One Hundred Things About NPW

I've been meaning to get around to a 100 Things About Me list for a while now, but it seems as though I've lacked the time energy motivation to get 'er done. But since everyone else has completed one, I don't want to be left behind out of sheer personal laziness. Onward!

1. I love pointless surveys in which you can learn an inordinate amount about someone you might not ever get to meet, or if you did, that you might not ever think to ask them questions that would lead to these specific answers.
   
2. I would have no problem being rich, but I would hate being famous. Not that I go out in pajama pants that say FABULOUS on the ass or anything, but if I did decide to go running in a baseball cap and hoodie I wouldn't want it all over the cover of People. Rich, on the other hand? I'll take me a cool couple of million and spend a few years traveling.
3. Traveling has always been sort of a hobby of mine. This was made easier by the fact that I have always worked/dated/knew people in the airline industry. Flying first class for years for free sure makes me not want to buy a coach ticket.
4. Favorite US place to visit: New Orleans
5. Favorite foreign place: London
6. Dream trips: Morocco, Australia, Vancouver, Mexico City, Costa Rica, Germany, Ireland
   
7. I love forensics shows. I would sit and watch an all-day Forensic Files marathon, if such a thing existed. Oh, Court TV. I've learned so much. Like never, ever to commit a crime and expect to get away with it.
8. Butterflies freak me the hell out. As do spiders and other crawly, bug-type organisms.
9. I thought about a variety of options before I decided to go to grad school for my Library Science degree: Art History, Urban Development, Translation. Then I realized, the library is where my heart is.
   
10. Sometimes I think I would have gotten into grad school even if I was a terrible student simply because my interviewer couldn't take his eyes off my boobs.
    
11. I drink coffee and tea like no one's business. Right now I'm digging on the Rishi Organic Fair Trade Masala Chai. I also drink what feels like a gallon of water a day, iced tea when I think to make it, and diet soda when I think to buy it.
12. I used Crest Whitening Strips this summer before a wedding and my glowing white teeth hurt for a month afterwards.
    
13. I've wanted a puppy for a while now- I'm thinking French bulldog, Chris is thinking Italian greyhound. Stout or sleek? We'll see who wins out!
14. Currently reading: The Green Glass Sea, by Ellen Klages.
    
15. Just finished: Avatars: So This Is How The World Ends, by Tui Sutherland (amazing, by the way).
    
16. Next up: The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls (for the book club!) Will be the first non-young adult book I've read since Running With Scissors.
    
17. I managed to avoid the Netflix snare until someone gave me a month-long gift certificate. Now I can't stop updating my Queue with ridiculous movies that I would never drive to Blockbuster to rent. Currently: This Film Is Not Yet Rated. Next up: Wimbledon, with Kirsten Dunst. (C's pick!)
18. I presently have accounts on myspace, friendster, facebook, hi5, flickr, picasa, blogger, wordpress, and photobucket, and I kind of hate all of them.
19. I enjoy writing, but am a very harsh critic of my own stuff. Conversely, I'm much more likely to write if I think there are people out there waiting to read my stuff.
    
20. I am a Guitar Hero savant, but am unable to learn to play a real guitar. Secretly, I think I was meant to be the bass player in a White Stripes-esque band. Not with my brother, though, since I don't actually have one.
21. Have one younger sister. Sometimes I have to wonder at her sanity. Like when she sends me 18 emails a day in all caps saying things like, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHY IS NO ONE WRITING ME BACK? I'M MAKING TACOS TONIGHT, WANNA COME OVER?"
22. I'm only at 22? My lord, 100 things is a lot.
23. Stores that I find I cannot avoid: Target, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods, Ikea, Border's.
    
24. Stores that I wish I could frequent more often: DSW, H & M, J. Crew, Abodeon, Jasmine Sola, REI, Banana Republic, Anthropologie.
25. Stores I never want to set foot in again: Wal*Mart, Home Goods, Building 19 3/4, Furniture World, Bob's Discount Furniture.
    
26. I have a bit of a library supply fetish. Not in a kinky way, more in a "Oh my god, I get to spend how much from this catalog at 47% off?!" kind of way.
27. I love taking photographs but I'm terribly amateur, especially compared to C and pretty much all my friends. Am taking steps to learn more about apertures, ISO settings, and the like, but like I said- I'm my own worst critic.
28. I'm fairly athletic and I love team sports, as long as the competition doesn't damper the spirit of playing. For example, I love playing Ultimate Frisbee, as long as we're not actually keeping score and no one gets hurt- say, kicked in the head, or knocked out. I also enjoy loner sports like tennis and racquetball. Basically anything with eye/hand coordination, I'm on it.
    
29. I'm usually full of good cheer and smiles which makes me a candidate for any "Likeable Librarian" awards that might be going out. However I have, on occasion, been known to have a bitchy side as well. Who doesn't, really?
30. I like to make fun. This includes friends, family, co-workers, random idiots, the government, the disabled, the abled, old people, people that slip on ice, people that slip on banana peels, celebrities, middle schoolers, and most of all, myself.
31. I like Mexican food an awful lot.
32. Ditto on the Indian food.
33. I wish my job included more hands-on tech stuff like building the school's website. I should be careful what I wish for though- it appears as though all of the tech duties will fall to me next year and that includes an inventory of over 200 computers and printers. Blah.
34. My student loans each month cost more than my car payment and insurance combined.
35. I hate dishwashers. I feel like I'm doing extra work with the loading and unloading, plus they always come out spotty, then I have to clean them myself anyway. Washing dishes can be very Zen-like for me.
    
36. The worst chore is folding laundry. I'd rather clean the toilet than fold laundry. Even if I can distract myself with Forensic Files or my ipod, I still hate it.
    
37. Gosh, this is taking me forever. Hope you're not all bored to tears by now. If you've made it this far.
38. I'm a fairly excellent cook. If only I could hire someone to come clean the mess afterwards.
39. I started reading when I was very young. I'd make up words to go along with the pictures, until finally the words and the pictures matched up. No one's been able to tear me away from books since.
40. I hate the term "hipster".
41. I love the term "emo", but only because I like the way it sounds when I say it. Emo!
42. The last time I went to the dentist I thought he was going to ask me out on a date. This was made more humorous by the dual facts that A) he had a newspaper cutout on his wall of him with a mullet, circa 1993, and B) he told me I needed a root canal.
43. I love zombie/vampire movies, but I hate horror movies like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Saw. The Grudge gave me nightmares for a month.
44. My sister is also deathly afraid of movies like The Grudge- and happens to live out on a secluded lake. I like to devise ways of scaring her, like standing outside her living room window at night and moaning like that scary thing in the movie.
    
45. In our house, Tuesday used to be pizza day (like in the Ween song). Now it's Wednesday night, to coincide with Lost. Pizza:Lost::Nachos:Super Bowl
    
46. Like that? I rocked the SATs.
    
47. I'm fluent in French, and have a decent working knowledge of Spanish and Italian. I also took a Latin class in college (worst class I've ever taken, hands down), and I've taught myself a bit of German from some audio discs from the library. I'd love to learn Arabic.
48. I know more than most average non-Jew about Judaica and things like keeping kosher due to my matriculation at a university that boasts a whopping 65% Jewish population. I would make my roommate teach me Hebrew and Yiddish phrases and then bust them out at parties. Yeah. Good times.
49. My university had, quite possibly, the least amount of partying known to college campuses worldwide, save for maybe some Mormon schools. For real, I was telling my sister about a BYOB frat party I went to and she said, "What was it- Bring Your Own Books?"
50. I can't stomach reality television, not even for a minute. I can feel my blood start to pound in my temples when I see things like My Super Sweet Sixteen and that show with Nick Carter's brother and all the screaming white trash girls. Similarly, I hate American Idol, that show where they build houses for poor people, and anything where they ask you to text a vote.
51. I will admit to watching snippets of Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance, but only for the flashy dance bits.
52. How is this only half over? Painful.
53. There are a couple of great kids in my school, I'd love to analyze their parents to see how they made them turn out so great.
    
54. There are a couple of ridiculously bad kids in my school, I'd love to analyze their families and then do exactly the opposite with my own children.
55. I waver between wanting kids of my own and not wanting them. Biology is a strong force to reckon with though; I may just give in eventually.
56. I have very strong feelings on literacy advocacy and encouraging students to read. Sometimes this gets me in trouble with the people who feel that #2 pencils and machine-read tests are the keys to academic success.
57. Getting a big box of new books at the library makes me giddy with excitement.
    
58. I still watch cartoons.
59. I love Harry Potter. Love it. I also love Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy- let's hope when the movie comes out this summer Nicole Kidman doesn't ruin it too badly.
60. Valentine's Day is coming up and while I have previously eschewed the holiday, I don't think I'll mind so much this year. For reals though- if you don't want to get smacked, do not give me Conversation Hearts.
    
61. I work roughly 180 of the 365 days in a year. Last year I took the whole summer off and spent the majority of it in Rochester, NY. This year I will be finding myself some part-time employment. Oh yeah, so if you know of anything in the Boston area, drop me a line. Preferably something not involving tweens.
62. Speaking of vacation, only a week and a half to go before I have one full, glorious week off! What are my plans? Well they'll probably include a whole lot of nothing, but I'll save my pontifications for a later post.
63. I love the smell of books in the morning.
64. I love giving good book recommendations.
65. I love getting comments on here.
66. Currently listening to on my iPod: the new Shins album, Wincing the Night Away
67. Currently ordering for my library: Guinness Records Book 2007, the new Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants book, and the World Almanac for Kids 2007.
    
68. Currently being shipped to my library: an assortment of graphic novels. I obstensibly ordered them for the kiddos; that's not to say I won't be the first person to check them out. Librarian perks- you know how it is.
69. Ha. 69.
70. I currently have a Master's degree plus an additional 18 credits. When I hit 30 credits, my pay scale jumps another $4,000. You can bet I'm working on that- hence the classes like "Guitar in the Classroom" and "Beginning French".
71. I like craft projects and flowers and rubber cement and ribbon and wrapping paper.
    
72. I never use spell check. It's more a bad habit than plain vanity, I always re-read everything I write about 50 times before I print it, anyway. But I also kick ass at spelling and grammar, so I don't worry about it too much.
73. I am highly competitive in the fields of air hockey, skee ball, Mario Kart, Scrabble, DDR, and all gaming in general.
    
74. I love the beach and being near the ocean. Summers in Maine are some of my best memories.
    
75. I also love the mountains, including hiking and picnics.
    
76. Oh, and the city too. With it's rush of people and drama.
77. I do not love strip malls. Or Central New York. Or southern Georgia, where the cooks have guns in the waistband of their pants at the local Waffle House.
    
78. This is taking forever.
79. I just came dangerously close to spilling an entire Nalgene bottle of water onto my computer keyboard.
80. I once had a high school biology teacher throw a dictionary at me. She was evil and gigantic.
    
81. I then made up the anthem: "What's the AP Bio cry? Eat my Twinkies or I'll die!" It caught on. She only knew of the first line, but it's actually printed in my yearbook.
82. That was pretty much the extent of my rebellion in h.s. I was kind of a goody two-shoes.
    
83. But man, I hated her.
84. She used to tell us stories about how her husband's brains were leaking out of his ears and how she adopted some boy who was in high school already.
    
85. Once we had a lab that involved estimating and she handed out big bags of tiny little beads. This girl Courtney swung one of the bags around, causing an explosion of beads all throughout the lab. Our fearless teacher dove onto the ground, under the lab benches, her sizable bottom wiggling all around in her attempt to grab every last estimating bead. I can still see this image in my brain like it happened yesterday.
86. I got a 4 on the AP English test and a 1 on the Bio.
87. Our physics teacher invented the rubber bumper on cars and drove a Mercedes to school every day. He died before I could take physics.
    
88. When I think back on my high school days I feel a general fondness, but also a sense of bewilderment that I ever accepted my conditions there and went along with it.
    
89. One of my friends from high school became a nun.
90. Before she left for the convent, she sent me a letter saying she would pray for me and my family. I laughed quite a bit, imagining her praying for me in her bare little cell in Tennessee.
91. Then I laughed some more when she said she hoped we could visit when she came back in May, imagining us out at TGIFridays with her in her nun habit that she sewed up herself.
92. Nuns are hilarious. From a distance. Up close, they're scary.
    
93. Almost done!
94. I'm never doing 100 Things About Me again, so I hope you enjoyed this one.
95. I mean, if I knew it would take this long, I would've just done 50. Or 25, even.
96. I should have posted some pictures as a couple of the 100 things. Maybe I'll do some kind of photo meme- a project for the future.
    
97. There can't possibly be anyone reading this far. But if you are, you deserve an award. Maybe I'll mail you something.
98. I have to get to work now. Libraries wait for no blog.
99. Thank you, thank you.
100. Fin