100 things about me

1. I hate the smell of vinegar. It makes me gag and choke, usually over-dramatically.
2. I wish I could sew all my own clothing, but whenever I try I end up having to do everything twice.
3. I have knit far more disasters than successes.
4. My first real FO was a pair of felted mittens in Lopi yarn that took me three years to knit because I forgot about them for long periods of time.
5. I try to be a monogamous knitter.
6. I love garlic.
7. I can’t stand tomatoes or anything made with tomatoes. Tomato sauce is one of my least favourite smells.
8. I have a sensitive sense of smell. My dad used to joke that I was a supertaster as well, but I don’t think I technically am, given that I enjoy most of the things that supertasters are apparently less likely to: spinach, coffee, olives, grapefruit juice, soy, etc.
9. I don’t really like cheese, but I’ve become more open to it in my old age.
10. I let my G1 license expire, and I’m not planning on getting a driving license in the near future.
11. I want to live somewhere I can walk to everywhere I need to go.
12. I obsessively modify recipes.
13. I’m awkward.
14. My favourite dessert is plain yogourt with fresh peaches.
15. In my third year of university I studied abroad in England.
16. I play the saxophone, but I haven’t seriously since 1st year university.
17. I have dual citizenship: Canadian / American.
18. I have run out of shelf space for my books and they have begun to occupy my floor.
19. My pretentiously conceived dream home is filled with plants, books, and art.
20. I am obsessed with the idea of living sustainably, but I haven’t figured out a way to do that yet.
21. When I was in England, I was mistaken for Irish on two separate occasions, once by an Irishman. This continues to puzzle me.
22. I wish I was good at languages, but on the other hand I’m shy and anti-social enough that I would never use them.
23. I’m a Latin nerd.
24. I spent hours in the Paris catacombs trying to figure out Latin inscriptions among the bones.
25. When I visited Prague, I spent a whole day in two Kafka museums, although I had not read any of his work at that point.
26. I have had a journal on and off since I was 7. My first journal had a plastic cover with balloons on it.
27. I am afraid of forgetting things. This fuels my obsessive journal writing.
28. I went to band camp for several years in high school and constantly had to deal with people quoting a crappy teen comedy.
29. I tend to remain ignorant about the gadgetry associated with my interests and hobbies.
30. I’m generally okay with being mediocre.
31. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy changed my life and remains a significant influence on me even ten years after I read it.
32. My relationship with my brother is almost entirely based on inside jokes from weird radio comedy.
33. Octopi fascinate me.
34. On my 19th birthday my friends forced me to sign up for facebook against my will.
35. I left livejournal for political reasons.
36. People often make puns with my last name.
37. I rarely buy souvenirs other than postcards when I travel.
38. I am in love with the idea of sweater vests.
39. Someday I expect to own a tweed jacket with leather patches.
40. I don’t understand a word of Heidegger.
41. My extended family on my father’s side all live within a 5-block radius of my immediate family. We were there first.
42. I was born in Germany. No, I do not have German citizenship, nor do I speak German, although I wish I could.
43. I love Minoan art motifs.
44. My experience as high school yearbook editor taught me a lot, but it also turned me off management forever.
45. I get really excited about seeing things that I learned about in textbooks in person.
46. My style of traveling is to wander aimlessly and stumble upon interesting things. This is not foolproof.
47. I have traveled in Canada, U.S.A, Costa Rica, China, England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany, and the Czech Republic, with brief but significant stops in Belgium and Wales.
48. I have a knack for liking clothing in styles entirely unsuited to my body type.
49. But I actually like my body type, most of the time.
50. I have blue eyes, brown hair, and freckles.
51. I am growing my hair until I can’t stand it anymore.
52. One of the reasons I am growing my hair is to avoid making a decision about how to have it cut.
53. I’m chronically indecisive.
54. When I was a baby, my parents and I vacationed in Portugal, and Chernobyl blew up while we were there. My parents have a photo in which can be seen a newspaper with a headline describing the nuclear disaster.
55. I am afraid of the telephone.
56. I read Doorways in the Sand by Roger Zelazny about once a year.
57. I would like to visit New Zealand.
58. I am unable to specialize, and I fear this makes me master of none.
59. I feel guilty if I don’t pay attention to world events for any length of time.
60. I don’t believe in free will.
61. I made earrings long before I got my ears pierced.
62. I like winter.
63. Skating is my favourite athletic activity, and the only one I’m any good at.
64. Though, hiking is also up there.
65.I love cliffs and oceans.
66. People tend to forget who I am, so I have a habit of reminding them even when I don’t need to.
67. I realize that compiling this list is an exercise in ego, but then, so is having a blog. So I’ll keep going.
68. My main vice is chocolate covered almonds.
69. Despite what they may tell you, I’m not a Communist. Really.
70. I do not want to contribute to the clutter of the universe, but I love making things that tend to contribute to this clutter.
71. For the above reason I have developed a pathological obsession with practicality in my handmade items. This only works in theory.
72. I love fruit. Apples are my favourite fall fruit, peaches are my favourite in summer, and grapefruits in winter.
73. I am afraid of showing anyone my work before knowing I’m absolutely perfect at it; of course, I never feel I’ve completely mastered anything, so I rarely put my work out in public.
74. Yet, I don’t consider myself a perfectionist. When I make things for myself I fudge them all the way along.
75. If I lived in ancient Rome (and was a free-born male), I would probably have been an Epicurean.
76. Green and purple is my favourite colour combination.
77. I often make sarcastic remarks at the television in a loud and belligerent voice.
78. Sleeping on clean sheets is one of my simple pleasures.
79. Diamonds are overrated.
80. I’m still not sure what I want to be when I grow up, if I grow up.
81. Objects silhouetted against the sky please my aesthetic sense.
82. I love words like sesquipedalian. And just words in general.
83. I do not want to have pets, ever. Other than maybe fish.
84. I could easily become pescatarian, except that the fishing industry is the one I object to most of food industries, so any ethical decisions attempted in the process would be undermined.
85. I quit eating beef for a year while I was in England, but I swear it was not from fear of mad cow disease.
86. I don’t eat pork. This has nothing to do with the fact that half my family is Jewish.
87. Fashion fascinates and repels me.
88. I’m not ambitious. This does not make me a slacker, though.
89. I love old books in all their yellowing, dusty, cracked glory.
90. I seem to like a lot of music by men with low, gravely, often tuneless voices (e.g. Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Louis Armstrong).
91. I once saw Sonny Rollins in concert, and it remains tied for the best show of my life.
92. The other best show was The Decemberists in Glasgow in 2007.
93. Making hand-bound blank books fills me with satisfaction.
94. I have been known to sunburn even in the spring when it is overcast.
95. I only tan after I burn, but even my tan looks a lot like most other people’s pasty winter skin.
96. Greek mythology was my first academic passion, from grade 6 onward.
97. Most of my favourite books are dystopian fiction.
98. One of the few stuffed animals I still have is a giant plaid moose.
99. My favourite flowers are violets and forget-me-nots.
100. I have a bad sense of direction. Sometimes I pretend I don’t know where something is so that I don’t have to try to explain it and inevitably make someone else get lost.