn’t get practice otherwise.

40.  I know how to twirl a baton.

41.  I also know how to spin flags.  I was a part of the color guard at the first high school I attended.

42.  I generally don’t like reality TV shows.  Or scripted reality TV shows.

43.  I do like the Amazing Race.  And there’s something about Big Brother that always sucks me in – perhaps the fact that a common house enemy always seems to emerge at some point in the season.  The editing portrays the person as completely evil so the audience hates him or her, and I just hang in there until I can see them evicted from the house.

44.  I’m also a fan of Keeping Up With the Kardashians and Kourtney & Khloe take Miami.  I know the family members find themselves in crazy situations all the time, contrived or not, but they’re smart and they actually work hard, so I can have a decent amount of respect for them.

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