Bread
One of Those Surveys
JULIE, 25 RANDOM FACTS, FEBRUARY 1, 2009
1. I am obsessively private about my life, to point at which I really debated if I could fill out one of these things… to the point at which people sometimes think I am either really snobby or too cool for school. I'm not too cool for school, I hated school and mostly think of myself as a big dork.
2. I have a weird and slightly obsessive fascination with logic puzzles. I work them all the time, they are my fifteen minute time wasting preference. I especially work them at night before I go to bed to wind down - something about determining the breakfast food, last name, job, street name and spouse of six random strangers based on four scant clues is oddly calming.
3. I live in the 70s. I love 70s music, my sense of fashion is sort of 70s casual, politically I identify most strongly with first wave feminists, and I still buy in to late sixties early seventies ideals about peace and universal acceptance/tolerance.
4. I go back and forth between really wanting to start a family and worrying that I am far too nutty about my privacy to deal with kids and their lack of boundaries. I also have no desire to be pregnant, ever.
5. I became a vegetarian when I was 12 years old after watching a video in my health class about how hot dogs were made. The video started with little pigs oinking in a field and tracked them through a slaughterhouse all the way until they were hot dogs in a grocery store shelf. I was particularly traumatized by a picture of a stack of skinned pig snouts. I never ate meat again after that day, and eventually phased out seafood. I could probably be a vegan if it weren't for cheese.
6. I am forever fighting a losing battle against cat hair. I go through periods where I am obsessive, and will stand and pluck every last hair off my clothes in the hallway outside my door before I go out, and then periods when I give up and everything I own is coated in a sheen of cat hair. During those times, I am like Pigpen from the Peanuts, and anyone standing near me is probably also coated in cat hair, too.
7. My favorite song in the universe is “This Will Be Our Year” by the Zombies LISTEN.
My second favorite song is a tie between the album version of “Somebody to Love” by Queen from A Day at the Races LISTEN,
...and “Jesus Was A Crossmaker” by Judee Sill LISTEN
8. I supported Hillary, and voted for Obama grudgingly.
9. I came out when I was 19, but I always knew I was a lesbian. My very first crush I remember having, ever, was on Linda Carter/Wonder Woman. I remember having little fantasies that she was the damsel in distress and I swooped in and rescued her (telling, yes?). Years later, in my twenties, I stood next to her at a pharmacy counter in Cleveland. She smelled HORRIBLE. She was wearing some kind of awful perfume, and my attraction to her was instantly, permanently killed.
10. My first real NYC apartment that was mine was a ramshackle building in a Hasidic neighborhood in Williamsburg. My landlord was a complete slumlord; the building was pretty much made of paper and tar and if you kicked it too hard, it probably would have fallen over. It had an amazing view of the Manhattan skyline, and you could clearly see the Empire State Building out of the kitchen windows - on holidays my friends and I would take to the roof for amazing fireworks over the city. Some of my fondest New York memories are intertwined with that apartment.
11. When I first moved to the city, to pick up extra money I worked as a cat sitter for an upscale pet sitting company on the Upper East Side. I got paid ridiculous money to feed designer cat food and Perrier water to rich people’s cats. Every week my boss would give me a set of keys to let myself into various client’s apartments daily and care for their pets. I got to see firsthand the outrageous displays of wealth the upper 1% enjoy. Among my clients were Justine Bateman, Jennifer Tilly and Munch from Law and Order SVU.
12. I am ridiculously verbose. I can’t start talking or write a sentence without turning it into 10 minutes or 400 words (obviously). This is not because I can’t get enough of my own voice, but because I have an irrational fear of not being understood or making my point plainly enough and feel I have to explain myself six ways to Sunday.
13. The very first place I lived when I moved to NYC was an apartment share in Brooklyn. It was a one bedroom occupied by a Turkish couple in their twenties. I rented the bedroom and they moved into the living room. They rented to me for extra money, and because Serder, the husband, wanted an American in the home to speak English to his wife regularly to help her learn. Serder turned out to be a batterer. Although he never attacked me, he became threatening the second time I called the police as I heard him beating his wife on the other side of my bedroom door. I moved out abruptly after only 6 weeks there. Sadly, I was never able to really talk with his wife about the battery due to the language barrier between us.
14. I have an obsessive personality. Whenever I get a new interest, I go crazy researching and learning and gathering and collecting anything to do with it and then eat, sleep and breathe it for a short time until I burn out in boredom. Fortunately, the things I get interested in are mostly nerdy – board games, television shows, books. Most recent geek-outs include my new Nintendo Wii (Wii Sports and We Ski ROCK) and the Twilight books, because they are Just. So. Ridiculous. I’ve been playing “horrify the Twilight noob” with all my friends for three weeks now.
15. I love food. I love cooking, and eating, and talking about food, and reading food blogs and trading recipes. My favorite recreational thing to do is invite friends over and cook for them.
16. I am nearly deaf in my right ear. There is a 78% hearing loss due to deterioration from a childhood accident involving a pair of scissors during a haircut. I hear mid-range tones, but have a very difficult time hearing low tones like whispering, mumbling or soft volume bass notes.
17. I love interior decorating, but can never seem to keep my apartment from looking like a college dorm room. I can’t afford to buy furniture that matches my taste, so I have picked up things from craigslist here and there over the years creating a hodgepodge of styles that lack cohesion. Decorating magazines of any kind are my apartment porn.
18. I have secret fantasies about becoming a street artist in the vein of Banksy or Keith Haring. Wooster Collective is one of my favorite blogs, and I taught myself wheat-pasting a few months ago. I’m waiting for the nerve to go out on my first mission. I want to spread love with my art.
19. I love being alone; I enjoy my own company and am happiest by myself, geeking out over this or that project and feeding my brain.
20. I lack ambition, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. In the early stages of my career, I always felt frustrated that I didn’t have more autonomy, that I was smarter and could do a better job than my supervisors, and I felt restless. As I get older, I sometimes feel just fine being a worker bee, doing what I need to do to earn a living and basking in my free time everywhere else. I suppose another way of saying that is I work to live instead of live to work The goals I have now all center around my art and creativity. Over the last year I have made choices that take me closer to those and further from career ambition, and I’ve been happier than ever.
21. I love older women, and I look forward to being in my 40s. Over the years, I have known so many amazing women and mentors in their 40s and 50s; women who create peace and radiate calm and contentment. I think that kind of self assuredness can only come with age. I have taken great strides to achieve this through my 30s, but I think 40 will feel like an old friend when I meet it.
22. I hate drama in my personal life, and pretty much in general. I can often be heard telling people something is “not a big deal.” My mom frequently asks me if ANYTHING is a big deal in my universe. I think not really. It takes a lot to take me out of my comfort zone and generally laid back state. I can’t remember the last time I got really upset about something in my personal life.
23. My favorite tv show of all time is the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I’m heartbroken that Fox discontinued the DVD box sets after season 4.
24. I really, really want to be a homeowner. I go back and forth between wanting to buy and renovate a rambling three family Victorian in Ditmas Park (Brooklyn) or buy and trick out a loft in Williamsburg (also Brooklyn).
25. My favorite qualities in people are kindness, directness and intellect. ¶ 5:01 PM 0 comments
Sunday, February 01, 2009
So, I have had about 10 people pelt me with this survey, in which you're supposed to write 25 random things about yourself. It was harder than I thought...JULIE, 25 RANDOM FACTS, FEBRUARY 1, 2009
1. I am obsessively private about my life, to point at which I really debated if I could fill out one of these things… to the point at which people sometimes think I am either really snobby or too cool for school. I'm not too cool for school, I hated school and mostly think of myself as a big dork.
2. I have a weird and slightly obsessive fascination with logic puzzles. I work them all the time, they are my fifteen minute time wasting preference. I especially work them at night before I go to bed to wind down - something about determining the breakfast food, last name, job, street name and spouse of six random strangers based on four scant clues is oddly calming.
3. I live in the 70s. I love 70s music, my sense of fashion is sort of 70s casual, politically I identify most strongly with first wave feminists, and I still buy in to late sixties early seventies ideals about peace and universal acceptance/tolerance.
4. I go back and forth between really wanting to start a family and worrying that I am far too nutty about my privacy to deal with kids and their lack of boundaries. I also have no desire to be pregnant, ever.
5. I became a vegetarian when I was 12 years old after watching a video in my health class about how hot dogs were made. The video started with little pigs oinking in a field and tracked them through a slaughterhouse all the way until they were hot dogs in a grocery store shelf. I was particularly traumatized by a picture of a stack of skinned pig snouts. I never ate meat again after that day, and eventually phased out seafood. I could probably be a vegan if it weren't for cheese.
6. I am forever fighting a losing battle against cat hair. I go through periods where I am obsessive, and will stand and pluck every last hair off my clothes in the hallway outside my door before I go out, and then periods when I give up and everything I own is coated in a sheen of cat hair. During those times, I am like Pigpen from the Peanuts, and anyone standing near me is probably also coated in cat hair, too.
7. My favorite song in the universe is “This Will Be Our Year” by the Zombies LISTEN.
My second favorite song is a tie between the album version of “Somebody to Love” by Queen from A Day at the Races LISTEN,
...and “Jesus Was A Crossmaker” by Judee Sill LISTEN
8. I supported Hillary, and voted for Obama grudgingly.
9. I came out when I was 19, but I always knew I was a lesbian. My very first crush I remember having, ever, was on Linda Carter/Wonder Woman. I remember having little fantasies that she was the damsel in distress and I swooped in and rescued her (telling, yes?). Years later, in my twenties, I stood next to her at a pharmacy counter in Cleveland. She smelled HORRIBLE. She was wearing some kind of awful perfume, and my attraction to her was instantly, permanently killed.
10. My first real NYC apartment that was mine was a ramshackle building in a Hasidic neighborhood in Williamsburg. My landlord was a complete slumlord; the building was pretty much made of paper and tar and if you kicked it too hard, it probably would have fallen over. It had an amazing view of the Manhattan skyline, and you could clearly see the Empire State Building out of the kitchen windows - on holidays my friends and I would take to the roof for amazing fireworks over the city. Some of my fondest New York memories are intertwined with that apartment.
11. When I first moved to the city, to pick up extra money I worked as a cat sitter for an upscale pet sitting company on the Upper East Side. I got paid ridiculous money to feed designer cat food and Perrier water to rich people’s cats. Every week my boss would give me a set of keys to let myself into various client’s apartments daily and care for their pets. I got to see firsthand the outrageous displays of wealth the upper 1% enjoy. Among my clients were Justine Bateman, Jennifer Tilly and Munch from Law and Order SVU.
12. I am ridiculously verbose. I can’t start talking or write a sentence without turning it into 10 minutes or 400 words (obviously). This is not because I can’t get enough of my own voice, but because I have an irrational fear of not being understood or making my point plainly enough and feel I have to explain myself six ways to Sunday.
13. The very first place I lived when I moved to NYC was an apartment share in Brooklyn. It was a one bedroom occupied by a Turkish couple in their twenties. I rented the bedroom and they moved into the living room. They rented to me for extra money, and because Serder, the husband, wanted an American in the home to speak English to his wife regularly to help her learn. Serder turned out to be a batterer. Although he never attacked me, he became threatening the second time I called the police as I heard him beating his wife on the other side of my bedroom door. I moved out abruptly after only 6 weeks there. Sadly, I was never able to really talk with his wife about the battery due to the language barrier between us.
14. I have an obsessive personality. Whenever I get a new interest, I go crazy researching and learning and gathering and collecting anything to do with it and then eat, sleep and breathe it for a short time until I burn out in boredom. Fortunately, the things I get interested in are mostly nerdy – board games, television shows, books. Most recent geek-outs include my new Nintendo Wii (Wii Sports and We Ski ROCK) and the Twilight books, because they are Just. So. Ridiculous. I’ve been playing “horrify the Twilight noob” with all my friends for three weeks now.
15. I love food. I love cooking, and eating, and talking about food, and reading food blogs and trading recipes. My favorite recreational thing to do is invite friends over and cook for them.
16. I am nearly deaf in my right ear. There is a 78% hearing loss due to deterioration from a childhood accident involving a pair of scissors during a haircut. I hear mid-range tones, but have a very difficult time hearing low tones like whispering, mumbling or soft volume bass notes.
17. I love interior decorating, but can never seem to keep my apartment from looking like a college dorm room. I can’t afford to buy furniture that matches my taste, so I have picked up things from craigslist here and there over the years creating a hodgepodge of styles that lack cohesion. Decorating magazines of any kind are my apartment porn.
18. I have secret fantasies about becoming a street artist in the vein of Banksy or Keith Haring. Wooster Collective is one of my favorite blogs, and I taught myself wheat-pasting a few months ago. I’m waiting for the nerve to go out on my first mission. I want to spread love with my art.
19. I love being alone; I enjoy my own company and am happiest by myself, geeking out over this or that project and feeding my brain.
20. I lack ambition, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. In the early stages of my career, I always felt frustrated that I didn’t have more autonomy, that I was smarter and could do a better job than my supervisors, and I felt restless. As I get older, I sometimes feel just fine being a worker bee, doing what I need to do to earn a living and basking in my free time everywhere else. I suppose another way of saying that is I work to live instead of live to work The goals I have now all center around my art and creativity. Over the last year I have made choices that take me closer to those and further from career ambition, and I’ve been happier than ever.
21. I love older women, and I look forward to being in my 40s. Over the years, I have known so many amazing women and mentors in their 40s and 50s; women who create peace and radiate calm and contentment. I think that kind of self assuredness can only come with age. I have taken great strides to achieve this through my 30s, but I think 40 will feel like an old friend when I meet it.
22. I hate drama in my personal life, and pretty much in general. I can often be heard telling people something is “not a big deal.” My mom frequently asks me if ANYTHING is a big deal in my universe. I think not really. It takes a lot to take me out of my comfort zone and generally laid back state. I can’t remember the last time I got really upset about something in my personal life.
23. My favorite tv show of all time is the Mary Tyler Moore Show. I’m heartbroken that Fox discontinued the DVD box sets after season 4.
24. I really, really want to be a homeowner. I go back and forth between wanting to buy and renovate a rambling three family Victorian in Ditmas Park (Brooklyn) or buy and trick out a loft in Williamsburg (also Brooklyn).
25. My favorite qualities in people are kindness, directness and intellect. ¶ 5:01 PM 0 comments
