BINARY TRASH

Comment Policy

Comments are welcome!  Feel free to comment or criticize anything I have written.  Or just say hi.  I love it when you come in and say hi.

If you come in here spewing filth and hate toward others, consider yourself deleted. 

That is, unless, your comment is so mispelled and off-base, I will leave it up for the amusement of others.

Selected Facts

1.  Outwardly I am cool and collected, but this is only a ruse to disguise my inner nerd.  Truth be told, I love my coin collection, my stamp collection, Discovery channel specials and wearing mismatched socks.

2.  I’ve lived in Montana, Arizona, Florida, the Carolinas, Virginia, D.C., and Colorado. 

3.  I really want to believe in conspiracies, I’ve tried to, but I don’t.

4.  I have had back surgery three times.  The third time, they went in through my abdomen and had to take everything out and set it in a bin (still attached), did the work, and put it back in when they were done.  I now have a bionic back and a seven inch, extremely crooked scar as a souvenir.  Luckily vanity is only .001% of my personality traits.  My bikini modeling career really wasn’t going anywhere anyway (Ha!).  My husband calls it “Frankenbelly” because you can still see the staple scars. 

5.  I collect coffee mugs and sweatshirts from places I really like.  I have a serious coffee cup problem.  Someday when I am rich and famous I am going to build a guest house to store my coffee cups.  Actual guests can sleep on the couch.

6.  I wanted to name my son Wolfgang, but instead he ended up an “A.J.”  Having a son with initials for his name is a great life tragedy for someone who wants to write for a living. 

7.  I had several college scholarships available to me, but I turned them down in favor of enlisting in the Marines, mostly on a whim.  Note to self:  you should really not do such things on a whim.  However, it was a great adventure and I will never regret the decision.  College came later and wasn’t nearly the rush.

8.  In first grade we had an assignment to draw a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up.  The girls drew models and nurses.  The boys drew firemen and doctors.  I drew an Indian dancing around a blazing fire.  I was extremely disappointed when I found out that was not an available occupation. 

9.  I have an unfortunate capacity for memories.  I say unfortunate because deep and detailed memories often result in classic OCD behaviors.  Or perhaps OCD leads to an unfortunate capacity for memories.  Either way, memories constantly play in my mind like a TV that won’t shut off.  It’s really hard to concentrate on anything when you can’t dump the thought of what the snow looked like as it fell when you were riding on the chair lift on the ski trip you took in the third grade. 

10.  I never wanted children and now I have two.  I think I could have about a dozen.  (If I had a nanny)  Funny how life works. 

11.  The only thing I’ve ever wanted to do was write.  I remember no other aspirations (once the dreams of living in a Tepee were crushed) and have always let the wind take me where it wanted.  It worked out really well. 

12.  On writing…my first book was called “Pernats Claps.”  I was four and highly enjoying drawing the cover on yellow construction paper.  It was about a pilot who flew from island to island to eat lunch with the natives who lived there.  My mom still has it in a box somewhere.  Oh, Pernats Claps was the name of the pilot. 

13.  Thirteen is my favorite number.  When I played sports in school, I always wore it.  This is rather strange because 13 is a horribly uneven number. 

14.  Speaking of numbers, I can’t keep 3’s, 6’s, 9’s, or any multiples of three straight.  If you tell me your number is 636-9939 I cannot be your friend, I am sorry.  I would never be able to call.  I would try to key your number into my cell phone, but I’d never be able to do it.

15.  Speaking of phones, I probably wouldn’t call you anyway.  I dread using the telephone.  If I have to make a phone call, don’t look for me at the phone.  I will be doing laundry or dishes or something I enjoy a lot more than talking on the phone.  I am lucky to have e-mail and IM or I would have to be a hermit.  I have no problem talking to anyone in person.  It’s just the phone.  *Shudder*

16.  I fear flying.  My heart rate shoots up to cardiac arrest levels by just sitting in a plane with the engines turned off.  Once they turn on, it’s time for a stroke.  I tried to do the thing where you immerse yourself in the subject of your phobia to try and cure it.  I read everything I could about planes, the physics of flying, how the plane just “couldn’t fall out of the sky,” etc.  The problem with that is due to my unfortunate capacity for memory, I remember every single thing I ever read about the things that can go wrong during your flight too.  Suddenly I was morbidly surfing websites called planecrashinfo.com and amIgoingdown.net.  Planecrashinfo.com even offered the final flight recordings where you could hear the pilots screaming in terror.  So much for immersion therapy.

17.  I have no desire to play a musical instrument or to speak a foreign language.  I would like to have the desire to do these things.  I just don’t.

18.  I’m allergic to cats, but I just love them.

19.  I am not a dog person.  I like the idea of dogs.  When I was really little my grandpa’s bird dog bit me in the face.  It’s not something I remember too clearly (strange) but I wonder if that has something to do with it.  I am the jerk who calls animal control when you break the leash laws.  If you are my neighbors and you are reading this, I’m sorry.  But not everyone loves Rover the same way you do. 

20.  I like the idea of family, but I don’t buy into that whole blood is thicker than water adage.  If this was the case, we’d never read about neglected children, domestic violence, or abandoned babies.  Family is what you choose to make of the people you meet over time.  I feel closer to many friends and people I’ve encountered over the years than some of my crazy-ass relatives.  Remember:  “Extended family are the people who call you when they see you’ve won the lottery on TV.”

21.  I love spicy food.  My favorite restaurant is this Thai place in Vienna, Virginia.  Every time I go there I order this hot salad thing that is so hot that my face turns red and my fingernails sweat and I can’t sleep for two days.  I love it.  But it hurts. 

22.  I also used to love getting shots.  It must have been the endorphin rush from the needles.  In the Marines there were lots of shots, too…for all kinds of fun things like typhoid fever and anthrax and what have you.  I still don’t mind getting shots but I can’t donate blood.  I get instantly cold and tired and feel like I have to go to sleep for days.  I wish I could give blood because it saves people.  But the last time I did the nurse told me to never do it again.  I guess I need all my blood for me. 

23.  I run on very little sleep.  I have chronic insomnia.  I can go for months on end sleeping just 2-4 hours a night, though I will admit this is getting harder with two kids.  The longest I’ve ever stayed up due to insomnia was a little over five days.  I wasn’t the least bit tired.  Then I started to have strange hallucinations of blue lightning coating my furniture. 

24.  I was addicted to the TV show “The O.C.”  I hate soap operas.

25.  I am constantly planning escape routes.  I can’t stand being in a room with no windows, and I have to sleep on whatever side of the bed is closest to the door. 

26.  When I see a bag laying on the side of the road, I imagine that there are kittens inside.

27.  Horrible things abound in the world…wars, famine, Britney Spears…but what I really abhor in this world are words that are purposely mispelled for marketing purposes.  As much as it pains me to do, I will write a few examples:  Krispy Kreme.  Toys R Us.  Kwik E Wash.  Froot Loops.

28.  My heart broke when they added purple and green loops to the aforementioned cereal.  I hate change to products that I like.  I usually stop buying things that become “new and improved.”  I guess I prefer “old and substandard.”

29.  * DELETED UNTIL I THINK OF A BETTER #29*

30.  I could easily be one of those people who get addicted to video games to the point where they can’t leave their house and they lose their job and their family.  Because of this, I don’t play them. 

31.  I eat my sandwiches in circles.