100+ Odd or Random Facts About Me

I've been thinking about this post for a while. I was originally going to do it for my 100th blog post, but this happened instead. So, here are some random facts for you. I'm planning on at least 100. Not because I'm necessarily that interesting, but rather just because. And you all might find it humorous in some cases.

1. I was born in a pink Army hospital in California.
2. The base where the hospital was located has been since decommissioned.
3. I spent 3+ years living in Germany.
4. We left Germany shortly before my 4th birthday.
5. Two of my earliest memories involve our cat, кошка (Pronounced "Kushka". Means "Cat" in Russian).
6. Another memory of Germany involves playing in a pile of tar that was to be used for the roof of the apartment complex where we lived.
7. My brother and I got into a LOT of trouble for that stunt.
8. None of my memories of Germany have any chronological order (I was too young).
9. Because I was so young, I was never truly bilingual like my older brother. I mixed German and English words though.
10. I have only beat my older brother in a fight once. I cheated. I bit him on the arm and drew blood.
11. I got into a LOT of trouble for biting him.
12. My sister was born in the front seat of the family car (a blue Datsun station wagon) at a rest-stop on the Autobahn. My brother and I slept through the whole thing.
13. I had my first crush in 1st grade. She was the daughter of one of my mom's friends.
14. That crush lasted until 7th or 8th grade. We never got together.
15. I kissed my first girl in 3rd grade summer school. Her name was Sunny.
16. Another kid, a boy, saw us and teased us for it. This did not stop us from sneaking off to kiss on multiple occasions.
17. Due to divorce and remarriage, I have 3 brothers and 3 sisters.
18. I consider each of them my siblings even though two of them are related only by marriage and two of them only share a father.
19. I remember every book I've read.
20. I have only read two books more than once. They are L. Ron Hubbard's Battlefield Earth and Allan Dean Foster's Season of the Spellsinger.
21. I don't always remember the intricate details of each book, but I remember enough that it only takes a chapter or two to remember everything.
22. I get sad/depressed when I finish a series of books and have to say goodbye to the world/characters.
23. I will often imagine events beyond the context of the book/series/TV Show/Movie/etc. A lot of times it is a continuation of some sort.
24. I started, but didn't finish, my first novel in high school. It's title was "Runner" and was about couriers in a post-apocalyptic future world.
25. Runner was set in the same world as my NaNoWriMo novel, Troubleshooter.
26. I plan on finishing Runner at some point.
27. All of my toys and stuffed animals that I had as a child had names and lived in the same "world". Details of that world are in this post.
28. I still have all of my stuffed animals and most of my favorite toys from my childhood in tubs and boxes in the attic.
29. One of my toys is an old R/C R2D2 that was purchased around the time of the original movies.
30. R2D2 sits on a shelf in my office at home.
31. I cried at the end of Toy Story 3.
32. I went to a Catholic elementary school
33. I was almost expelled for telling the principal (a nun) that what she was saying was "a lie".
34. It wasn't that she was lying, but the information she had was a lie.
35. I was bullied a lot in that school and was mad because, once again, I was painted as the bad guy by the other students (even though I wasn't).
36. I've run into the principal as an adult. I still don't like her.
37. My wife's first impression of me was "My God, he's a drug dealer."
38. I wasn't. It was high school and I was angry and rebellious.
39. I had long hair and an earring that hung to my shoulder and I wore torn jeans and a jean jacket. I also wore an old Army Greatcoat, but I never dealt drugs.
40. I was offered a job selling once while walking through a store parking lot.
41. I politely declined.
42. I've had a gun pointed at me...twice.
43. The first time a friend was being stupid and pointed a gun at me after a bunch of us went shooting on another friend's property.
44. It took us threatening to shoot him before he lowered his gun.
45. I don't know if I would have pulled the trigger or not. I'm glad I didn't have to find out.
46. The second time was a cop, but he was actually focused on the car behind me and didn't realize I was there.
47. I got a call once just before I started the 10th grade where the caller threatened to stab me back when school started.
48. I carried a knife in my backpack for the first couple weeks of school.
49. I was never attacked.
50. I never told my parents or even considered telling someone with any authority.
51. I received my Bachelor's degree in Music Theory.
52. I've spent over 20 years as a librarian, computer programmer, and now writer.
53. I learned to program databases to keep track of my comic book collection.
54. I've taught myself just about every programming language I know.
55. I have close to 7000 comic books, most of which are cataloged and bagged.
56. I have every eclectic tastes in music, books, and movies.
57. I listen to just about everything except rap and country and even then there are exceptions.
58. I read EVERYTHING. If it's a good story, I'll read it. 
59. I've read classics, horror, scifi, contemporary, romance, fantasy...you name it. I'll read it.
60. I don't list favorite books, I list favorite authors.
61. My current favorite authors change as I find new authors/series to read.
62. Yes, I've read the Twilight series.
63. I like to watch bad horror movies with my sister and her husband.
64. I like Japanese Anime.
65. I play games on my PC that I built myself.
66. I had a database business around Y2K. I wrote custom databases for small businesses. I made a little money and the databases I wrote were used for a long time.
67. I probably undercharged for my services.
68. I thought I was stupid until I was in my mid-30s.
69. I found out, then, I had a superior level IQ as well as a chronic form of depression called Dysthymia.
70. I still don't think a high IQ makes you better than other people. It just means you learn things faster.
71. I have learned that I like being goofy and silly and still be a responsible person.
72. My humor is weird, dry, and somewhat inappropriate.
73. None of my writing is funny (except maybe stuff on this blog).
74. I've always wanted to write a story from a purely evil person's perspective. I think it would be interesting.
75. I don't have any story ideas with a truly evil main character...yet.
76. I have a word document that has about 15 story ideas listed on it.
77. I am writing my second novel.
78. My first novel was a fantasy story. I decided to dump all of it and rewrite it from another perspective.
79. My current novel is a Young Adult contemporary with romance elements, which is completely different than my usual genres of Scifi/Horror/Fantasy/Paranormal.
80. I'm really excited about this story. It also scares the hell out of me.
81. I'm tapping into a lot of trauma and pain from my childhood to write this story.
82. This story is not my story. It is my main character's story.
83. Pain and heartache are universal, the stories around them are different.
84. One of these days, I will be published.
85. I am not a tall person (just under 5 foot, 8 inches tall).
86. I have been told that I am about as intimidating as a perturbed squirrel.
87. I used to be terrified of spiders
88. In order to get over my fear, I researched and bought a tarantula.
89. It's name was Fenris and I had him for several years before it died.
90. I never picked it up, but I did hold a tarantula in my hand years later.
91. I am terrified of heights.
92. I have 3 cats and 2 dogs.
93. One of my cats, Lily, I rescued from the side of a busy highway during rush hour. Details in this post.
94. I don't sleep much. If I didn't need to sleep, I probably wouldn't. This is probably because of the horrible nightmares I had as a kid.
95. I know now that the nightmares I had were a result of my brain trying to process the immense amount of emotion that I was cramming into a small box in my head.
96. I wouldn't recommend repressing all of your feelings. It isn't healthy. Trust me. I know.
97. I have read Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Most of the math was above me, but I did understand some of it.
98. I fell asleep reading Dante's Inferno.
99. Upton Sinclair's The Jungle is the only book I have thrown across a room. I hated it that much.
100. The essay I wrote for it was titled "Animals Animals Everywhere". The teacher was not amused by my title.
101. I didn't get a good grade on the essay. I didn't care. I hated the book.
102. I wouldn't recommend writing pithy essays on stories you don't like. Your teacher will not find your humor ironic nor funny.
103. Do NOT write lines like "He should have jumped off a bridge with rocks in his pockets" to show your disdain for a classic author's main character.
104. I love cheering on my friends in their various endeavors.
105. No matter who you are or what you promise me, I will not wear a cheerleading skirt.
106. I will wave imaginary pompoms made up of various bizarre substances including, but not limited too, zombies, dinosaurs, cookies, and chocolate...sometimes all of the above.
107. An ex-girlfriend named her first child after me. It was not mine. I ran into her at a grocery store. She was "Hey Andrew, this is my kid...Andrew..."

Hope you all enjoyed this little trip of weird. I realized I could have kept going, but decided to cut myself off before I ended up with several hundred bits of info.

'Till Next Time.

Saying Goodbye to Gracie

15 years ago my wife, Susan, met Gracie. She had just lost a cat, named Oliver (a feisty orange tabby), to cardiomyopathy. She wasn't really looking for a new cat right away, she was just going to visit the local animal shelter and look around. As with most no-kill shelters, they had an abundance of cats. One cat caught her eye. I can't remember the breed, but it was beautiful, elegant cat. She had passed over the scraggly, scrawny, sick looking black cat. No way was she taking that cat. No, she would talk to this new, beautiful cat and see what it was like. She was just looking after all.

The black cat, tired of being ignored, opened her mouth and meowed. It wasn't a pretty meow, but it was plaintive. Susan (who was my fiance at the time), tried to ignore her, but every time she turned to the pretty cat, the black one would meow. Completely frustrated, Susan turned to the black cat and decided to give her some attention. Hoping it would shut her up enough so that she could interact with the pretty cat. The scrawny, scraggly, sick looking cat (who may have even had feces stuck in her fur) immediately began purring and rubbing against the cage, desperate for attention.

You can probably see where this one is going.

Yup, Susan picked the black cat.  Her reasoning being, "she kept telling me that I was going to take her home. I didn't have a choice." The vet had no idea how old she was because she was so malnourished from the time she was out in the wild before the shelter took her in. She estimated about a year, but couldn't be certain.

It took some work, a bath, and some meds, but the scrawny, scraggly, sick-looking cat turned into quite the beauty. Once we got the clumps out, her fur was soft and sleek. She loved attention and would curl up next to you every chance she got. Gracie was a sweet, beautiful, cat.

She did have some quirks, like the fact that she would forget she could see in the dark and would start calling for you until you called her name, then she would come in a meow a couple times before hopping up in bed and going to sleep. She was also an amazing jumper. She could jump from the bottom of our entertainment center to the top (close to 5 feet). She also had extra toes (called Polydactylism). Her paws looked like little mittens. It was the strangest thing in the world.

She wasn't a big fan of our second cat, Nikki (a grey and white tabby), but they eventually got along enough that they didn't hiss at each other (for the most part). She also wasn't too thrilled about the addition of small, grabby, baby hands either. I think she spent most of our kids baby-hood hiding out of reach.

The average life expectancy of a cat is between 12 and 14 years.

Gracie was over 15 when she passed. It was sudden, as most illnesses are. We took her and Nikki to the vet June 16th (see this post for details on the visit). They gave Gracie an anti-inflammatory shot. June 22nd, my wife took Gracie to the vet because she looked like she had lost weight and was lethargic. She had lost 14 ounces in 7 days and was dehydrated. Fluids were administered and she perked up. Saturday morning, I took her back, more fluids were given. Saturday night, my wife took Gracie to the pet hospital (BluePearl Veterinary Partners). Gracie was up 7 ounces, but she was lethargic and could barely stand. They kept her overnight and gave her more fluids. Saturday afternoon, Gracie was not responding to the fluids and her blood work had a value on her kidneys that they couldn't even register it was so high.

My wife stopped by to take her home. It was obvious that they couldn't do anything. They told her that Gracie wouldn't last the night. Susan decided that the only humane thing to do was to let her go there at the vet.

We all arrived to say our goodbyes. When they brought her too us, it was obvious she was in pain and had difficulty breathing.

Gracie passed peacefully, June 24th at approximately 7 pm, surrounded by those who loved her most. It was hard letting her go, but seeing her at the end, and the pain she was feeling, it was the only humane thing we could do. As much as we wanted to keep her physically with us, she needed us to let her be free. Free of the broken body she lived in. Free to be at peace.

Secret Friends -- A Poem

In my last post, I mentioned a poem about my childhood toys.  I looked through my old poetry and found it.

Secret Friends--Fantasy

My dearest friends,

As is plainly seen,

Are not of flesh and bone--

But of thought--And childhood fantasy.

Behind closed doors,

Far from view

Where no mortal eye can see--

Lives a world--Of simply fantasy.

------

It isn't much, but I think it gives you all the gist of what I was talking about.  I wrote this in my teenage years and it was significantly different than any other poem I had written at that time.  Most of the poetry I wrote was angst filled, angry, and full of hatred (and maybe a little blasphemy...I did mention I was angry...).

Breathing new life into old things

One my youngest's favorite stories involves a sock monkey.  I can't remember the title off the top of my head, but that isn't that important.  What is important is that he likes the book, and especially the sock monkey.  After listening to the story recently, he decided he wanted a sock monkey.  As it turns out, I have one, sealed in a tub in the attic.  I can't remember when I got it, but I've had it as long as I can remember.
   
For the last week, he's been asking to see it.  I finally dragged the tub down out of the attic a couple days ago.  After locating the sock monkey, I started thinking about all the stories we made up about them.  We had names for all of them.  We even developed personalities, relationships, jobs...a whole world for them.  Well, at least part of the world (more on that later).  Our imaginations, under the direction of my older brother, had created a vast world for our toys to live, play, and experience all manner of adventures.

It's been a long time since I've thought about their world.  I've forgotten most of their names and personalities, but I remember some of it.  I'm feeling there is a story in there, but I'm not sure where I want to go with it.  You see, the world we created wasn't a perfect place.  This wasn't a place full of sunshine and constant happiness that you see in most stories involving children our age.  At the same time, it still maintained some measure of innocence.  I have very few memories of my childhood that are happy, but I remember these were always amazing and wonderful.

Another problem with writing a story about the world of my stuffed animals was that it was so immense and complex.  A fear a children's book wouldn't be able to capture enough of the essence to make it live.  On the flip side, some of the innocence that made it so special would be lost if I wrote it to a more grown up audience.  A true conundrum for me that I hope to resolve soon.  I think writing a story about them would be good.  I've written a poem about them (one of the few from my teenage years that wasn't filled with angst or anger).  I'll have to post it some time.

Here is some of what I remember:

• All of the toys lived in a terraformed area of the Antarctic.  We wanted some place remote and difficult for the real world to get to.  I remember my brother also suggested that we have some sort of cloaking device to hide them from people.
• It was a mighty kingdom ruled over by the benevolent, and pink, teddy bear named Sleeptight.  He was the oldest (older than even me), and biggest of all the toys.  He was also my favorite.
• The kingdom had a prince, named Sleep.  He was my brother's favorite, so he got to be prince.
• They had enemies, so they had a captain of the guard, a stuffed buzzard, named Buzzy.
• We had a couple alien races, the Jelloons and the Gagleans.  The Jelloons were a couple of stuffed jellybeans that my brother and I had.  We only had one Gaglean, named Gagloo (that's what it said on his tag).  I've never seen it's like.  The Jelloons and Gaglean were scientists (they were after all aliens).
• Buzzy had a father, named One Ear (I think).  He was probably my first(?) stuffed animal.  I've had him as long as I can remember.  He's a panda, and yes, he is missing an ear.  One Ear had a brother, named Samsonite.  He was a large panda bear that I got when I was older.
• Buzzy had a trusty mount that we ride into combat. His "steed" was a white stuffed dog named Blue Eye.
• There were two sock monkeys.  One for me and one for my brother.  Their names were Monkey See and Monkey Do.  They were floppy (as all sock monkey's are) and were kind of silly.  I'm not sure what they did, but I'm sure it was silly.  Monkey See had more stuffing that Monkey Do so we decided that Monkey Do was more "athletic".  Beyond that, I don't remember.

There is more in there, but it is easy to see the complexity.  What can I say, we were children.  We didn't have TV or video games.  The internet wouldn't be invented until I was almost in college.  All we had were books, our toys, and our imaginations.

Monkey See is now named "Sock Monkey" according to my youngest.  He's been walking around and taking good care of him.  There is a story in here.  One of these days, I'll have to tell it.  We'll see where it takes me.