Getting to Know Me
Since I last posted, I’ve been finishing up all sorts of knitting projects, some long-term and some instant gratification, but I haven’t been able to blog about them because my computer died and I’m using my old laptop. Okay, technically, nothing is stopping me from blogging, but everything’s harder on this old computer, and I am too lazy to import pictures and so on. I’m supposed to get my computer back today, and then I can play catch-up.
In the meantime, I will answer the “Eight Random Things about Me” meme that Gryphon tagged me for. I think that Mel tagged me for it a few months ago, but I was too lazy to do it. Also, I kept thinking it was “Eight Weird Things about Me,” and I couldn’t think of anything weird about myself. (I told David that, and he thought it was funny. He did not have any trouble coming up with weird things about me.) But then I thought of several items that are both weird (by some standards) and random, which I will list for your edification. There’s supposed to be a baby picture, too, according to Gryphon’s modified rules, but I don’t have any handy. I’ll try to remember to add one after I get my computer back.
Edited to add: Here’s that baby picture! I like this one because I am so obviously pouting. And if someone was taking my picture, the pouting was just as obviously not being taken very seriously. I am about two and a half here.
1. I have two TVs, but neither of them has any channels hooked up — no cable, no antenna, no reception. At least, I assume that they have no reception; I’ve never tried to receive anything on them, so I can’t be sure. There’s one TV in the bedroom, which we use at night to watch movies and shows we get through Netflix (currently season 3 of Deadwood), and there’s another TV on the wall in the basement, which entertains us when we’re on the treadmill. Otherwise, we don’t watch TV.
2. I exercise five or six times a week, and it’s one of my favorite things to do. I run, do yoga, walk and hike, ride my road bike, ride my mountain bike, ski, snowshoe, do indoor climbing, and lift weights. For the vast majority of my life, I considered myself to be “not athletic” because of my mediocrity at all the team sports and gym class games that constitute athletics in the public schools. I think it’s practically a crime that we introduce children to exercise by having them do competitive sports, which only a small fraction will ever excel in, and which teach many children, including myself, much more about what it feels like to fail and be humiliated repeatedly than they do about “cooperation” and “healthy competition.”
3. I’m a vegetarian, and I cook just about everything David and I eat from scratch. When I go to the grocery store, I’m usually quietly appalled at the groceries other people are buying. No vegetables! Hamburger Helper! Gallons of strawberry-flavored milk! Cases and cases of soda! Pounds and pounds of red meat! Frozen meals! Yikes!
4. Despite the impression items 1-3 above almost certainly give, I’m not an evangelist for my way of life. If you watch TV, don’t exercise, and eat processed food for every meal, I don’t care. Really.
5. I don’t do (and am not interested in doing) any craft except knitting.
6. I am the vice-president of the Board of Directors of the Brown County Historical Society.
7. I don’t understand and have never understood why people like cats so much. I have nothing against cats, really — they seem fine. I just don’t get their appeal.
8. I only blow-dry my hair about twice a year, and I don’t dye it, even though it is just plain brown. Sometimes I get the impression that this puts me in a very small minority of American women. Why am I the only person I ever seem to encounter in public with wet hair?
August 23rd, 2007 at 9:50 am
Ruth, It’s fun getting to know these random things! Except for number 7 (I like cats), and number 2 (I am a lazy lazy lout) the similarities are eerie. No blow-drying, cooking from scratch, TV only for Netflix, and that whole historian thing! Also, I can barely crochet, let alone sew.
August 23rd, 2007 at 10:46 am
Great post - it is fun to read these. I love your take on athleticism - in school I couldn’t connect with a ball of any sort, but I really like being an adult “athlete” of sorts. No tv channels here either and I rarely leave the house withOUT wet hair (both to the amusement of my coworkers).
I do eat frozen meals off&on though, but I try to get the healthy-er ones at least… I go through cooking phases, mostly dependent on how busy we are. The garden & CSA have helped a lot in this area though - I have all this great food on hand and have to find a way to use it!
I keep hearing about all this rain in Wisconsin and elsewhere - I hope you are safe & dry up there! And I hope your computer gets fixed - I would love to see a baby Ruth pic
August 23rd, 2007 at 1:28 pm
I totally agree about team sports and public schools - gym was a ridiculous nightmare for me. Every day something worse, broken glasses in high school due to getting smacked in the head with some kind of ball - I can’t remember. I am a firm believer that I should permanently steer clear of any kind of court with any kind of ball that is propelled through the air as the moment I get near it is immediately drawn to my skull.
I’m originally from Green Bay, though I live in Madison now. I’ve enjoyed reading your random things. I’m new to reading blogs - knitting blogs specifically. I needed some help with the Baby Peapod Pattern and was doing internet searches hoping for wisdom and found many a knitter are also bloggers…so…now I find myself following you all along
Happy Thursday and hope your computer gets fixed soon.
August 23rd, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Well, that’s blow-drying two times more per year than I do! I don’t even own a blow-dryer. I have tried to dye my hair with limited success, threaten to dye my hair and look at hair dye in the store all the time, but am SO resistant to dyeing my hair and getting stuck in the rut… If you meet another brown-haired* wet-head on the street someday, say “Hi,” will ya?
*With a shimmery rim of gray all ’round the hairline — though I think the horizon has been expanding of late.
August 23rd, 2007 at 9:01 pm
Brown hair, check. Blow dryer? Well, I own one but I can’t use it or I wouldn’t be able to fit through a doorway, too much frizz. My dream is to grow it all out and be a grey-haired old hippie lady. It’s at the worst possible stage right now…I need to knit a cute cap or something.
August 24th, 2007 at 12:06 am
I don’t blow dry my hair either. It drives my husband crazy and he forces me to do it on days when the temperature’s significantly below freezing. Before I met him, my hair would freeze on my head in the winter.
And I don’t understand the appeal of cats either. I’m definitely a dog person - but I do think kittens are cute.
August 24th, 2007 at 7:14 am
That’s a great list, I’m so glad I tagged you.
Judging by the other comments (I’m in the same boat on many of them), we’re all very unAmerican here. We should probably be reported to Homeland Security. Items 1-4 and 8 on your list are directly antithetical to the American Way. We’re supposed to watch gobs of TV to numb our brains, love competitive sports (preferably from the safety of our couches where we can watch overpaid men in tight pants engaging in them on the aforementioned TV), consume vast quanities of substances as far removed from the earth as possible, be severly judgemental of everyone who doesn’t live the same way we do, and be hyper-concerned with our appearances (of course spending lots of money on products to enhance them). 5-7 might be okay.
August 24th, 2007 at 1:22 pm
Hee, love your list! I finally succumbed and got a blowdryer last winter, when I cut my hair too short to put in a ponytail. I couldn’t deal with frozen hair against the back of my neck! But I am so with you on the sports thing. I love to go running, or really do anything athletic that doesn’t involve other people, but any time I’m competing, I freak out because I know that I am just not good. I realized how bad it had gotten when I was playing a tennis video game, and even on the little screen my instinct was to run away whenever a ball came near me.