Pretend There Is Tickertape and Confetti Here...

It's my 100th post! It only took me a year and a half. And, as promised, here are not 100 things about me.


1. I have Coulrophobia. On at least three separate occasions while driving, I have looked in my rearview mirror and seen a clown in the car behind me.

2. If it were feasible, I would take a sabbatical from my job and do this instead.

3. My name is in the acknowledgments of two published works. One is a doctoral dissertation on Laura Ingalls Wilder (I was 8 at the time of acknowledgement). The other is a book I did research on for work 12 years ago. It's called "Control Self-Assessment: Experience, Current Thinking, and Best Practices." And yes, it's every bit as exciting as it sounds.


4. In college, I worked at a marketing and incentives firm. I worked for either 4 or 6 hours at a time, depending on my class schedule for the day. I made copies. It was in a loft, and it had a kitchen with a full-stocked fridge of pop and a movie theater popcorn machine. So for my freshman and sophomore years of college, I made photocopies 4-6 hours a day while surviving on movie theater popcorn and orange Diet Rite.


5. When Darren and I were putting me through grad school, I worked for a man described in Crain's Chicago Business as "Who's Who: Movers and Shakers under 40." I was his personal assistant. My duties entailed the following: picking up his dirty laundry off the office floor (he would change clothes in front of me, like I was Miss Moneypenny or something); standing in a line of at least 30 men, the lone woman, on Valentine's Day to buy roses for his wife; studying for and taking the commercial real estate exam in his place to renew his license; making a trip to Sam Goody Music to buy Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" album so that he could sing "Go ask Alice...she's 10 feet tall" with accompaniment.



6. Most nights when I get in my bed, I sing, "I love my house, I love my nest, in all the world this nest is best!" (That won't sound quite as strange to fans of P. D. Eastman's "The Best Nest." Or...maybe it will anyway.)


7. With the exception of "Angels of Harlem," I cannot stand U2. I know this is a universally unpopular opinion. But...I can't help it. Bono reminds me of Rasputin.


8. If I could be any character in all of literature, I would be Miss Marple.


And lastly, 9. I had to find some justification for coloring my hair every 10 weeks. (Professionally, of course. I've tried things at home...with disastrous results, proving the maxim "Those who know go pro.") But the cost is prohibitive, and every time I come home Darren says, "How much did that cost?" and after years and years, it's just wearing me down, giving the answer. So, from now on, I'm just going to quote this poem each time I get it done:

Never shall a young man,

Thrown into despair

By those great honey-coloured

Ramparts at your ear,

Love you for yourself alone

And not your yellow hair.

But I can get a hair-dye

And set such colour there,

Brown, or black, or carrot,

That young men in despair

May love me for myself alone

And not my yellow hair.

I heard an old religious man

But yesternight declare

That he had found a text to prove

That only God, my dear,

Could love you for yourself alone

And not your yellow hair.

(See? I promised I would get some Yeats in there today!)

And there you have it. My 100th blog post. Thanks to anyone who's actually still reading it! I'll be back next week with more funny tales of Beezus and Ramona as I've taken to calling the two sisters who live at our house. Oh, and three bloggers will meet IN REAL LIFE this weekend as well! I will write with all the details...stay tuned!