random. really.

During an idle moment this morning while cruising Pinterest, I saw a photo with a link to a blog that offered 30 ideas for conversation while on a date, a road trip, during a "getting to know you" exercise, and so on. Since we have a road trip in our future, I thought it would be fun to check it out, so check it out I did. For the record, I'm planning to bring most of this list along on the aforementioned trip (for better or worse, we are already quite familiar with the subject matter of some of these ideas). In the meantime, it offers some fodder for blogging. Since I am a sporadic blogger these days I'll take any help I can get to prompt an entry here on reverent irreverence.

The first one on the list is to generate another list. Twenty random things about myself.

Oddly (I suppose), my first reaction to doing that here was, "but that makes it all about me." And then I had a V-8 moment and considered that this is my blog, after all, so this is a natural place to write about me. Truth be told, though, as much as I have concerns about my own life, and although I certainly share what goes on in my life, I prefer that my reflections here be about the broader world. It is in that broader world where we find points of intersection and commonality with others, and it is interaction with those others that give texture and richness to our lives.

Today, however, I'm going to yield to some randomness. Here goes.

1) I have an extra vertebrae in my spine. How 'bout that! If you're interested, the interloper is in the cervical portion of my spine.
2) My favorite flavor of ice cream is mocha chip (or any variation on what that might be called).
3) I have a crescent-shaped scar on my right cheek where a dog bit me when I was 11.
4) As of today I have 219 pins on my Sheep board on Pinterest. That happens to be the greatest number of pins of any of my 57 boards. (The runner-up is stuff related to the home, with 210).
5) I don't have a favorite color.
6) When I was 14 I spent six weeks living with cousins in Lausanne, Switzerland. It was there that I fell in love with French.
7) I have been on a hot air balloon ride.

8) My first job was working in a bakery. Believe it or not, I lost weight working there.
9) I was the costume designer for a production of "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off" while in college.
10) It always amuses me when I look at a digital clock and the time is my birthday (5:13). It happens more often than you would think!
11) I completed or had waived all my high school graduation requirements by the end of the fall semester, senior year. It amazes me still that my parents didn't object to me finishing early.
12) I have a title picked out for the Great American Novel I will probably never write. I've written the first line, know the name of the main character, and have a clear sense of what I want this book to be about. All I lack is a real plot.
13) I play the recorder.
14) During what would have been the spring semester of my senior year in high school I took a calligraphy course at a local community college.
15) When I was in fifth grade I set a school record for girls in the long jump. I think it was 19 feet and change. No doubt that record has long since been broken (given what a superior athlete I am not!).

By the way, that's not me. Bet you couldn't tell.

16) In spite of the fact that I am a lousy housekeeper I actually like to clean the house. It's just that there are a hundred other things I would rather do.
17) I make great corn chowder.
18) Christmas is my favorite holiday
19) Once upon a time I sang in the chorus of a production of "Applause!"
20) When Geraldine Ferraro was candidate for VP I scored the job of driver in her motorcade when she visited Connecticut.

So, what's random about you today?