Category: me

about me, about time

As of yesterday, I’ve now been at this blog for 6 months. And as is my trend, I’m running behind in the things I’ve been meaning to do. For example, I meant to have some sort of “about” page. Possibly more than one. So that poor unwitting souls who stumble across my ramblings can have some sort of idea what they’re in for.

For some reason, I’m resistant to writing a blurb about myself, though I’ve done pretty boring-ass ones about the blog for places like blogher and technorati. So instead of writing another blurb, I offer to you a test. But don’t worry. It’s multiple choice.

  1. I am a ______-year-old _______.
    a) 12, squid
    b) 35, woman
    c) 1, party game guaranteed to please the crowd
    d) blue
  2. I am currently in _____.
    a) grad school for linguistics
    b) a box
    c) really big trouble
    d) all of the above
  3. I am ______ ______.
    a) usually tired
    b) happily married
    c) wearing pajamas
    d) all of the above
  4. I have a ______ ______ named _____.
    a) one-year-old daughter, Phoebe
    b) sewer alligator, Fred
    c) big toe, Philippa
    d) false
  5. I think ______ is a funny word.
    a) pants
    b) pants
    c) pants
    d) a and b, but not c

Okay, and here’s a picture John took of me:

alejna_and_fish.jpg

blue trees

Look, a picture:

blue_trees.jpg

This is a painting I did a few years back. (All of the paintings I’ve done were a few years back. It’s been a while since I’ve painted.) I was experimenting with cubism, and using a limited palette. I should probably get a better photo of it at some point. But there it is.

Really, I’m just very tired today. In spite of the extremely rare occurrence of having gone to bed before midnight for the last two nights, I’m still just wiped out. I should nap, but have appointments today, plus more of that work-nuisance stuff to do. So I’m not feeling terribly writey today. So, instead I say: “Look, a picture.”

6 weird things about me

In exchange for getting YTSL of Webs of Significance to subject herself to the 5 questions meme, which she has graciously already posted about, I have offered myself up to be tagged by her for the 6 weird things meme. (Yes, I realize these are not your traditional meming behaviors. However, I don’t expect we’ll be fined by the International Meme Police. I do sometimes worry about being persecuted by the International Mime Police though. My “walking against the wind” is appallingly bad.*)

Anyhow, here is a list of 6 weird things about me.

  1. I was a weird kid, and had a variety of colorful fantasies. I’m sure most kids did, but somehow, I think mine may have been a bit weirder than normal. For example, when I was around 9 or 10 years old, I used to imagine that as an adult, I’d choose to regularly wear full blown Victorian-style gone-with-the-windian hoop-skirted dresses. Because as an adult I’d have full choice over what I’d wear.

    2. artichokes.jpg

  2. My favorite food is a vegetable. I love artichokes. Not to say that I don’t have other food loves. But artichokes are tops. I’m talking fresh, steamed, prickly, spiky, alien-looking thistle buds. My deep, abiding love for artichokes dates back to my youth, and was considered to have been no_pizza1.jpg

    3. decidedly odd by other kids. When other American kids were asked for favorite foods, they’d almost universally answer “pizza.” But me, I’d answer “artichokes.” I actually didn’t even like pizza as a kid. (Yes, another weirdness. I got over it.) I remember a school project once where the kids of my 5th or 6th grade class had to put together a newspaper. As a new kid at the school, I was interviewed. The “editors” chose to put the headline for the resulting article on the front page: “Girl Likes Artichokes”. It almost could have been a Weekly World News article.

  3. I once lost my sense of smell. I don’t remember for how long. Might have been a couple of weeks. It came back gradually. When it first came back, I could smell only one thing: cherry scones. (I’ve been meaning to write this story, but I think I’ll save the details for later.)
  4. I can sing a bunch of TV theme songs for shows that I’ve never watched. For example, “77 Sunset Strip” and “Flipper”, or one of my favorites to sing, “Surfside 6“. (Keep in mind that the indented parts are sung in my best bimbo voice.):

    Surfside 6
           What’s that?
    Surfside 6
           an address?
    Surfside 6
           for a houseboat?
    Surfside 6
           and where is it?
    In Miami Beach
    da da da, da da da
    cha cha cha
    cha

  5. My name is spelled in Esperanto. (In a way that speaks more to the weirdness eccentricity of my parents than of myself…) In case you haven’t heard of Esperanto, it’s an artificially created international language. Much like the dodo, it is most frequently referenced in jokes about obsolescence, obscurity and extinction.
    cf:

    Esperanto is a joke. It’s for cranks. You can tell it’s for cranks because, on the few occasions you hear about it, you hear that it is “not just for cranks”.

    or

    cynics have mocked it as an idealistic cult for linguistic weirdos.

  6. I can get quite compulsive about my hobbies. And I have a weird sense of humor. This is a combination that some people have found disturbing. For example, consider this incident from a recent visit to the in-laws. John and my mother-in-law and I were sitting at the kitchen table late at night, talking. I noticed a “Clipper magazine”, a hideous thing made up entirely of ads, with coupons to clip. When I saw the magazine sitting there, with me sitting around with my hands unoccupied, I had this overwhelming urge to clip the letters. I thought I could make a banner for the blog. When I asked my mother-in-law if I could cut up her magazine, she asked why. As I have felt it best to hide the existence of my blog from her, I had to come up with a plausible reason: “I need to write a ransom note.”

    scissor.jpg

Okay, them’s my 6 weird things. Others might claim that there are additional weird things about me. John says my little toes are weird. So I suppose they could have been items 5 and 6.

Now I believe I’m supposed to tag 6 other people, according to the rules:

People who are tagged should write a blog post of 6 weird things about them as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.

Okay, this is definitely the hard part. Maybe I should just go around to random blogs and leave the “you are tagged” bit. Or maybe I’ll just go around leaving comments telling random people to read my blog. That would be oh-so-smooth. Or I could send notes with cut up letters telling people to read my blog…or else.

So, I think I’ll go with some people I haven’t attempted to tag before, but believe to have some weirdness to them. (And I mean that as a compliment.):

  • jeanerz of Jean Crawford, Starr Linguist
  • KC of Where’s My Cape?
  • NotSoSage of NotSoSage
  • Jaŋari of Matjjin-nehen

    • and

  • Lori of Celebrating the Absurd

    • And since she’s seemed moderately amenable to this sort of thing in the past,

  • jenny of baggage carousel 4.

    • If any of you don’t want to play, I can untag you. Or you can just ignore the tag (which is what often happens). If someone out there does want to play (either this game or some future one) please let me know.

    ——————————–
    *I’m trying to figure out a way to throw in this quote about miming by Paula Poundstone, who said:

    The saddest thing about me talking all the time is that I am a gifted mime. I could have had a brilliant career. I just couldn’t shut up!

    and

    Look at me, I’m in a box!

    breaking research from the geekology laboratories

    I mentioned yesterday that there are tests out there to help you determine how you fit into the geek/nerd/dork paradigm. There are many, many tests out there. I may explore these more, but here are a few (with my own results, when available).

    Geek, nerd or dork tests

    1. The “original geek test”
    I like this one. And I actually like that you get bonus points for being a female geek. (Ha!)
    I scored 23.07692%, which puts me at the (unmodified) “Geek” level. (There are, of course, higher levels of geek. You also get to have, should you choose, a button with your test results. Behold mine!
    i am a geek

    2. The Geek Test: How geeky are you?
    This one is a shorter test, and may be derivative of the preceding test. (Or maybe they both are derivative of some previous source. Scientists at the North American Geekology Laboratories are furiously researching this question as we speak.)
    Here are my results:

    Geek Test Results
    You are 47.5% geeky.
    OK, not that geeky at all, are you? I’ll bet you even have a girlfriend (or boyfriend).
    The current average score is: 31.55%
    Fact: 35.45% of people who took this test admit to wearing a costume “just for fun”.

    3. A nerd test, called the “nerd purity test“:
    Here are a few sample questions:

    Do you have a Rubik’s Cube?
    Can you solve it?
    Without the book?
    Without looking?
    Do you have acne?
    Do you have greasy hair?
    Are you unaware of it?

    And here are my results:

    Your Nerd Purity Test Results
    You answered “yes” to 26 of 100 questions, making you 74.0% nerd pure; that is, you are 74.0% pure in the nerd domain (you have 26.0% nerd in you).
    Your Weirdness Factor (AKA Uniqueness Factor) is 11%, based on a comparison of your test results with 576688 other submissions for this test.
    The average purity for this test is 73.8%.
    The first submission for this test was received June 16, 1994.

    4. Another nerd test, this one called The Nerdity Test:

    THE NERDITY TEST
    Version 5.x.cubed.minus.3.x.all.divided.by.2
    10 December, 1993
    HTML-Version: 7 May, 1996
    CGI-Enabled: 13 March, 1998
    JavaScript-Enabled: 25 October, 2000

    This one looks pretty good, and gets extra points for the version number. However, I didn’t finish taking the test due to time constraints. (Also, when I clicked on the “credits” link for one of the questions, I accidentally cleared out my answers for the test at the point, and didn’t want to go back.)

    5. Blogthings had a pretty lame one. I’m not convinced by my results, even though the “nerd” percentage is somewhat similar to the previous test score. But come on. “no one would ever call you a nerd”? Oh, how wrong can they be:

    You Are 24% Nerdy

    You’re a little nerdy, but no one would ever call you a nerd.
    You sometimes get into nerdy things, but only after they’ve become a part of mainstream culture.

    6. To balance things out, we have a dork quiz:
    This one is not interactive, but the questions do look fun, like:

    9. Who do you most closely identify with?
    a) Kermit.
    b) Gonzo.
    c) Scooter.

    7. I’m actually most partial to the OKcupid Nerd? Geek? or Dork? test
    I like it that this considers nerd, geek and dork to be dimensions, and helps you to place yourself on those axes. This one has some pretty funny questions, like:

    When you encounter something you don’t know, do you often try to find out what it is? (Like an unknown word in a dictionary or event in an encyclopedia.)

    Wait a second-there are people who would answer “no” to this question? I’ve often wished I had access to imdb while watching movies in a theater…

    Do you enjoy quoting books/movies/tv shows, etc. in your conversations/letters/emails?

    (Possibly.)

    This test also claims to give a score about how you ranked on the three variable (nerdiness, geekosity and dork points) compared to others of your age and gender. Note that my score shows higher than 99% for all three. Which I thought was interesting. So I was curious about how I’d score if I were a male. Still got the same. So I actually tried retaking the test from a nearly totally different persona, a sort of suave but kinda dumb athletic type. And still, I get over 99% on the three variables. This suggests to me that a) this feature is probably broken, and these levels are probably not actually a reflection of the test-taker demographics b) I am really a nerd, geek and dork to follow up on this and c) I really should be getting back to the work I need to be doing and stop taking these damn tests.






    , you’re now logged in!


    Below you’ll find your test result. After, continue on to your
    homescreen to discover what we’re about.







    Modern, Cool Nerd

    78 % Nerd, 65% Geek, 47% Dork

    For The Record:

    A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.

    A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.

    A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

    You scored better than half in Nerd and Geek, earning you the title of: Modern, Cool Nerd.

    Nerds didn’t use to be cool, but in the 90’s that all changed. It used to be that, if you were a computer expert, you had to wear plaid or a pocket protector or suspenders or something that announced to the world that you couldn’t quite fit in. Not anymore. Now, the intelligent and geeky have eked out for themselves a modicum of respect at the very least, and “geek is chic.” The Modern, Cool Nerd is intelligent, knowledgable and always the person to call in a crisis (needing computer advice/an arcane bit of trivia knowledge). They are the one you want as your lifeline in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (or the one up there, winning the million bucks)!

    Congratulations!

    Thanks Again! — THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST






    My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:
    free online datingfree online dating
    		You scored higher than 99% on nerdiness
    free online datingfree online dating
    		You scored higher than 99% on geekosity
    free online datingfree online dating
    		You scored higher than 99% on dork points

    Link: The Nerd? Geek? or Dork? Test written by donathos on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

    used

    Last night I signed up for YouTube, and posted a video there for the first time ever. (Can you blame me?) When I went to sign up, and selected my user name, I got a message saying that the user name was already taken. My first thought was that I must have already signed up for YouTube, and just forgotten about it. So I tried my various passwords. No go. So maybe I used a different password that I’ve forgotten about. So I hit the button for “forgot password,” and got the message that an email with my password would be sent to my email address. So I waited. For my email. No email. NO EMAIL!

    Do you realize what this means? Somebody out there signed up for a YouTube account with my name. MY NAME! Mine! For the first time ever, and I mean ever, I was faced with having to make a second choice. It was a bit of a shock. I ended up choosing alejna99. In part because I’m amused by the idea of having 99 alejnas signing up before me.

    I asked for it

    There’s a thing going around whereby folks ask each other questions, and then write some answers. In response to an offer to spread this thing, I requested questions, and The Amazing KC from Where’s My Cape? answered with some questions. Below I’ve answered the questions. Perhaps you will question my answers.

    1. How did you get to live in rural Massachusetts? Is there anywhere else in the country you’d like to live?

    We moved up to Massachusetts from Providence once we’d both finished college. John had been working in Massachusetts for several years already while in school, and during time off from school. We started off in a somewhat more suburban area, in a town next to the one where John worked. Then, when it was time to buy a house, we couldn’t find anything we liked in our price range close to Boston. (Things were run-down, on very busy streets with no yards, or hideous 70s split levels with flood-damaged basements.) We kept looking further and farther out. Our realtor was from this town, and tolds us of the charms and history of the small town. He encouraged us to look at houses here. When we did, we suddenly could afford nice houses. With yards and trees. It was the trees that got me. We live in the woods. It’s quiet. The air is clean. The snow stays white as snow until it melts.

    I love the physical location of our house, but I wish we could be closer to civilization. Most of my friends live closer to Boston, and I love the city. I love the culture, the food, the activities. Museums, restaurants, indie movie theaters, concerts. I love the mixture of cultures and ethnicities. I’d love for Phoebe to go to school in a city. And I know that I could do more in the city. I would love to do away with this commute, which eats up time and energy, and keeps me from doing things I’d like to do.

    My sister is always trying to get me to move back to California, but I’m resistant. For one thing, I’ve become attached to this area, have a lot of friends around. For another, I like seasons. I actually like winter. Plus it’s so crowded out in the Bay Area, where she lives. And so expensive. (I know, Boston is crowded and expensive, too.) Then again, my mother lives out in California now, too…it would be nice to be close to family.

    2. You’ve graced the cover of American Hovel Magazine. What’s another magazine you would like to be on the cover on and what would be story about?

    So you’ve seen the latest AHM? That’s right, you probably have a subscription.

    You know, I don’t really know too many magazines. I don’t really read them. So I’d have to go for something generic or fictitious. Maybe a general news magazine. Time or Newsweek or some such. Or maybe Amazing Stuff Quarterly. I’d like it to be for some accomplishment I’ve done. Some unspecified achievement. Definitely for an intellectual achievement. Maybe something language oriented, or for some ingenious solution I’ve come up with that will address social issues or improve the quality of life of some group of people. I’d like it to be about “the woman who revolutionized X” or “who initiated Y” or “who solved Z.” (I’d really rather not be the person “who slept with X” or “who survived Y disaster.” I wouldn’t even care to be the one “who dazzled Z audience.”)

    3. What are the top 3 things you want to accomplish over the next 10 years?

    1. Get the PhD.
    2. hmm…
    3. well….

    Um…It’s hard for me to come up with a list beyond that. Continued family development will be involved. There will need to be some sort of job at the end of grad school. I have lots of activities I’d like to get back to and/or develop further, but I don’t have specific goals. I mean, take the violin. I want to keep learning, but there is no specific target for how much or how good I’d like to get. I’d like to get back to painting, jewelry-making, martial arts. I’d like to get back to some sort of volunteer work. I’d like to travel. How odd to realize that my goals are overall somewhat vague right now. Hmm…

    4. You seem to like pants. If you were a pair of pants, what kind would you be (details please)?

    Ah, yes. Pants. I am actually fairly ambivalent about pants. I like pants. The word, more than the article of clothing. I like to say “pants.” Pants are functional, and more practical to wear than dresses. (I do like dresses and skirts. My tastes can be quite girly in spite of my tendencies to wear men’s clothing.) I actually hate shopping for pants. I shop the sale racks, and buy what fits, as long as it’s fairly plain. Jeans are comfy, but I wouldn’t consider myself to be denim. So, if I were to be a pair of pants, I’d probably be made of some sort of woven cotton blend, durable yet soft. I’d need to have pockets, because it’s important to have a place to put stuff. (I’m not a purse person.) Deep pockets. I’d have simple lines, and hopefully wouldn’t be falling down, tripping the wearer, or exposing the butt crack. I’d be fairly fitted, not actually tight, not really baggy, hopefully flattering to the butt, even for butts of varying sizes or shapes. I’d be loose enough or stretchy enough that the wearer could sit cross-legged comfortably on the floor.

    I’d be of a style that wouldn’t reflect the latest fashions, whatever they may be, so I wouldn’t look too dated when you’d wear me years after you bought me. I’d be machine washable, tumble dry low. But if you wanted to line-dry me, I’d be okay with that. I’d be made in a dark color like black or charcoal gray, in part so I’d be stain-resistant, or at least forgiving of stains. (I know things can get messy.) I’d be fairly wrinkle-resistant, so that I’d be good to pack or wear on a trip. I probably wouldn’t be totally wrinkle-free, but you certainly wouldn’t need to iron me. I would be moderately priced, accessible, so that any who wanted to wear me could.

    5. You are a superhero. What are your superpowers? What is your Kryptonite? Who is your arch villian?

    You’re trying to trick me! You’ve discovered my secret identity!

    This is actually a question that I’ve enjoyed playing with since childhood. (I remember daydreaming about being a superhero in kindergarden.) I’d definitely have the power of flight. Telekinesis would be handy. I’d also like to be skillful at some martial art. A showy one. Plus I would have the power to befuddle my enemies with my superior wit. Or perhaps render them helpless with laughter. (Laughing due to my wit, not my clumsiness…But hey, whatever works.)

    My Kryptonite? Uncomfortable shoes? No stilettos or pointy toes for me. Or some sort of dissonant or excessive noise. I can’t stand hearing more than one form of music at the same time.

    My arch villain? That’s a tricky one. I don’t really like having enemies. They’d have to be bizarre. Absurd. I like Casanova Frankenstein from Mystery Men.

    ……..

    Okay, there are my answers. So I guess I should continue this thing by offering to give questions to anyone who’s up for being asked. Answer, and you shall be asked.

    [Note: jenny of baggage carousel 4 and ericalee of something bookish and bluegrass in my pocket have both requested questions. You can see jenny’s answers, and follow along with those who in turn asked her for questions. Stay tuned for ericalee’s answers…]

    Choose an identity

    “Choose an identity”choose_identity.jpg

    Those are the words you get when you’re going to leave a comment on a Blogger blog. And for some reason they struck me tonight. So much of what we do is about choosing an identity, defining an identity, constructing an identity…

    If only it were always as easy as checking a box, clicking a button.

    I keep meaning to write my “about” page. But I keep hesitating. It’s so hard to choose just a few terms to define myself. What parts of me do I want to present? What roles? What truths? What culturally-defined fictions? What list of quirks? And what pants will I be wearing?

    Who the hell do I think I am?

    Who the hell do I want you to think I am?

    Maybe I’ll just reuse this identity. At least she sees a lot of action.

    overload…overtired…overdue

    I’m going through one of those overload times again. I’m having trouble fitting everything together. While I have massively more time now than I did, say, a year ago, I am still constantly feeling like I don’t have nearly enough time. Which leads me to stay up too late. Which leads me to not get enough sleep. Which leads me to stumble around like a zombie much of the day. Once Phoebe goes to bed, I putter around for a bit before digging in to my work. Then I end up realizing how late it is, and how little I’ve gotten done, so I stay up later. Often in a half-panicked state. Overall, my efficiency is not high these days. I’ve been spending a lot of time working and doing work, but the quantity of actual work I achieve keeps falling short of my expectations.

    And due to a variety of factors, not the least of which is my own idiocy, I did not finish an assignment that was due for my class last night. Not because I hadn’t put time into it. Not even because I put off starting it. But because I sank a lot of time into learning stuff that was not actually central to the assignment. And then in the last push to finish, I experienced some technical difficulties. Which set me back a few hours.

    At around 1:00 Sunday night (or Monday morning, if you prefer), I realized that even though I could hypothetically finish the write-up within an hour or two, I just couldn’t manage to push myself any more. And I realized that I would be putting my health and safety at risk to pull an all-nighter. I’m too old to push myself that way, and driving to class on no sleep would have been irresponsible.

    So I decided to ask for an extension. Even though it probably means getting some points off, possibly even a lot of points. But I’ll take my lumps. Lord knows somebody needs to knock some sense into me.

    I need to adjust my expectations. It really doesn’t matter in the slightest what grade I get in this class I’m taking. By that, I mean, it wouldn’t matter in the slightest if I don’t get an A. Maybe it would even be good for me. This perfectionism thing is pretty counter-productive. I really need to get over it.

    18 of my favorite books

    YTSL of Webs of Significance has (more-or-less) tagged me with a meme, by way of emails suggesting that I write about one (or more) of the (two so far) meme-related topics she’s posted on. One of the posts is on the book she couldn’t live without, inspired in part by a survey asking for people to list the 10 books they could not live without and a resulting list of the top 10 most frequently listed books. (The other meme-tagged post she’s written is called “wannabe“, which is about things she’s been and things she’s wanted to be. I may get around to this at some point, too.)

    Because I don’t have a single favorite book, I’ll take some liberties with the meme concept, and write a list of my own favorites. The number of which will be determined when I get to the end of the list. And then hopefully I’ll get around to writing about the books in more detail. And because I have trouble determining which is my all-time favorite, I have not ranked them. Instead, I’m listing the books here roughly in the order in which I first encountered them. My list is in part selected to get a cross-section of the genres I enjoy reading, or phases I went through. I haven’t included any picture books, although that is a category of book that is very near and dear to my heart. Several of the books I list are meant to be representative of various works of that author, or a series by that author.

    Some of my all-time favorite books

    1. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, by C. S. Lewis

      2. a children’s fantasy, and my favorite of the Narnia series (U.K.)

    2. The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster

      3. a silly children’s fantasy that plays with words (U.S.)

    3. The Shadow of the Moon, by M. M. Kaye

      4. a historic novel of the British in India with a bit of romance flavor (U.K.)

    4. The Peacock Spring, by Rumer Godden

      5. another British in India novel, but a more modern coming-of-age novel, by one of my all-time favorite authors (U.K.)

    5. Tess of the D’Urbervilles, by Thomas Hardy

      6. 19th century British Literature (U.K.)

    6. Emma, by Jane Austen

      7. witty 19th century British literature (U.K.)

    7. The Kitchen God’s Wife, by Amy Tan

      8. a novel of family, immigration and the meeting of cultures (U.S.)

    8. A Suitable Boy, by Vikram Seth

      9. a coming of age Indian novel (India)

    9. Winterdance, by Gary Paulsen

      10. a memoir featuring dogs (U.S.)

    10. Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

      11. a fun, funny work of science fiction (U.K.)

    11. Startide Rising, by David Brin

      12. a futuristic science fiction novel featuring talking dolphins, part of the Uplift series (U.S.)

    12. A Pale View of Hills, by Kazuo Ishiguro

      13. a poetic and almost surreal novel of memory, family and Japan (U.K.)

    13. The Witching Hour, by Anne Rice

      14. a novel of the supernatural, representing my Anne Rice phase (U.S.)

    14. The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin

      15. a science fiction novel about social structure (U.S.)

    15. Bellwether, by Connie Willis

      16. a novel about fads by a favorite science fiction author, but this one’s more social scientist fiction (U.S.)

    16. Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

      17. a tale retold, about the Wicked Witch of the West from the Wizard of Oz (U.S.)

    17. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver

      18. a novel of family, the meeting of cultures and living in Africa (U.S.)

    18. Thus was Adonis Murdered, by Sarah Caudwell

      19. one of only four books ever written by this author, a slightly racy, slightly academic, and very witty mystery and comedy of manners (U.K.)

    Okay. So I ended up with 18. Which is a good number. For a start.

    And as far as the meme business goes, I’ll try my hand at tagging some folks that I know to be book-oriented. Because I’d be interested in seeing your lists. Lists of whatever number you’d like to write. Perhaps within the range of 1-20. Erica, what’s your list? bs/Beckanon? jenny? John? Anyone else want to play?