Five Things You Don't Know About Me

a meme by way of librarygrrrl (blog at <http://www.librarygrrrl.net>):

(if you’re not interested in me -- and no reason why you should be -- move on now!)

1. i first started reading at age 3. the first word i ever read was "there". by age 4ish i was on noddy and mr. men; i had special library privileges at school and my classmates called me the dictionary. seems i took pride in my nerd status even back in the day.

2. i fixate on my eyebrows. they are a constant source of annoyance, chagrin, and dismay to me. sometimes i think i don't care what they look like, other times i pluck them silly. they've gone from arched to curved to practically non-existent (always asymmetrical) -- no wonder i used to call them caterpillars. if i had one wish in the world, it would be for all varieties of facial hair to be non-issues in my life.

3. i can fake signatures and handwriting quite easily. (watch your checkbooks, people.)

4. i will only wear levi's jeans.

5. i'm obsessive-compulsive about planning and documentation: lists, ratings, memories, calendars, hours i've worked... my netflix account contained about 600 movie ratings (because i couldn't just let movies i'd watched sit unrated, could i now); my filofaxes always held extra post-it pads so that i could write out lists and then joyfully check things off them; my first widget on the personalized google homepage was a to-do list applet; i'd print out and highlight and categorize credit card and bank statements; i collected years' worth of movie stubs back in the US. when i first moved to boston in august 2001 -- and then again in august 2005 -- i'd make daily expense lists down to the cent. years before that i went through a phase where i wrote down what clothes i wore every day so that i wouldn't repeat too often. i have lists of books i've read, lists of people i've made out with, a list of imdb's top 250 with how many i've watched plus when i watched them and with whom... applications for college and grad school involved thirty-column colour-coded excel files. when i went off to college, i borrowed and edited a friend's detailed packing list so that i would have documentation of exactly how many pairs of socks/shoes/jeans/whatevers i was carrying (ditto for packing up my stuff after year 1 -- every item in my 4 boxes was put on a list, in case -- i don't know in case what). my diaries, until i started blogging, used to have to be daily so that i would remember everything. these phases don't last long, but when they're on, they're very involved. i figure out what i'm going to wear to events weeks, sometimes months, in advance. yeah, like i said: involved. and exhausting. i'm currently in a state of great privation because i don't have any to-do lists going. i make do by using google calendar to tabulate my hours such that all events and tasks are documented. it'll do until i go off to grad school.

ok, i realize that i sound like a psycho, but i'm not. really. and anyway, that's an intense enough blog post for jan 1 :P i tag no-one, again, although anyone who feels particularly inspired by this list can go right ahead and put one on his or her own blog.