Forty Things About Me

I'm not in the mood to do 100.

1. I bought my cat a water fountain.

2. In 1999, I wrote a book about Pokemon. It was on the children’s bestseller list in Canada.

3. I don’t like watching movies with subtitles because I count the letters in the subtitles. This gets annoying.

4. I can think of nothing better to do on a weekend afternoon than to take a nap with the cat during a football game.

5. I like a clean apartment.

6. I very rarely have a clean apartment.

7. I have a recurring dream where it turns out I never graduated from college, and I need to find a way to sneak out of work and back to York, PA several times a week for that one last class.

8. This is probably because after I walked at graduation, I still had to take one last class.

9. That class was Plant Taxonomy.

10. Sam emailed me last month, “You suck as a person, but you’re a pretty good friend.” I think that captures me very well.

11. I’ve seen 119 movies so far this year. My goal is 150.

12. My favorite movie is The Apartment.

13. I root for the Mets, because the Yankees sucked when I was a kid, and my father never wanted to drive in the Bronx, so we went to METS games. And because I like the underdog.

14. I hate to travel, but there are some things I’d like to see, like Graceland.

15. I have seen every episode of M*A*S*H.

16. I have never seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

17. It really annoys me when couples play the "let's both get in a line and see who gets there first" game and give each other little smiles like they're smarter than everyone else at the Supermarket. You're saving like 2 minutes, people. . . and you're making one line artificially longer. Assholes.

18. I may have stolen a Pepsi today.

19. I would like to live in a log cabin with a big backyard. In Hoboken.

20. I do not go to work on August 6. I don’t like being in the city on the day Hiroshima was bombed.

21. I got thrown out of dancing school when I was in second grade.

22. I cannot concentrate for very long stretches of time.

23. I cannot concentrate for very short stretches of time.

24. I can trace my OCD back to the time I was four. I used to say my name backwards and forwards over and over again.

25. I do not want children. It’s not a matter of shouldn’t. I genuinely have no desire to raise people.

26. I do want a dog.

27. When I was little, I had scoliosis. It never hurt. When I was 12, I almost needed a back brace. If I got one, my parents were going to get me a dog. But my back started to straighten itself out as I grew. I found out about this when I was 16. I wish I’d had the back brace. It would have been worth it for the dog.

28. I did have a parakeet. My sister accidentally stepped on him. He didn’t make it. His name was Prince.

29. I was watching Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown right before my sister killed my bird. For years I would not watch that movie. I was afraid something bad would happen.

30. My sister was so upset that for years, we had to say that the bird flew into a mirror. I’m pretty sure I’m going to get a phone call from her asking me to remove this from the blog.

31. My sister provided me with two pretty cool nieces. They are four and one.

32. They do not make up for the parakeet.

33. The four-year-old calls me sometimes. It makes me feel special that she chooses to call me.

34. I do not like beer, vodka, most wine, rum, whiskey, or most other types of alcohol.

35. I do like gin and hard cider and Kahlua. And Bailey’s, but overall I don’t drink much.

36. I love showtunes. I especially like Sondheim. I refuse to apologize.

37. I also love eighties music. It reminds me of my childhood which had an awesome soundtrack.

38. Yesterday, BB said, "If I knew what you the Hell you were talking about half of the time, I'd be a much richer man." I don't think that made any sense, if he meant rich in the money sense, which he did. But it still made me feel special in that, "I have a secret language" sort of way.

39. I also wrote this sitcom exchange in my head:

Person 1: Hey, Person 2, who's the most paranoid person here?
Person 2: Why? Who asked? Who wants to know?

40. Here's another random sitcom exchange from a few years ago. It takes place at a costume party.

Person 1: What are you supposed to be?
Person 2: I'm a Goonie.
Person 1: You don't look like any of the Goonies.
Person 2: I know. I'm not dressed like one of the Goonies from the movie. This is just how I would dress if I was a Goonie.