Glorified Spam

[elspethdixon]

100 things you might not know about me (gacked from blukitten):

1. I was born in Georgetown University hospital in DC; I would have been born at St. Mary’s Hospital at home, but they weren’t equipped for emergency c-sections in 1983, so they took my mom up to DC by ambulance (the weather was too bad for them to use the helicopter).
2. I can read both Middle English and Old English (though my vocabulary in OE is a bit small).
3. Despite five years of French classes, I still can barely understand French when I hear it spoken.
4. When I was five, I wanted to be a palaeontologist.
5. When I was ten, I wanted to be a marine biologist.
6. Instead, I’m two months away from getting twin bachelor’s degrees in English and History.
7. I was in chorus in high school and sang second soprano, until we got a new (less qualified) director my senior year and I conned her into switching me to first soprano, because they always have the melody line, and their parts are easier to sing.
8. Before I joined my church’s choir, I used to be the Episcopalian equivalent of an alter boy (acolyte, then crucifer).
9. I wear size eight shoes, except for my four-inch heel leather hooker boots, which are seven-and-a-halfs.
10. In sixth grade, I wore size twelve jeans. From ninth grade onward, I wore (and still wear), a size six. And still, I hate my utterly-not-flat stomach.
11. I wrote my senior History thesis on Confederate blockade-runners.
12. For my English honours thesis, I’m writing a novel about pirates.
13. I was in girl scouts from third grade through eight grade (first I was a Brownie, then I was a Junior). I think I earned like twelve merit badges, total.
14. I read War and Peace when I was fifteen. For fun.
15. I’ve been an X-Men fan since I was eleven, but wouldn’t admit it until I got to high school, because I didn’t want people to know I was reading something as unintellectual as comic books. My favourite character is Gambit.
16. And yet, I had no problem with walking around reading Laurel K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake books. Which my mom still doesn’t know are essentially vampire porn.
17. I ran varsity cross country my senior year of high school. My best three-mile time was 24 minutes and 57 seconds. Now, it’s more like 28 or 29 minutes, because running on hills in Roanoke has given me permanent shin splints.
18. I got asthmatic bronchitis every winter of my life until I turned twelve. Then, my asthma went away.
19. And when I went to college, it came back. Now, I have an inhaler.
20. When I was in fifth grade, my favourite author was Anne McCaffery. I’ve read every single one of her Pern books, plus all the telepath ones.
21. Now, my favourite author is Terry Pratchett, with George R.R. Martin and Barbara Hambly as close seconds.
22. My father races vintage 1960s Harley Davidsons (two 750 KRs and a 250 Harley Sprint). He does both road racing and dirt track, and I vastly prefer watching dirt track because I’m always afraid at Mid-Ohio and Daytona speedway that he’ll crash in some corner of the track that I can’t see.
23. My mother is an English teacher in the St. Mary’s County public school system. She taught me honours English for three years in a row in middle school.
24. My favourite Girl Scout cookie flavour is Thin Mint.
25. I spent five years in retainers and braces as an adolescent/teenager, and my bottom teeth are still slightly crooked.
26. I’m twenty-one years old, but still don’t have a driver’s license (this summer I’m getting one, I swear).
27. I didn’t get internet access until my freshman year at Hollins.
28. Within a month of getting internet access, I was reading fanfiction (starting with Al’s AU Harry/Draco slash fic Snitch! on FictionAlley). By that February, I was writing it.
29. My mother used to be a Trekkie. She has a Mister Spock doll. Because of her, I watched most of Next Generation and countless ST:TOS reruns growing up.
30. Thanks to a handful of flying lessons in a Piper Cub, I know how to land a tail-dragger. I maintain that it is easier than driving.
31. My younger sister is a Three-degree (sophomore) at the Air Force Academy. She’s a student instructor in their glider-flying program.
32. Sarah (said younger sister) lost her virginity a year before I did.
33. I’ve always wished that I could read Latin.
34. My college dorm (Main) was built in 1869. It has no air conditioning, but it does have the best steam heating system I’ve ever experienced.
35. I have a cartilage piercing at the top of my left ear.
36. I’ve always wanted to be able to play the piano or violin, but can do neither.
37. I got a perfect 800 verbal score on my GREs, and have a 3.7 GPA.
38. And yet both Graduate schools I applied to rejected me (well, one already has, and the other probably has).
39. I’m bisexual.
40. My favourite movies when I was a kid were Chitty-chitty Bang-Bang and The Princess Bride.
41. My favourite movie now is Tombstone. I saw it for the first time when I was fourteen and have loved westerns ever since. Westerns were what got me into anime, via Trigun.
42. When I was eight years old, my dad read The Hobbit aloud to me.
43. When I was fifteen, I had abdominal surgery, and now there’s a piece of plastic in my stomach (well, under it and to the left).
44. I’m allergic to marijuana (just the smell gives me migraines and asthma attacks).
45. My favourite foods are curry chips, ice cream, and spoonbread. Lamb stew and Reeses Peanutbutter Cups are up there on the list, too.
46. I hate broccoli so much that just the smell of it cooking gives me a headache.
47. I’ve had 23 articles published in various motorcycle racing magazines. Three were published in England.
48. I’ve seen two space shuttle launches. I knew one of the astronauts both times (they went to Test Pilot School with my dad).
49. I have 20-600 or 20-700 something vision (really, really nearsighted) and have worn glasses since I was seven. I can’t wear contacts.
50. I didn’t have a real romantic relationship until my senior year of college (girlfriend).
51. I’ve never had a boyfriend.
52. I wish I had a Southern accent, like my relatives do.
53. I’m blonde, but dark blonde, and I sometimes cheat and frost/highlight my hair (at home, with a frosting kit and aluminium foil).
54. I’m a Leo. My birthday, August 6th, is the date the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
55. I love 18th and 19th century novels. Unless they’re written by Thomas Hardy or Laurence Sterne.
56. I’m a Buffy fan, but I didn’t become one until last year, when I saw seasons five through seven on SkyOne in Ireland. My favourite characters are Spike and Giles.
57. I’ve wanted a black leather duster like Spike’s ever since I first saw Duncan MacLeod wearing a leather duster on Highlander. Instead, I have a heavy black denim duster from Hot Topic that I bought because it looked like something Doc Holliday would have worn.
58. I haven’t watched television regularly in over a year. I haven’t watched American television regularly since before I went to Ireland.
59. Oh, I spent the fall of my Junior year at UCC in Cork, Ireland. I ought to have mentioned that earlier.
60. Back before it descended into a black hole of suck and then ended, I was an X-Files fan. I never shipped anyone on the show.
61. I’m left handed.
62. I almost certainly have Aspergers Syndrome, but have never been formally diagnosed.
63. I was diagnosed with Anorexia and border-line OCD in high school. The OCD was probably misdiagnosed Aspergers.
64. I was valedictorian of Great Mills High School in 2001. I also never went on a single date in all four years I was there.
65. I am probably the only female English major out there who hates Virginia Wolfe and likes Rafael Sabatini and Dashell Hammett instead.
66. My father’s family has lived in Hanover County, Virginia since before the Revolutionary War. We still have land in Beaverdam that’s belonged to us for over 200 years. Once, my ancestors owned a plantation in the area (two, in fact: Airwell and Dewberry—the houses are still there and distant cousins of mine live in them).
67. Both my grandfathers were in the Navy. So was one of my grandmothers. My dad’s Great Uncle Wilson was an aide to President Roosevelt, and superintendent of the Naval Academy from 1938 to 1941.
68. After he left the Navy, my dad’s father was a construction worker.
69. From the time I was six until the year I was twenty, I had a cat named Nancy (after the character in Oliver Twist). She was my favourite pet ever, and died the same week Johnny Cash did.
70. I like to cook, but hate electric stoves (gas stoves are the only way to go).
71. I still resent JK Rowling over Order of the Phoenix. She’s only a small step down from Marti Noxon on my list of writers who have treated their novels/shows’ characters in ways that irritate me massively. However, if, in book seven, it turns out that the “chosen one” was Neville all along, I’m willing to forgive her almost everything.
72. Last year, I made $300 dollars writing dirt track racing articles during Daytona Bike Week. I spent it all on a Hollins class ring and Metallica tickets.
73. I’m both a World War II and a Civil War geek—I have a silver pendant shaped like a Spitfire (British fighter plane), and feel vaguely wistful that I’ll never be able to own or wear anything with a Confederate flag on it for fear of offending people.
74. My parents never gave me an allowance when I was a kid. I didn’t have any spending money until I began working at the county library in high school. Now, I’m too busy with college to have a job, and once again have no spending money. I’ve been known to eat ramen for lunch and dinner three days in a row, and to scavenge and hoard loose change whenever I go home in order to do laundry.
75. My desktop computer is named Vash. My laptop is named Mordraed. Both are Microsofts. I want a Mac.
76. I’ve seen the Magna Carta (in Salisbury Cathedral).
77. I often prefer reading books and fanfiction to actually interacting with people, even people I like. I have stopped feeling guilty about this.
78. I am almost incapable of not talking during movies. Have you ever watched a DVD with the commentary track on? That’s what the inside of my head is like any time I watch something.
79. Three of my favourite poets are Robert Browning, Christina Rossetti, and Wilfred Owens. I hate modern experimental poetry.
80. I have a Starsky & Hutch poster on my wall, along with one for The Princess Bride and a motorcycle poster signed by Dick Klamforth.
81. I know who Dick Klamforth is.
82. I’ve read almost all of Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe series (listened to most of it on booktape, too), and have been slashing Sharpe and Sergeant Harper since I was thirteen.
83. When I was a small child, the Giant Sloth skeletons in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History scared me to badly that I couldn’t enter the exhibit room they’re in without crying. I revisited the museum this January and the things are still fucking terrifying.
84. I can’t draw. I’d give up a small body part to be able to.
85. Monument Avenue in Richmond has been one of my favourite streets anywhere since I was five. At that point, I could already tell you who Stonewall Jackson was.
86. My family has a three-foot tall, ninety pound German Shepard-Wolfhound mix named Wyleigh. She looks like a giant, black Wile E. Coyote. I adore her, but am terrified of small, yappy dogs.
87. My elementary school was next to a pig farm. It didn’t have air conditioning.
88. I can’t suntan—I only get burns that turn into freckles.
89. My breasts are halfway between a 34A and a 34B. I can wear girls’ training bras.
90. The a mole on the inside arch of my left foot.
91. I’m a terribly unproductive writer, and write fiction painfully slowly.
92. I hate most cities, except for Cork and London (but even London I wouldn’t want to live in).
93. I would like to be a copy editor after I graduate, if I can find any sort of job as one that doesn’t require me to live outside of Maryland or Virginia (or the Carolinas; they’d be all right, too).
94. I won’t buy “edited for content” CDs from Walmart (or anywhere else) because I believe they promote censorship, and that even bleeping out profanity is disrespectful to singers and songwriters.
95. I’m pro-choice, but still believe that abortion is morally wrong, and probably a form of infanticide.
96. I support the US military with every essentially jingoistic cell of my Navy brat body. I’m often feel like I’m the only person in my fairly liberal fandom peer group who does so.
97. I voted for Barbara Mikulski in Maryland’s 2004 senatorial election, because she voted against the Federal Marriage bill.
98. I’m a Republican.
99. No one in my family knows that I’m bi. I’m never going to tell them. Until I’m dead, when those family members who outlive me can read it in my will (and then they’ll feel guilty for not being pro-gay right and for forcing me to stay in the closet. Or that’s the idea, at least).
100. I read an average of at least one fanfic a day, but rarely review them unless I know the writer, because I’m massively lazy.