Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
(To do this, go to "notes" under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)
1. I finished typing my 25 things a few days ago, and then deleted the whole thing by accident. I just did this again. This is my third time typing 25 interesting facts about myself.
2. I've been to 10 major league baseball stadiums, but have only seen games played in 9.
3. Two questions I always answer yes to: "Would you like to go on a walk?" and "Do you want a Costco hot dog?"
4. Two questions I always answer no to: "Would you like to hold this gun?" and "Would you like pickles on that?"
5. If I could have dinner with any four people, I'd eat with Barack Obama, Magic Johnson, Reese Witherspoon and Bear Grylls.
6. We would eat salmon.
7. I have no idea what I would say to any of them.
8. I refuse to use chat slang like "LOL" "BRB" or "C U L8R." I can type fast enough that these things don't slow me down, plus I think they make me look dumb. I also think this is the reason so many people can't spell anymore.
9. Someone in my family has either been enrolled or employed by Oregon State University almost continuously since 1907.
10. I cry more than I used to. I think this is because I'm a parent.
11. I smile more than I used to. I know this is because I'm a parent.
12. I think Rachel and I had a boy because we couldn't come up with a name for a girl.
13. We settled on Jonah for our son's name because she liked it from the kid's name in Sleepless in Seattle, and I liked it because Jonah Nickerson led OSU to the national championship in baseball.
14. I'd rather be too cold than too hot.
15. Two girls have asked me the question "do you think she's cuter than me?" Twice I said yes. Twice the girl was mad. Twice I refused to apologize.
16. My hair started going gray in 10th grade.
17. I dyed my hair once using some Just for Men that my brother got me for Christmas. I looked like a freak with freakishly brown hair. I refuse to ever dye it again.
18. All of my grandparents lived to see their 85th birthday. I think this is a good sign.
19. I am a teetotaller.
20. I had to look up how to spell teetotaller. I'm still confused, because it said "teetotaller or teetotaler" and then gave a definition.
21. I visited Alaska with the sole mission of seeing a wild moose. I ended up taking a taxi to the Anchorage Zoo on my last day there to see one in captivity.
22. On January 1, 2010 I will be 30 years old. However, I will have lived in parts of five decades (70s, 80s, 90s, 00s, 10s). I know this is true for everyone born in 1979, but I still find it awesome.
23. I believe in aliens, ghosts, bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster if for no other reason than I think the world is more interesting if these things exist.
24. I can never remember important things like when the bill is due, what time I need to pick up my son, or what we need at the grocery store, but I know all the words to Bust a Move by Young MC, even though I haven't heard the song in years.
25. The only thing harder than figuring out 25 interesting things about yourself is figuring out 25 people that would be interested in reading 25 things interesting about yourself.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Monday, January 12, 2009
I'm a very polite vampire.....
I think I need to apologize to the women out there who were offended by my post implying that these books were making girls wish their boyfriends were vampires. After the first book, I was still unconvinced. The second book was so slow and tough to read that it took me 3 weeks to start reading the third one after I finished. Well, that and the fact that I wasn’t about to pay for a hardcover copy, and people I knew who had the book were having trouble remembering to loan it to me. Now that I’ve read all the books, I can see that they have an appeal beyond simply “girl meets boy, girl finds out boy is vampire, girl falls in love with vampire, vampire loves girl so much he won’t eat her even though her blood smells SOOOOOO good.”
Though that part is there. The lovey dovey stuff in the books is so over the top, I found my eyes glazing over everytime Bella and Eddie were alone, only to have to go back and re-read all the mushy stuff to find the one sentence that tied that conversation to whatever the next scene was.
The biggest thing about these books is that they’re long enough that the author is able to bring the characters to life. The first book is almost exclusively Bella and Edward, but as the series progresses, you learn more and more about the peripheral characters, and you start to identify with one or many of them. You start to think about which characters you’d like to hang out with, which one’s you’d want to date (for me it’s unquestionably Alice) and which ones you wouldn’t mind if they were eternally damned.
Reading that many pages and investing that much time in the story is much like the feeling I got after playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I’d spent so much time with my gangsta that when I drove down the street, I’d be convinced that I could just use my car to block traffic wherever I wanted and take a better car from the old lady behind me. I would think about “what would happen if those guys on the corner suddenly pulled out submachine guns and opened fire? How would I react? What would I do?”
With the Twilight books, you almost can’t help feeling as if you’ve moved to Forks and are constantly seeing vampires and other supernatural things. Rachel remarked that she had trouble concentrating at work the other day when measuring people’s blood sugar levels because she was worried that if she poked somebody’s finger too hard and they bled a little too much, one of the other patients might not be able to contain their vampiric bloodlust any longer.
The ironic thing is that I hardly have any interest in vampire cultures. I’ve never read another book about vampires, I didn’t wait in line on opening night to see “Van Helsing” (still haven’t seen it actually) and only watched the Blade movies because TNT insists on playing them every weekend. Much like I don’t have any real interest in “Thug Life” yet was completely consumed by Grand Theft Auto. Sometimes people just like to get away from the mundane life of “eat, work, sleep.”
I also saw the movie this weekend. First off, nobody who didn’t read the books would ever consider that a good movie. Second, I was a bit bewildered by the girls in the theater who gasped when Edward first showed up on the screen....did you not know who was playing him? Did you honestly not know what he was going to look like? Thirdly, I’ve never been to a movie where the foreshadowing was picked up on instantly by ever single person in the theater. Every inside joke was hilarious, every hint about future happenings was blatantly obvious. Very different atmosphere than most movies I’ve been to. And finally, any guy who sees the movie will not be able to get over how horrible the special effects were. One of my friends equated the way the vampires moved to The Flintstones “driving” their cars. Not that far off. The only scene that involved special effects that was even remotely well done was the baseball scene in my opinion.
So when I finish the 4th book (I’ll finish tonight), I’ll have to take a week or two to “move out of Forks” so to speak. But then what? Do I start reading Harry Potter? Lord help me if I start down that path.....
Though that part is there. The lovey dovey stuff in the books is so over the top, I found my eyes glazing over everytime Bella and Eddie were alone, only to have to go back and re-read all the mushy stuff to find the one sentence that tied that conversation to whatever the next scene was.
The biggest thing about these books is that they’re long enough that the author is able to bring the characters to life. The first book is almost exclusively Bella and Edward, but as the series progresses, you learn more and more about the peripheral characters, and you start to identify with one or many of them. You start to think about which characters you’d like to hang out with, which one’s you’d want to date (for me it’s unquestionably Alice) and which ones you wouldn’t mind if they were eternally damned.
Reading that many pages and investing that much time in the story is much like the feeling I got after playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I’d spent so much time with my gangsta that when I drove down the street, I’d be convinced that I could just use my car to block traffic wherever I wanted and take a better car from the old lady behind me. I would think about “what would happen if those guys on the corner suddenly pulled out submachine guns and opened fire? How would I react? What would I do?”
With the Twilight books, you almost can’t help feeling as if you’ve moved to Forks and are constantly seeing vampires and other supernatural things. Rachel remarked that she had trouble concentrating at work the other day when measuring people’s blood sugar levels because she was worried that if she poked somebody’s finger too hard and they bled a little too much, one of the other patients might not be able to contain their vampiric bloodlust any longer.
The ironic thing is that I hardly have any interest in vampire cultures. I’ve never read another book about vampires, I didn’t wait in line on opening night to see “Van Helsing” (still haven’t seen it actually) and only watched the Blade movies because TNT insists on playing them every weekend. Much like I don’t have any real interest in “Thug Life” yet was completely consumed by Grand Theft Auto. Sometimes people just like to get away from the mundane life of “eat, work, sleep.”
I also saw the movie this weekend. First off, nobody who didn’t read the books would ever consider that a good movie. Second, I was a bit bewildered by the girls in the theater who gasped when Edward first showed up on the screen....did you not know who was playing him? Did you honestly not know what he was going to look like? Thirdly, I’ve never been to a movie where the foreshadowing was picked up on instantly by ever single person in the theater. Every inside joke was hilarious, every hint about future happenings was blatantly obvious. Very different atmosphere than most movies I’ve been to. And finally, any guy who sees the movie will not be able to get over how horrible the special effects were. One of my friends equated the way the vampires moved to The Flintstones “driving” their cars. Not that far off. The only scene that involved special effects that was even remotely well done was the baseball scene in my opinion.
So when I finish the 4th book (I’ll finish tonight), I’ll have to take a week or two to “move out of Forks” so to speak. But then what? Do I start reading Harry Potter? Lord help me if I start down that path.....
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