[Meme] 5 random facts about yourself
Nov. 12th, 2013 02:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingTumblr meme thing, via othercat2: After you receive this, you must share 5 random facts about yourself and then copy and send to your ten fave followers (・ω・) <33
I am bad at the chain aspect of memes, so I’ll just share random facts and if anyone wants to follow suit, please feel free to consider yourself tagged. *shrug*
1. When I was in first grade, my class did a project where each student collected 100 copies of a single item. Any item we wanted. It could be 100 socks, 100 photographs, 100 kazoos, whatever. The due date happened to be the day before my birthday, so I (or technically, my parents) bought 100 little birthday candles. And then we had a snow day, so the due date got moved to my actual birthday and I was SO PLEASED by that.
2. Relatedly, my teacher’s husband brought in 100 paperclips as part of that project. He had them strung in chains of ten and hung from a little spinning doohickey that I think was meant to dry nylon stockings. I thought that was incredibly cool, and from high school onward I have amassed a collection of, currently, 846 paperclips. I string them in chains of 10 and hang them from keyrings, 25 chains to a ring; the rings themselves are nailed to the side of one of my bookcases. The trick is that I cannot buy the paperclips. They must be “found” items: things I pick up off the floor or the sidewalk or desks in public computer labs... which is why I only have 846 after doing this for over 15 years.
3. When my computer is in one of its “I will bluescreen every time you try to wake me from sleep!!!” periods -- which it still has, and which I still fix with percussive maintenance (by which I mean I lift the CPU several inches off the ground and drop it. no, really. AND IT WORKS, which is how I know the problem is a hardware thing, not a software issue), I play solitaire while waiting for it to reboot.
4. I first alphabetized my fiction collection when I was seven years old. (Look, my mom is a librarian. I think it’s at least partially genetic.)
5. I currently own six spider plants. (I have a lot of other houseplants too, but here and now we’re talking spider plants.) Two of them I got from my mom, one from my sister, and the other three are the descendants of babies snipped from now-deceased spider plants of my own... but they all trace back in a direct line to a pair of teeny baby spider plants my sister and I received from one of my mom’s colleagues when I was eight years old. Spider plants are FOREVER. *grin*
Shortly before I dropped out of college for mental health reasons, I had four spider plants, which I named Strawberry, Herring, San-san, and Ankh. You see, I had taken an intro to karate class to fulfill my phys. ed. requirement, this required learning to count to ten in Japanese, and I have never claimed to have a good sense of humor. (Ichi -> Ichigo -> Strawberry. Ni -> Knights Who Say Ni -> Herring. San-san -> self-explanatory. Shi -> Death -> Sandman -> Ankh.) They all got infested by a weird scaly parasite -- little circular brown dots in varying densities -- that caused their leaves to weep clear sticky fluid and eventually killed them. I was able to save uninfected baby spider plants from Herring and San-san, which are the ancestors of three of my current spider plants, but Strawberry and Ankh died childless. (No, wait, I lie; I cut two babies off one of them a few years earlier and gave them to someone else as a birthday present, because I’m a cheapskate.)
For those who are curious, yes, I do name all my houseplants. I don’t remember exactly when I started doing that, but it amuses me too much to stop. (The weird looks I get when I tell people I name my houseplants are also amusing.) My current spider plants are Nefertiti, Euryale, HayJay (short for Herring Jr.), Castor (acquired from Vicky; Pollux died, alas!), Damocles, and Babylon. The latter two are in hanging pots, because see above in re: questionable sense of humor. *wry*
I am bad at the chain aspect of memes, so I’ll just share random facts and if anyone wants to follow suit, please feel free to consider yourself tagged. *shrug*
1. When I was in first grade, my class did a project where each student collected 100 copies of a single item. Any item we wanted. It could be 100 socks, 100 photographs, 100 kazoos, whatever. The due date happened to be the day before my birthday, so I (or technically, my parents) bought 100 little birthday candles. And then we had a snow day, so the due date got moved to my actual birthday and I was SO PLEASED by that.
2. Relatedly, my teacher’s husband brought in 100 paperclips as part of that project. He had them strung in chains of ten and hung from a little spinning doohickey that I think was meant to dry nylon stockings. I thought that was incredibly cool, and from high school onward I have amassed a collection of, currently, 846 paperclips. I string them in chains of 10 and hang them from keyrings, 25 chains to a ring; the rings themselves are nailed to the side of one of my bookcases. The trick is that I cannot buy the paperclips. They must be “found” items: things I pick up off the floor or the sidewalk or desks in public computer labs... which is why I only have 846 after doing this for over 15 years.
3. When my computer is in one of its “I will bluescreen every time you try to wake me from sleep!!!” periods -- which it still has, and which I still fix with percussive maintenance (by which I mean I lift the CPU several inches off the ground and drop it. no, really. AND IT WORKS, which is how I know the problem is a hardware thing, not a software issue), I play solitaire while waiting for it to reboot.
4. I first alphabetized my fiction collection when I was seven years old. (Look, my mom is a librarian. I think it’s at least partially genetic.)
5. I currently own six spider plants. (I have a lot of other houseplants too, but here and now we’re talking spider plants.) Two of them I got from my mom, one from my sister, and the other three are the descendants of babies snipped from now-deceased spider plants of my own... but they all trace back in a direct line to a pair of teeny baby spider plants my sister and I received from one of my mom’s colleagues when I was eight years old. Spider plants are FOREVER. *grin*
Shortly before I dropped out of college for mental health reasons, I had four spider plants, which I named Strawberry, Herring, San-san, and Ankh. You see, I had taken an intro to karate class to fulfill my phys. ed. requirement, this required learning to count to ten in Japanese, and I have never claimed to have a good sense of humor. (Ichi -> Ichigo -> Strawberry. Ni -> Knights Who Say Ni -> Herring. San-san -> self-explanatory. Shi -> Death -> Sandman -> Ankh.) They all got infested by a weird scaly parasite -- little circular brown dots in varying densities -- that caused their leaves to weep clear sticky fluid and eventually killed them. I was able to save uninfected baby spider plants from Herring and San-san, which are the ancestors of three of my current spider plants, but Strawberry and Ankh died childless. (No, wait, I lie; I cut two babies off one of them a few years earlier and gave them to someone else as a birthday present, because I’m a cheapskate.)
For those who are curious, yes, I do name all my houseplants. I don’t remember exactly when I started doing that, but it amuses me too much to stop. (The weird looks I get when I tell people I name my houseplants are also amusing.) My current spider plants are Nefertiti, Euryale, HayJay (short for Herring Jr.), Castor (acquired from Vicky; Pollux died, alas!), Damocles, and Babylon. The latter two are in hanging pots, because see above in re: questionable sense of humor. *wry*
(no subject)
Date: 2013-11-13 07:28 am (UTC)I think my fig is the Moreton Bay, mostly because the roots have been buttressing for years.
Not surprised your Mum's Japanese Maple made a bid for freedom and is stalking another tree, they get huge. Beautiful foliage though. They're a tree that's pretty much my idea of the iconic maple.