Dichroic Reflections

not quite 100

One of my discussion lists has a tradition that on your birthday, you post 100 things about yourself. As I did last year, I'll just use that list for today's entry. (I get lazier as I get older.)

(Almost) 100 things

1. I've completed "100 things" birthday lists a couple of times before so this is really hard!
2. I have a pilot's license that I got the year I turned 30.
3. I'm working on an Instrument Rating.
4. I fly a Cessna 172.
5. I row a Hudson racing single.
6. I learned to knit last summer, mostly from a book. (Stitch 'n' Bitch.)
7. Finished Objects include several scarves, one Clapotis (sort of a cross between a scarf and a shawl), two small stuffed bunnies, 1 pair of socks, and one poncho (in a lace pattern with lots and lots of mistakes.
8. Objects currently on the needles include one sock for me, one cabled scarf for a gift, one sleeveless sweater for me.
9. On Myers-Brigg tests, I consistently come out an ENTP.
10. Despite that E, I do need to spend some time alone now and then.
11. And if I don't get enough reading time I get a bit squirrelly.
12. I learned to knit specifically because it was something I could do while reading. (Unlike beadwork, or cross-stitch.)
13. I have learned that magazines are easiest to read while knitting, large hardbooks next, then smaller hardbooks, then paperbacks. Paperbacks just don't want to stay open on their own.
14. I've kept an online diary for 4 years now, since March of 2001.
15. I've written 1500 entries so far. (And you thought I talked a lot here!)
16. I began on Diaryland.
17. I now have my own site here.
18. The riseagain part is mostly from a Stan Rogers song.
19. The dichoic part was inspired by the earrings I was wearing when I first began my diary.
20. I think it's appropriate because dichroic glass reflects multiple colors and I have a lot of variant interests.
21. I also have a Livejournal. I don't post there much; it's mostly so I can have a friends list to read other Livejournals.
22. I've been online since the late 1980s.
23. I was on my first mailing lists in the early 1990s - Alan Rowoth's folk-music list is one I was on for years.
24. Currently on quite a few mailing lists, but most are set to nomail.
25. I drive the tiniest car you've ever seen, a Toyota Mr-2 Spyder.
26. My husband's truck is huge, a Hummer.
27. They look very funny in the garage together.
28. I have brown eyes and hair.
29. I've only got a few gray hairs, so far.
30. I've had highlights a couple of times, but right now my hair is entirely its natural color.
31. I don't blow-dry - I just towel-dry, comb it, put in some stuff so it won't frizz, and go, even when it's long.
32. If I'm putting it up I usually wait until I get to work so it's dry so there will be some curl.
33. I go to the Renaissance Faire every year.
34. I really like buying unique jewelry there and especially hair ornaments.
35. I've been thinking of joining the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms).
36. I really want to find more of a community - this isn't a very easy area to make friends in.
37. Also I want people to sing with who don't believe you can't sing unless you're of professional quality.
38. I'm not!
39. I think I have reasonably good voice control; I just don't have a great voice.
40. I took guitar lessons for a couple of years, but I'm not very good at it.
41. I haven't played much for years.
42. I own a mandolin but can't play it at all.
43. My brother gave it to me for my last birthday.
44. He thinks I'm more musically talented than I am.
45. Most workdays, I eat fruit (a Clementine in winter, graes in summer) and some cereal in a bggie for breakfast
46. Which I eat in the car on the way to work.
47. This is a holdover from when I either rowed or lifted weights, showered in a gym, and then went straight to work.
48. Now I have a shorter commute, I shower at home after the gym.
49. I'm semiretired from rowing
50. By which I mean I'm trying to stay in reasonable shape, but not training to compete.
51. I find it wonderfully freeing to be able to decide not to work out if I don't feel like it.
52. Right after Xmas and in the first half of January when I wasn't working out at all I lost a couple of pounds.
53. Now I'm being pretty good about working out around four times a week and my weight has ballooned. (Well, up 5 lbs.)
54. I have no idea how this all works.
55. I have never been on a diet in my life.
56. But it's pretty clear I do eat too many simple carbs.
57. This would be because I count pretzels as a food group.
58.Snyder's sourdough hard pretzels are my favorite.
59. And soft pretzels are one of the major things I miss from living in Philadelphia.
60. Folk music is another thing I miss.
61. So is being able to walk or take public transportation everywhere.
62. I didn't get a driver's license until I was 22, a week before...
63. I moved to Texas for my first job. (Hey, it's hard to get 100 things! I wasn't going to waste items by combining them!)
64. I spent 22 years in Philadelphia, 7 in Houston, and I've been here for 9 in Phoenix.
65. I use the word "in" loosely, meaning the greater city area including suburbs.
66. The main thing I miss from Houston is all the water (we lived in the SE end of town, by Clear Lake).
67. I escpecially miss retaurants and bars on the water.
68. I also miss being able to send out an emai on Friday afternoon and gather a posse of people to go out with that night.
69. That really stopped even before we moved away, as our friends got older and settled down.
70. Not that we're big partiers...
71. But Rudder and I have never understood why so many people stop doing anything when they get married, even when they don't (yet) have kids.
72. We believe being married gives you a partner in adventure, not a reason to stop having them.
73. In my opinion we've lived here far too long and it's well past time to move to someplace cooler.
74. I'd like to live in a variety of places, for say, 2-5 years each.
75. Then when we got tired of moving we'd know where we'd like to go back to, to settle down.
76. Unfortunately, Rudder likes it here more than I do - he isn't adamant against moving, but wants more of a directed goal, somepleace to move *to*.
77. My idea is to move away *from*, just to keep trying new places.
78. I've been working intermittently on cataloging our books and am still not done.
79. I'm up to 1100 books catalogued.
80. Some of my best friends are fictional. (If you read the note I wrote the other day on how children read, I think it explains 80. Some others of my best friends are online, I think for similar reasons. Sometimes blogs and email lists give you a better view into someone. Sometimes it's just a view of a different side.) (Later note: Note referenced above was in an email, not an entry here. Oops. See last entry on March 11 for what it said.)
81. I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. My job is OK but I think ideally I'd like more freedom to work anywhere, anytime. (Without, of course, sacrificing pay or working more hours. I did say "ideally".)
82. In retrospect I wish I'd had more trust in my future in college, to major in anything I wanted and trust I'd be able to earn a living with it. (Though that hasn't worked out for all of the people I know who've done it, it has for some.)
83. I find it slightly embarassing I don't speak more than a smidgen of any language but English - I can order from a menu or ask for the simplest of directions in Spanish but that's about it.
84. This is despite a year of French (4th grade), one of Latin (5th grade), 6 or Spnish (5th - 10th grade) and 6 of Hebrew school (of course, not all of that was language training).
85. And yet I think I have some talent for languages - I have a good eye for cognates and a good ear for accents.
86. Unfortunately I didn't figure that out until well after all those years of language classes. (For anyone outside the US reading this, this is unfortunately not uncommon. My husband had German for a few years in high school and knows considerably less of it than I do of Spanish.)
87. I am good at and comfortable with talking to strangers but not great at making friends.
88. This may be due to high expectations - read too many books in my youth about people who had bosom friends with whom they could share all their interests. This doesn't work well for me because there aren't too many people with such an oddly assorted set of interests.
89. Right now my biggest ones include rowing, knitting, flying, and as always, reading. I can't think of anyone interested in more than two of those - or at least, not in the same parts I am.
90. But I also think it doesn't necessarily matter that friends have the same interests, as long as they're interested in hearing about each other's interests.
91. Anyway, this is one reason I place a high value on the friends I do have, even those I don't see or hear from often.
92. I was born March 10, 1967, at 11:30 in the morning. It was snowing when they brought me home from the hospital.
93. And I've decided I am now officially too old to be bound by silly and arbitrary rules, so since I do want to post this today, I will end here!