constance | Laptop confessional (Reply)

I was going to do that explain-your-interests meme, but the little automated interest picker picked things I didn't really feel needed explanation, so I decided to bore you with this one instead:

20 Random Things about Me

Several years ago, I was bitten by my then-roommate's dog while trying to pry him and my dog apart during one of their frequent power struggles. He ripped my finger open from the nail bed to the first knuckle, and I spent the night in the emergency room soaking my hand in betadine and being fed antibiotics through a drip and reading an entire Angela Thirkell novel. Years later, you can hardly tell where it happened, except that there's this one place on my cuticle where the skin sort of overlaps and has never quite grown back together. Oh, and the nail is permantly indented.

I am a secret reverse snob. I take especial pride in living in neighborhoods where most of my middle-class acquaintance are nervous venturing, and when they say, I worry about you living alone in that neighborhood, I just think smugly to myself, that is because you are a cowardy-custard white-flighter who wouldn't know a decent working-class neighborhood if it brought a macaroni salad to your door to welcome you.

I almost never talk about things I really like with people whom I don't know to also like them (Livejournal excepted, of course). There are reasons for both the not-talking and the livejournal exception to this rule; I won't go into them here unless you really want me to, because the point is that people I've known for years are sometimes surprised by things I like and don't like, just because I haven't ever mentioned them before. You lucky people on livejournal likely know more about me and my little fetishes and obsessions (or at least have more access to them) than my real-life friends whom I've known for years and years.

I am not working as a programmer at the moment--though that may be about to change!--but of all the tech work I've ever done, I find it most satisfying. In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, I really love it, and have since my first C class, almost ten years ago. It combines creativity and intense logic in a way that I find much more satisfying than purely creative work, or purely logical work.

In matters related to (4) above, I was in a rotten mood for most of the day, until the company's lead programmer stopped by my office just a little while ago and asked if I wanted to take a look at some of our apparently frustratingly spaghetti-like VB code tomorrow, and if I feel comfortable with it, then I will maybe be at least a part-time programmer! :D:D:D:D:D:D I feel obliged to say that I like my current job--software testing--very much. But it is not my first love by a long shot.

I saw four houses over the weekend, and did not see a single one I liked better than my current apartment. I have decided that is my latest requirement in a house: that I actually like it better than the place I am living now.

I love stationery and keep buying it despite the fact that I now, thanks to the advent of email, hardly ever write actual physical letters anymore. I keep saying that one day I will. But several people on my friendslist can attest to the fact that my promised letters rarely actually materialize, which is a shame and a disgrace, because I used to be a demon letter-writer, and if you ask me, I will tell you that I really, really like writing letters. Damn you, easy, instantly gratifying electronic format!

I often buy books because they have interesting covers. Especially if they're really cheap books, but sometimes I will even pay full price for them--though I generally check first to make sure that they are something I won't actively hate. And I have also been known to buy a book just because the cover was designed by Chip Kidd. I know, I know.

I adore maps. Not just because I like to know exactly where I am and how to get where I'm going at all times--which I totally, totally do--but I also just love them, just love looking at them, love their secret codes and shortcuts and the abstraction of space squashed onto a sheet of paper. (See also: house floor plans, obsessive love of.) When I was little I entertained myself for hours at a time on road trips following our progress in a road atlas--I'd trace my fingers along the map as we moved along the road. I don't do this much anymore, because I'm not a passenger as much as I used to be. But I do still love to do it, and when I'm traveling with my parents and I have a map in my lap and their GPS system installed on the dashboard to obsess over: my God, does a trip get any better than that?

I used to have an orange-and-gold lava lamp that my grandmother searched high and low to find for me Because She Loves Me (this was in that doldrum era before they regained their kitsch value and you could find them anywhere). I loved, loved, loved that lava lamp. I used to fall asleep watching it every night. I broke it in my freshman year of college, and have missed it periodically ever since, and since my grandmother died this summer have missed it much more frequently. It has obtained symbolic status for me; but I'm not entirely sure it wasn't always a symbol of some kind, and I just never realized it.

I love delicate, girly little pieces of jewelry, but with the exception of my nose-stud, almost never wear it. For that reason, most people don't give me jewelry, but my sister-in-law, who has a knack for giving me gifts I didn't even know I wanted but really really did, and my crazy aunt who for some reason gives me excellent, appropriate gifts while getting it absolutely wrong with the rest of the family, keep me stocked in pretty jewelry. I repay them, of course, by almost never wearing it. But I honestly do love it.

I actually said the phrase "interventionist God" in everyday conversation the other day. Without irony. God, the unbearable pretension.

I have a mild and unrepentant crush on Hillary Duff (though this crush does not extend to her so-called "music"), and I have absolutely no excuse for it. Or at least I did have a crush before she got super-skinny. Hillary, I am begging you! Eat a peanut butter sandwich!

I am not comfortable sleeping without my dog--it's hard to share a house with someone for nearly fourteen years without getting used to it.

Of all the talents I wish I had but don't--and there are plenty of talents that fall into this category, believe me--the ones at the top of the list are all musical. I would like to have been a musical prodigy, specifically. A little genius who plays Chopin at age 8, and leaves it all behind to play in a seminal rock band that people are still listening to thirty years later. I would like to have made someone feel electrified. That is not too much to ask, no?

Also, I cannot French-braid, whistle, walk in stilettos, wear pretty underwear unself-consciously, guess the criminal of a whodunit (unless it's really fucking obvious), eat without dropping something on my shirt, or make any decision with ease.

I can, however, curl my tongue, touch my thumb to my wrist, bake bread from scratch, change a tire, knit, draw a reasonable likeness, and finish a NYT acrostic almost every time.

I miss my big fandom livejournal sometimes--and some of the others I've abandoned as well--but mostly, I love this journal more than any of the others I've written in, and I feel more comfortable in it than I have with any other one.

I almost never have cravings for sweets--I'm much more likely to crave something salty or savory--and I can definitely take chocolate or leave it, and only really eat it at all when it's presented with things I like better, like peanut butter or caramel. Or, I don't know, raspberry or orange creme. Or peanuts. You get the point.

I am always, always surprised when people turn out to have been paying attention to me.

I wouldn't have thought there was that much left to tell--but there's always something else, isn't there? Always another layer, always another story. Thank goodness for that.