Robin tagged me for a meme! The game is to list 10 things I have done that others might not have. Cool :) This will be tough (I’m quite uninteresting) but fun. Once I finish my list, I’ll tag 5 other people and leave comments on their blogs to let them know they’re tagged so they can play too.
So check it. Here’s the 411:
1. I went to elementary school in what used to be a one-room schoolhouse. The main portion of the school grew out of the old schoolhouse and they added a few mobile units for extra grades as the number of kids attending increased. There was a gigantic silver bell at the top of the stairs of the main building and we would beg the recess aide to let us ring it to signal the end of recess and time to go back to class. It would take two of us to push it back and forth enough to get the bell to clang. It’s one of my favorite childhood memories.
2. I rode close to 1000 miles on the back of a Harley to attend Sturgis in 2002. I would say I earned that “I rode mine” patch I got at the rally!
3. Related to #2, I also earned my Mardi Gras beads in Sturgis! I won’t tell you just how many beads I ended up with ;)
4. I have won a spelling bee. Nothing like the national stuff they do now, but I did win a pizza party for my whole 6th grade class by spelling the winning word in a competition amongst all the other 6th grade classes in our middle school. The winning word was “procedure”.
5. I have ridden in a helicopter and swum in a waterfall only accessible by air. On our honeymoon in 2004 R. Darling and I took a helicopter tour of Kauai and had lunch and a swim at a remote waterfall. So romantic and so amazingly cold! But we’re used to that living in the Pacific Northwest. As we were waiting to board the helicopter, another one landed and one of the passengers came out blowing chunks hard. The pilot told us that if any of us had trouble with motion sickness we should tell him right now. I get horribly seasick but I didn’t want to miss out or be the one to spoil the trip so I didn’t say anything. I spent a lot of the trip worried I’d get sick but I never actually had a moment where I thought I would be.
6. I have eaten off of the same dishes as the Queen of England. My mom’s grandfather was honored for some of his wartime achievements during World War I by the British Royal Court and included in his gifts was a set of china for his wife bestowed on him by The Queen Mother. No one in my mom’s family cared about the china except for her and she was given the set by her mother who “hated the stuff”. A family friend of ours who spent some time traveling in England was astonished to visit Windsor Castle and see the table set with china that looked remarkably like my mom’s. The set is now mine and it makes me feel like a queen whenever we use it (which isn’t often since I’m scared as hell I’ll break something)!
7. I rowed crew for 3 years in college despite the fact that I am the exact opposite of a perfectly built oarsman (oarswoman). I’m really more appropriately coxswain sized but I didn’t know any better when I tried out. And since it was a club sport at the university I went to, they had to keep me as long as I could hang with the workouts. The cool thing was, our women’s 4 won the New York State Championships our freshman year. Go UR Crew!!
8. I have co-authored 2 papers (under my maiden name) which have been published in respected scientific journals and have done research that contributed to at least 2 more. The ultimate goal for a lab rat!
9. I have been invited to, and attended a very sacred Native American religious ceremony. Very few non-tribal members are ever allowed to see something like this and it was a great honor to be invited.
10. I have swum with turtles in Hawaii. One of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had!
So that’s my quite boring list! And now I tag: Knitsabella, Fond of Snape, iKnit.iPurl, p3knitter (The Yarn Closet), & Lisa. Have fun! I can’t wait to hear your answers :)
