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I never do blog memes, but when Hamlet Au of New World Notes tagged me, I had to give in.

If you’ve somehow escaped this one, here are the rules:

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

And now eight random things about me..

1. I grew up on a horse farm and lived in a log cabin in the woods. I’ve bailed hay, chopped firewood, milked a cow, and hand farmed gardens that were bigger than most people’s lawns. We had an outhouse and carried our drinking water by hand from a natural spring out in the woods. We had a zillion cats, and dogs and horses, cows, chickens, and even some goats once, and with 90 acres of fields, woods, and creeks to play in, and an endless supply of books (not so good TV reception out in the sticks back then), I think I had a pretty good place to grow up.

In fact, urban and suburban life still seems unnatural and crowded, yet isolating and lonely to me. It seems like you should know everyone within a few mile radius of where you live (even if that isn’t really feasible in a city) and that kids were meant to run and play for hours at a time unsupervised (even if they do get hurt). Seventeen years after leaving the country, I’m still trying to reconcile all of these contradictions for myself, and it’s why I bought a house right next to a huge, 1500 acre park – it’s the closest I can get to the country without having a ridiculous commute.

2. My first SL avatar was Mara Brightwillow, and I remember being totally befuddled by the navigation interface – especially flying. The first resident created object I remember seeing was a giant hair spray can. (!)

3. I bumped into Emilio Estevez (literally) at a farmer’s market in downtown Minneapolis. I nearly dropped my bags and by the time I realized who I’d run into, we’d already exchanged excuse mes and he was gone. I was quite crushed considering I’d had a crush on him since.. what was the name of that ice skating movie?

4. I made it to the national spelling bee rounds in 7th grade and lost on the very first word of the very first round – xenophobic. I spelled it with a z. What a bummer that was.

5. I’ve been a priest or cleric in every D&D or RPG game I’ve ever played. Something about saving the hero’s ass at the last minute.. Actually, I think it comes from the early days when video games were largely single player. My brother was the type to open the box and go right for the controls, while I dove for the manual and bossed him around. He was the fighter, I was the planner, and when we got to multiplayer games, the hoarder of potions since he always wasted his. It ruined me for soloing ever after.

6. The only book I’ve ever seriously attempted to read and couldn’t was Infinite Jest. I don’t know why, all my friends liked it, but the second I open the cover my eyes glaze over. Maybe I should try again, it’s been a few years since the last attempt.

7. I once gave a tour of SL to a bunch of educators with no virtual pants on. I could see them on my client, of course, I still don’t know how that happened, but about 15 minutes into the presentation someone asked me if I was supposed to be wearing something on my bottom half. I’ve never been so grateful for virtual underwear! Taught me to always check with someone else to make sure my avatar is rendered properly before a presentation. That’s something they don’t teach you in Presentations 101.

8. Speaking of dumb things, I once ran over my own foot with my own car all by myself. How is this possible, you ask? Well, it takes the right combination of gravity, slope, long black coat, and idiocy. I’d left my headlights on over night and was late for a meeting (of course) and so when my neighbor offered to give me a jump, I was in a rush to get things moving. I decided to push the car down the driveway myself so we could hook up the cables, and while he was moving his car into position, I opened the driver’s side door and was steering with my left hand and pushing on the door frame with my right hand. What I didn’t know was that my flat drive way wasn’t actually flat at the end, and as soon as I hit that little slope, wow the car started moving at quite a clip. Before I knew it, the long black dress coat I was wearing got caught under the front tire and then I was trapped. The car didn’t actually run all the way over me, it just drug me along for a good while, grinding off shoes, tights, and flesh until it came to a rest at the bottom of the hill. Ouch. Ouch ouch ouch.

All things considered I was quite lucky, broken ankle and the proverbial “it’s just a flesh wound!” that eventually healed over. The only thing more painful than the event itself was having to explain what happened every time someone asked while I was on crutches. Moral of the story? Pick one: Don’t wear long loose clothing when working with heavy machinery. Don’t be in such a rush that you do really dumb things. If you hurt yourself in a dumb way, think of a good cover story before word gets out that you ran over yourself with your own car, yes really. *sigh*

And there you have it, eight things you probably didn’t know about me.

There are a bunch of people I’d love to tag, but I don’t want anyone to feel obligated either, so if you’re reading this and have a blog and haven’t been tagged yet, you’re now IT. Link back here and I’ll post a follow up to your site!