Eight Things About Me

Sully tagged me so here it goes:

1) I have a crooked face. The one side of my face is slightly smaller than the other. Most people don't notice it at all and even if I say something about it, they don't see it. Others notice it right away. At one of my jobs, I had to take a physical exam by the company doctor. As soon as I got into the exam room, the company doctor asked me what happened to my face and suggested that I have surgery to correct it. He was very rude and it didn't seem strange to him that he would suggest I have all the bones in my face broken so they would align up a little better.

I also can raise my one eyebrow (like Spock on Star Trek) which can really bug some people. I could never do Botox because I wouldn't want to lose that ability!

2) I am always surprised by my outward appearance and presence as compared to how I feel in the inside. When I see myself on video, it never seems to sync up to the inner person. Today, I was also thinking to myself that while I turn 45 in December, I don't feel 45 at all. At times, I feel more like a gawky teenager trying to figure things out.

3) When I was about 2, my family moved to Japan and lived on a naval base while my father served in Vietnam. When we left Japan two years later, I was speaking half-Japanese, half-English. Of course, now, I can't speak any Japanese. Always wondered if I would be able to pick it up easily or not. I spoke German fairly fluently in high school and college. When I was in Germany a few years ago, I could understand those around me, but could not speak as much as I used to be able to.

4) I learned how to drink Guinness beer in Germany at an Irish bar from a Scottish salesman who was dating the Croatian barmaid. They took us to another club where friends of their's were playing in the band. The lead singer of that band was a brain surgeon who had operated on the Croatian woman's son after a bombing.

5) When I was in elementary school, I was placed in a gifted program, an advanced studies program that took me out of class one day a week to go to a different school. I didn't like the program because it made me feel too different than the other kids. One week, I didn't want to go to the program because my class was doing something else I considered to be more fun. Since my parents wouldn't let me skip the advanced program, I decided I would miss the bus so I couldn't go. I walked the mile to school taking baby steps the whole way. It didn't work however. The school held the bus for me. When I got home, my mother wanted to know where I had been all day. Apparently the school called her and said I wasn't there. But they never called her back to say I was there.

6) My father was in the Navy so we moved around quite a bit. After Japan, we went to Rhode Island where I learned to read in nursery school. We then moved to Pennsylvania and I was asked to leave kindergarten because I was disruptive. They were learning the alphabet and I already knew how to read. We lived with my grandmother for a while in PA in a small coal mining town, Nesquehoning. I used to roam the streets and talk to the neighbors. There was one man, I called him the Onion Man, because I would talk to him while he was working in his vegetable garden. I told him that my grandmother could take her teeth out and kept them in a glass. He said, like this? and pushed his false teeth out of his mouth. I ran home and I'm not sure I ever talked to him again.

7) I graduated from college with a degree in business and a concentration in personnel management. I changed my major several times in college, starting out as a journalism major, then to social work and then to business. Before I graduated, I did my internship at Three Mile Island working in their personnel department for a summer in college. I remembered back when the accident happened at TMI. I lived nearby and my father was the town manager. As town manager, he was in charge of evacuating the town if it came to that. A 16-year old at the time, I decided I was not leaving. We argued about it but we were never evacuated.

After college, I took a temporary job at a trucking company that turned into five years. While there, I went back to college and started earning another degree in computer science. My daughter was born and I quit the trucking company to focus on school. My first computer science job was for a company who hired most if not all their employees in mid-June. They would have 200-300 people start every year at the same time. My IT team (10 of us) spent that summer in orientation together. They were all very early 20s and I was almost 30, married, and with a two-year old child.

8) I have always loved music even though I can't sing and my kids laugh at my dancing attempts. I played electric guitar in elementary school, then took drum lessons (got kicked out of the school band), and taught myself piano and some violin. When my daughter wanted to take an instrument in elementary school, I suggested she also take piano lessons. When she started, I started taking them as well. Figured I should learn to play the right way. So, now I take piano lessons one day a week, in the morning before I leave for work. My instructor comes to my house before 6 am - only time I can be sure that I have the time. Work and kids take up all the rest of my time. :-)

So now I have to tag eight other bloggers, so I'll tag:

ColleenM
Nabonidus
GreekZoe
Rich Greiner
Whooligan
Mermaid in MN
Suesjoy
Delbut