Me, Myself and My Meme

 

As noted in a previous post, Lemur King wants me to talk about myself.  Here are the rules: 

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
5. Present an image of martial discord from whatever period or situation you’d like.

Just to make sure rule one is in full compliance:  Lemur King’s Folly. 

And, just to get rule five out of the way…

Seven facts!  Gracious, that’s a tall order since I’m not all that interesting, and what I do have I already put in my “User’s Manual”.  Hmm.  Ok here’s something.

1.  I often sing in the shower.   Sure, that’s not unusual – lots of people do.  It’s the cool acoustics; everyone sounds better there than they really are.  The selection of material may be somewhat interesting though, it’s usually gospel.  Specifically Swing Low Sweet Chariot and Amazing Grace.  Why these songs?  I don’t know.  I don’t go to church, and never have.  Perhaps I ought to start going.  Another song – The Star Spangled Banner.  It’s a good, rousing song to start the day with.  Here’s another good one:  Michigan J. Frog’s opener.  The cat usually gets a front row seat (safely behind the shower curtain) for the show.

2. I LOVE tomato juice.  No, seriously I crave that stuff in the worst way.  I have ever since I was a kid and I can drink and ocean of that stuff (V-8 too).  I buy it by the 64 oz jug and drink on it all day long. I love it spicy so I go through a lot of Tabasco sauce which I keep a big bottle of right on my desk at work.  Snap-E-Tom is another delicious spicy tomato drink that I like.  When I was young and poor, I couldn’t really afford tomato juice, but I still craved it.  One day I found some canned tomato paste my Mom gave me and went to town mixing water, salt and spices in it to make a decent tasting tomato juice.  I quickly figured out that I could make my own tomato juice this way a lot cheaper than what I could buy from the supermarket, particularly if I bought the BIG bulk cans.  But – even better than tomato paste was tomato sauce!  I read the ingredients: tomatos, water, salt and spices.  Everything I was putting into my paste-juice.  All I had to do was add more water – and BAM! perfect tomato juice!  CHEAP!!!  I make a lot more money now so I can afford Campbell’s.

3.  I have a scab collecton.  Some years ago when I was poor I didn’t have a car so I rode my bike to work.  Fortunately it wasn’t very far so it wasn’t a big deal.  There’s a somewhat steepish hill descending from the street into the gate/guardhouse area where there’s a hard right turn to go to the parking lot.  Security was used to my usual arrival so they didn’t require me to stop.  I just waved and they let me sail right through, enjoying the fruits of momentum.  One day while making the right turn at full speed my back wheel decided to keep going straight and down I went.  I skidded a ways on the asphalt on my head, arm and knee.  Lovely road rash bloomed on my arm and it took quite a while for it to heal.  Big scabs!  Heal it did though and those scabs started coming off.  You know how it is with scabs though – they start itching around the edges and you generally scratch them off in small pieces.  Some of them came off in big patches though.  I hadn’t had any that big since I was a kid so I saved them in an Altoids tin.  Many years later I lost a big toe nail and I put that in with the scabs.  I keep the tin in a drawer at work.

4.  I only recently learned to tie my shoes.  Well, sorta.  I knew how to tie them, but not properly.  My bow knot on my shoes had a tendency to come undone ever since I was a kid.  My Mom frequently admonished me to tie my shoes before I trip and fall and break my neck, and she’s been telling me that for over 30 years.  It wasn’t until last year or so that I finally found out how to properly tie my shoes.  I’ve never had this problem since.

5. I am going to make chili next weekend.  In my new (well, new to me) crock-pot.  I bought a spice packet and most of the ingredients today.  I’ll pick up the meat next Friday so I can get it started in the morning.  Does anybody have any chili recipes you’d like to share?  I like beans in my chili but I know some people think that chili with beans isn’t proper chili.  Ha ha!  Some people are silly.

6.  I don’t like the Beatles.  Oh, I used to like them when I was younger, but over the years I just got so tired of them, their music and their fans.  I won’t go so far to say that I hate the Beatles.  I’d have to actually care about them first to do that.  The final break came when the song “Hey Jude” came on the radio some years back and I said to myself, “If I never heard another Beatles song for the rest of my life I wouldn’t miss it.”  I’ve never listened to “Hey Jude” ever again.  For the record, John Lennon was a conceited, self-centered asshole.

7.  I’m not a very good fisherman.  My Dad loved to fish.  When I was around 9 or 10 I started to go out with him and my older brother on the weekends.  We would get up before dawn, get our cups of coffee, Dad would fill his thermos and off we’d go.  The car was always loaded up with all the stuff and the boat the night before. 

We would usually hit the donut shop and then the bait store for a few dozen minows and we’d usually get to the launch ramp right at or just before sun-up.  We’d get the boat loaded up in short order and off we’d go.  Brrr.  The mornings were always so cold.  Dad would fire up the Envirude outboard motor and off we’d go.  Oh.  We always did lake fishing.  There were a few within an hour or so drive from where we lived at the time (southern Maryland).  Anyway, very cold but very pretty with the mist rising off the water and a general stillness in the early morning. 

We generally fished for two fish:  crappie and bass.  The minows were for the crappie and my Dad knew of a few places in most of the lakes we fished where they liked to hang out.  Crappie fishing was easy, peasy.  We had long, telescoping poles with corks, small hooks and a couple little weights at the end.  Hook a minnow, push the cork to the depth you wanted, and drop the line where you wanted.  If the cork goes underwater, jerk the pole a little an you’ve got a fish.  It wasn’t unusual for us to come home with stringers of several dozen crappie.  My Dad loved it when he could use the same minow over and over again.  Bass fishing was something else again.  That was casting and reeling, using artificial lures, trying to hit just the right spots and using just the right speed to lure the fish to hit the bait and BAM!  If you do it right you set the hook and you get the fun of reeling in the BIG fish!  My brother and Dad did it all the time.  I never did though.  Well, I caught one trolling one time.  I didn’t think that counted because he was hooked in the side.  I think he was just swimming along and got snagged by the lure by accident.  I did catch another one the correct way, but he was too small so we had to throw him back, so he doesn’t count either.  I eventually gave up and stopped fishing altogether. 

It’s been many years since I went fishing.  Maybe I ought to try again.  I’d definitely like to try fly-fishing some more.

So there it is:  seven things about me.  Was it everything you hoped it would be?  I’ll figure out who to tag later.