Getting to know me

So I got tagged, and since it was by someone I tagged a couple of months ago, I am honor-bound to suck it up and respond in kind.

Question is; are there eight things about me that anyone would care to know – that I am willing to post on a blog that I haven’t already?

Eh, I’ll give it the old college try…

1.) Every time I use a semicolon I apologize to Kurt Vonnegut.

2.) I play the Harpsichord.

3.) I know every word to every song on Frank Zappa’s Joe's Garage. Ditto Over-Nite Sensation.

4.) I never tune the radio in my bedroom to anything but NPR. For the last 25 years, every time I have moved, the first thing I did when I unpacked was hook up the stereo and head for the left end of the dial.

5.) I once fixed a blown radiator hose on a full-size Bronco in the middle of nowhere (rural, mountain Idaho) in the middle of the night (okay, about 9:00 p.m.), in the middle of a snowstorm, with a pair of my daughters dance tights and the elastic waistband from a pair of Hanes-Her-Way French-cut panties, and got my kids and dogs back to civilization. The guy at the only full-service gas station open that time of night was worried I might not be able to change a radiator hose, so I popped the hood and showed him how I made it to town in the first damned place. When I came in from the parking lot after getting the kids settled and the hose changed, my adolescent son asked where the hose was. I told him I threw it away, and while I was showering, he got up, got dressed, and went outside and retrieved the blown one out of the dumpster at the hotel to show to his Dad when he arrived at the billet and joined us.

6.) When I was in fourth grade, I went to a civvie school. When we started a geography unit in Social Studies, the teacher asked if anyone knew what the “Great Plains” were – I heard “Great Planes” and answered “The F-14’s!”

7.) When I was seven years old, I was at the homecoming game at the school where my father and father-in-law both graduated high school. I saw my husband – who was 16 at the time – from a distance and told the girl I was running around the school grounds with that I was going to marry him when I grew up. Hint: I did!

8.) My heroes are all teachers I have had over the years – Bill Russell who taught American Government at one of the colleges I attended. Carol Konek who was a Women’s Studies professor and Dean of Liberal Arts at Wichita State. Dottie Billings and Clay Robarchek who expanded my world when I studied Anthropology under them, also at WSU. But completing the top five is my favorite teacher ever – my eighth grade English teacher. When I went to his classroom a few years later, as an upperclassman college student, and told him I was a math/science nerd he looked at me with bitter disappointment and said “With your writing?” (He is very happy that I am blogging.)

Now – who to tag? Let’s go to the sidebar…

Dr. Sardonicus tagged me the last time we did one of these things, so it’s his turn to get tagged. Besides, he is the only other blogger on the team at Watching Those We Chose who has also been piss-drunk at Kirby’s Beer Store. He will verify - all the cool kids at WSU finished their day at McKinley Hall or that other building in close proximity to Kirby's - I only took one class there-speech-and immediately split for a warm beer every M-W-F afternoon at 2:50. (Kirby's is a dive, and the beer wasn't cold, but the clientele was - is - way cool. I wonder if Dennis Peebles is still sitting at the bar?)

Strannix gets tagged because I want to know more about any guy who can commandeer a battleship single-handedly, or at least takes his Nom de Guerre from a guy who did!

Mary Helen is new to this blogging thing, but she is a nice voice to add to the choir – and what I know of Sniderman the Snarky, just from blogging – she has to be a saint. Go see her, say howdy, and welcome her to the left side (which also happens to be the right – as in correct – side) of the blogosphere.

Jim Putnam is a retired Air Force Master Sergeant, with something to say. He should be listened to. He is at least as pissed off at the disintegration of our country the last six years as I am – but he is more civil about it.

Voices of Reason is a fine, fine little site, and damnit, I want more people to read it. I tap Jason Scorse over there because more people need to read his, well, voice of reason.

I don’t send out emails when I blogroll someone, I just do it. If I find that I am visiting a blog three or four times a week, I blogroll it, and it is strictly on merit and/or entertainment value. Quid pro quo is nice and all, but not necessary. I’m finishing off my eight with some bloggers who fall into that “I deem thee worthy whether you even know who the hell I am or not” category.

The Politicky Bitch is another pull-no-punches bloggin’ broad. I have yet to see a subject she was unwilling to tackle. I like that in a blogger. We might have been separated at birth.

Rook’s Rant is a blog by one of the Political Animals that comprises the online community at the Washington Monthly site. He has been on my blogroll for quite some time – although I don’t know if he is even aware of that fact. I like the snark, so he gets tapped.

And finally, inquiring minds want to know more about BadTux the Snarky Penguin than that he can be found on “some iceberg” in the south pacific. Anyone who describes himself as “A black and white and yellow multicolored penguin making his way as best he can in a world of monochromic monkeys.” Is begging me to want to know him better!

There you go guys. Tag. You’re it.