Random(?) Things About Me

I've been memed by Conserve Plastic Bags....I'm supposed to tell you 8 random things about myself and then tag 8 more people to do the same. Tagging 8 people seems a little excessive. I mean 9 rounds of tagging, and we've got the whole blogger universe tagged (8^0 + 8^1 + 8^2 + 8^3 +...+ 8^9 = 153,391,689), but coming up with 8 things about me isn't too tough. In fact, that that's pretty much what this entire blog is about (see especially those entries with the tag "ME").

I am a little perplexed, though, at the requirement that they be "random" things. I wasn't sure exactly how to randomize the things about me, so I took this approach: I made Excel randomly pick 8 dates between the day I was born and today. I then thought about what I might have been doing on these random dates to see if they triggered a memory of any particular "thing" about me that I might share with you. I decided that this was about as close as I could get to telling you "random things" about me.* So here's what you are getting.

1. November 28, 1974. This date elicited this random thing: I am a huge Pittsburgh Steelers Fan. On the date, I was probably celebrating (with friends in the third grade when we were living in Pittsburgh), the Steelers' recent victory over the Saints on their way to their second Super Bowl victory.

2. July 2, 1976. My brother and I once had matching USA t-shirts. It is hard to imagine that I was doing anything this day except preparing for the big Bicentennial Celebration. I remember my parents bought my brother and I matching t-shirts with a big eagle on the front for the occasion. It wasn't long after when my sense of enthusiastically mindless patriotism began to wane.

3. October 9, 1986. I was the treasurer of my dorm in college. Around this date, I would have just won the dorm election to be the treasurer of the Hall Council. My friends and I used a voter-turn-out strategy to win the election. We realized few people vote in dorm elections, so we put together a slate of candidates from our floor and got everyone on the floor to actually walk down and vote. We swept all of the offices.

4. March 15, 1988. I love BW3. When I was in college, Tuesday Wing night at BW3 was more than a tradition. It was a sacrament. It was approximately this date in my senior year that my friend Phil and I went to BW3 on Tuesday and ordered an entire "Barn" of hot wings. (That's 100 wings, for those of you too young to remember early BW3 nomenclature). And we ate them all, just the two of us.

5. May 11, 1996. I can put on my socks with one hand. Micah was about 6 weeks old on this date, and I was learning, as a new parent, how to do a lot of new things and how to do a lot of old things with one hand. Micah liked to be held when he was a baby, so I learned how to put on socks with one hand. Try it--it's not easy.

6. February 11, 2003. I have a lot of trouble saying no when people ask me to do things. It was approximately on this date that I had a meeting with the Dean and agreed to chair my department. Not that I was resisting that much, but I should have been!

7. October 28, 2005. I have had one and only one massage in my life. I was visiting Chicago on this date and got my first ever professional massage. It was really great, but I fell asleep and missed half of it, so it ended up seeming unduly expensive!

8. December 29, 2006. I can't handle my champagne. This date obviously wasn't New Year's Eve, but close enough. I went out on Lake Michigan from Navy Pier in one of those huge dinner cruisers and it took forever for the food to be served. In the meantime, they kept bringing the champagne, and bringing it, and bringing it. The next day, I had the worst hangover of my entire life. On the plus side, I'm told I won the the "best disco dancer on the ship" award...

OK, I'm going to buck the numerical pressure to conform and merely tag 4 other people who I haven't heard complain about being "memed" on their blogs.

Currently unnamed, you could use a little more traffic.
Prickers, since you're getting back in the game.
Everyday Life, you need something to keep you busy while you're putting on YOUR socks with one hand.
Jim Gibbon, don't procrastinate--make this your next post.

Have fun....
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* Supplemental random thing about me--I am not bored at all by this exercise of generating random events. I do realize, however, that you probably are.