100 things about this blogger? Well there are 100 things about me I could post, but there are quite a few of them that I’d prefer to keep to myself and even more things that are just plain too boring. So I picked out 30 things about me (and my family) that a reader might find interesting. Don’t blame me! Dean put the idea in my head. (That, my friends, is how you shirk responsibility for your actions.)
This list will be posted to my “About Me” page when I get around to it.
1. I was born in Chicago.
2. I was raised by my great-aunt and great-uncle from ages one to nine. My uncle has passed on and my aunt is in her eighties.
3. I look almost nothing like anyone on my mother’s side of the family and I only vaguely resemble my mother. (We have identical voices, however, and look alike walking away.) People ask whether I’m adopted or not.
4. I quit smoking on 02/03/04. It’s the second time I’ve quit. The last time—six years ago--I lasted 18 months. Since, quitting, I’ve gained some pounds, undoing some of the work I did last year, but I don’t regret it.
5. I am the eldest of eight siblings. I am the lone product of my biological parents’ marriage, however.
6. I have 70,000 words of a novel written. (Aren’t all bloggers writing a novel?) However, I haven’t touched it for a year.
7. I am the only member of my mother’s family that isn’t near-sighted.
8. My maternal grandfather was an “entertainer”: a singer, dancer, C-movie actor (in some old, horrible, all-black cast movies). I can carry a tune.
9. I have driven across the country (ah, the things you do when you’re nineteen, don’t know any better, and don’t have creaky joints).
10. My earliest memory is of one of my aunts, nine years my senior, telling me not to be a baby during a Chicago thunderstorm. I kept putting my hands over my ears against the thunder. I was two.
11. That same aunt is now a Chicago Police detective.
12. I knew how to read before entering kindergarten.
13. I speak three languages. (The others are German and Russian; my Russian has deteriorated.)
14. One of my uncles is the mayor of a small Southern California city.
15. As I mentioned to Dean, I score INTJ or INTP on the Myers-Briggs Personality tests (as Dean does). INTJs are the oddballs of the world. The best way to deal with me is on this page. This is me to a tee:
Do not expect INTJs to actually care about how you view them. They already know that they are arrogant bastards with a morbid sense of humor. Telling them the obvious accomplishes nothing.16. People say I like to argue. That’s true but it’s only a surface observation. If I argue with you it’s because something you’re saying (or trying to get me to do) doesn’t have clear reasoning behind it (to me). Also, if I take the time to argue with you, I’m giving you a compliment: I respect you as intelligent, capable and honest. However, if your arguments are not in good faith or are stupid or I think that you’re stupid, I’ll ignore you and find something better to do with my time. (I might say something cutting to you to get you out of my face if you don’t take the hint.)
15. My father is the managing editor of a foreign newspaper. He is also an admitted socialist and speaks seven languages.
16. I am named ‘Juliette’ because he wanted to name me something French. Well, it could have been worse.
17. One of my maternal great-uncles was executed for murder.
18. I met my ex-husband when I was ten. (He was eleven.) We married when I was thirty, divorced in little over a year.
18. I skipped the fifth grade.
19. I wanted to join the military right after high school, but I was too young (sixteen). When I turned seventeen, my mother and stepfather refused to give their written consent for me to join, so I waited them out.
20. I almost became a Marine, not because I was all that tough (not at 100 pounds soaking wet), but because I knew absolutely no woman that had ever done so. The Marine recruiter kept me waiting for an hour, however, so I walked over to the Air Force recruiter and the rest is history.
21. I was an extra in “The Truth About Cats and Dogs.”
22. I am a “Star Trek” fanatic, except for the “Enterprise” series.
23. I used to be a big football and basketball fan. But, like many, I noticed the change in general attitude among the players. More and more were being arrest for crimes, large and small. More and more of them believed their own press and beginning to act as though playing a game was on par with saving lives. The LA Lakers’ Shaquille O’Neal recently said that he didn’t give a f*** about cursing on national television. Well guess what, Shaq? A lot of people no longer give a f*** about you or your team.
24. I hate all holidays, except for Easter and Independence Day.
25. I was arrested for shoplifting when I was eleven and received the righteous whipping of my life.
26. John McCain was the first Republican I ever voted for (2000 primaries).
27. I used to volunteer at Pacifica Radio’s KPFK fund drives. They’re actually a lot of fun. The employees and fellow volunteers looked at a GI as if he/she were someone from Nepal. Of course, this was back in the mid-to-late nineties.
28. I’ve never done any drugs; well, no illegal ones.
29. I have several things in common with Rosemary Esmay.
30. In conversations, I enjoy talking about myself so much that I have to restrain myself and make myself talk about the other person. :-)
