From Mindspillage

I did the 25 things meme when it was going around, same as everyone else:

1. I love to recommend books and music to people, but I am always a little bit nervous about it; I feel guilty if they don't like what I recommended.
2. I hate using the telephone, so I don't have one. (true when I wrote this, but now I have one and try not to give out the number)
3. I can recite pi to 60 places.
4. I went to do the state quiz bowl competition instead of going to my high school prom. I still think I made the right choice.
5. In my first recital at college, I panicked and had to go offstage to cry and hyperventilate. I went back onstage to do it over after the next performer had gone.
6. I don't like drinking alcohol.
7. I enjoy clothes, but I'm not fashionable; I like to wear fun or silly outfits. About 80% of my wardrobe came from thrift shops. A business suit is just another costume, until it gets tiring.
8. I made it to the national spelling bee in 8th grade -- but I missed "incunabulum" in the first round.
9. I'm very introverted and need a lot of time alone.
10. I really, really hate to be tickled, even though I'll laugh because I can't help it.
11. Mayonnaise makes me want to puke.
12. I am strong for a woman, stronger than I look, and I enjoy when this surprises people.
13. I can fall asleep pretty much anywhere. And once I've started to fall asleep, there is almost no stopping it.
14. I read fast. Really fast. Ridiculously fast. When I start to read I hear the words in my head, but once I get absorbed in a book it's like I stop subvocalizing and start inhaling.
15. I wrote my first computer program, in BASIC, before I started kindergarten. One of my first was a program that asked your name, and spit out a fake error message -- unless you typed in *my* name.
16. I don't generally enjoy women's-only events or social groups -- I fit in worse there than in mixed social groups.
17. My mother was crazy, literally: she had disassociative identity disorder, what they used to call multiple personalities.
18. I started playing bassoon in 8th grade, after joining the school band mid-semester because I had to change my schedule and couldn't take chorus anymore. (I was already in orchestra, playing violin.) The director assigned it to me, gave me an instruction book, and said "I don't know how to play this either. You'll figure it out."
19. I do really good cartwheels.
20. I don't want to have children -- I don't think I'd be good at being a mother.
21. I am terrible at recognizing faces, and I am even worse at interpreting facial expressions and other nonverbal communication. It's part of why I am more sociable online.
22. I've been on network TV once, for about 10 seconds. (Being interviewed by Nightline, about Wikipedia.) I've been on live radio, too, which was much more terrifying.
23. I stress out about writing. Anything I try to write takes me about five times longer than it ought to. I feel like I have to be aware of everything possibly relevant before I can say anything at all and even then I am unsure of what to say. I almost never read my old writing because I can hardly stand to look at it.
24. My first crush was on Weird Al Yankovic.
25. My hair has only been shorter than shoulder length once since I was a baby, and I hated it. I intend to be one of those old women with long gray hair.

I didn't tag anyone -- some people will be annoyed if I tag them because they hate these things; some people will feel left out if I don't. So do your own if you want to. I probably want to read yours, even if we don't know each other very well -- maybe especially if we don't know each other very well.

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