I honestly thought I had avoided this one - several of the blogs I read had been caught up in it, but I had not received the dreaded instruction. Until ten minutes ago. Drat.
Okay… here’s the instructions, should I wish to accept them;
Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.
The person who tagged me added the following, which I thought was excellent…
If I tag you it means….you tagged me and I feel I should warn you of your impending doom or I am choosing to share with you a few of my quirks, issues, ramblings without the need for you to write your own list. I would also like to add to the list things that really get on my nerves because again…..you might need to be warned of your impending doom.
Here goes… 25 random things, facts, habits or goals;
- I just got blocked on Twitter by Hugh MacLeod (very good cartoonist), after questioning a deliberately misleading claim he made that Michael Arrington was leaving TechCrunch. He then announced my non existence in his world to me before responding to others with the information I gave him. I really do wonder about some people… 2. Given the choice, I would much rather be doing something creative - either web design or photographing people - than software development. The unfortunate snag is that I’m quite good at software development. Perhaps it’s to do with the creative mind. Who knows. 3. I am a “Pisces”, which means nothing. I do fit many of the stereotypes that star gazing idiots would wrap around my character if given half the chance though. I tend to think people who take notice of the astrology bit in the newspaper are idiots. 4. I am partially red green colour blind. Quite how I passed art at college without the teachers figuring it out is anybody’s guess. Did you know that very few women are colour blind? 5. I’m having trouble coming up with any more random things. No doubt I’ll hit a rich vein of form in a moment and trot out more than I can write down. Hopefully. Ah - here’s one - I am growing more and more cynical as I get older. I guess complaining that I cannot think of any more things to write in this meme is symptomatic. 6. I met my better half on the internet, back when it was very rare to do so (sealing my geek credentials in doing so, I guess). We met for the first time in the “Cock and Camel” in Oxford in July 2000 one Sunday lunchtime. I can still remember her looking up at me as I walked in. 7. My oldest friend is a girl I went to primary school with, and who I lost touch with for about twenty years. Facebook threw us back together recently, to our great delight, and we collectively filled the gaps in our memories of the infant playground. 8. One of my closest friends is an amazing woman who lives on the other side of the world, and who I’ve only met twice. A modern friendship perhaps? She is the most kind person I know, the most careful with her words, and provides a welcome relief from the world I inhabit when I most need it. 9. My other closest friend lives about 300 miles away, and continually amazes me with her industriousness, her optimism (sometimes in the face of the most daunting situations), and the amazing job she continues to do bringing up her daughters. 10. I never expected to get married. I always ended up being everybody’s best friend. It was bloody annoying actually. 11. I regret losing touch with somebody I shared a couple of mad years of my life with. I don’t know what happened to her - we parted on bad terms. I see the back of her head in crowds from time to time, and wonder where she is, if she’s okay - how her life turned out. 12. I once wrote a ridiculous rant of a blog post about a colleague who was having a bad day (and had a “falling down moment”), and nearly lost a fantastic friend in the process. I have always regretted it, but it also taught me a lesson about pausing before opening my big fat mouth. 13. In the past history of my online writing activities, I expressed my thoughts far more openly and directly than I do now - the arrival of children in our lives has tempered the thoughts that leave my fingers quite dramatically. 14. I cannot have children - or at least, the chances of it happening are astronomically small - due to a rare genetic fault in my makeup. I won’t bore you with the micro-biological reason. Lets just say it took an electron microscope to figure out what was wrong. 15. We adopted three children in February last year, and have survived one whole year of being a family of five! (hooray for us). In the early days I wrote a lot about our experiences, struggles, observations and thoughts. I try not to so much any more for fear of inducing narcolepsy. 16. I think too much, and end up not interjecting into conversations when I might have, and then the conversation has moved on, and the really rather clever thing I was going to say is no longer relevant - so I don’t say it. 17. I am a terrible people watcher. People by turns amuse me, interest me, and annoy me. I wish I had enough confidence to photograph strangers in the street - to share the interesting people I notice with others. 18. I like drawing people, but hardly ever do it. I also love looking at paintings and drawings of people, and would have a house full of such artwork and photographs - only nobody else seems to share my fascination. 19. The giggling and laughter of children completely undoes me. Apparently I have always been “great with kids” - able to play on their level. Grown ups probably think I’m an idiot - unless they are a parent of course, and they recognise the brilliance of the idiot before them (and recognise the opportunity to have a break while I wear the children out). 20. I cry at the movies, but am surprisingly unaffected by the real world. Perhaps if the real world had popcorn and a sweeping soundtrack, I might be different. 21. Figure this one out - I am stronger than my skeletal frame allows me to be. First sign of this was years ago while out training on a mountain bike, and I managed to hurt my foot while putting the power down on the pedals. I then dislocated my knee many years later in a freak accident that exposed the whole problem - my joints are more flexible than they should be. podiatrist (foot doctor) once laughed when testing to see how much flexion I had in my ankles. 22. I do not have an addictive part to my makeup - I can take or leave just about anything. I do drink too much coffee though. Probably. I get headaches sometimes if I don’t drink any for a few days. That’s probably normal though right, and proves I shouldn’t drink it in the first place? 23. I don’t appreciate good food at all (although I do think it tastes nice). I am continually told off for treating food like fuel. Teaching the kids to chew their food properly is difficult when Dad is busy shoving his food in like a machine. 24. I am slowly becoming obsessive compulsive about being tidy and organised. It’s not just about making lists of things to do either - it’s washing up, tidying desks, putting things in orderly piles… I know I’m getting worse… this is a good thing though, right? (especially as my other half is quite possibly the most chaotic/messy person in the known universe). 25. I am shocked, stunned and amazed that I thought of 25 random things to write down, and hopefully they are all inconsequential, forgettable, and won’t come back to haunt me in however many years time.
There. Done it. Now I have to land this on 25 other people. Start ducking right now.