Just got an email from my husband with funny stories in it. I don't want to give away anything OPSEC, but I wanted to share a part that made me smile. He had to go talk to the mayor of a nearby town about Problem X:

It was kind of cool. A room full of Iraqis were jumping through their ass
trying to impress your husband as they told him about [Problem X]. They
invited me to dinner and tea but I told them I had to go. I never thought I
would be a civil administrator in an Arab country while fighting an insurgency
against the only democracy in the region. If you would have told me that five
years ago, I would have called you crazy.

I'm going to see another town tomorrow about the same stuff. The only
translator available is yours truly so we'll see how it goes.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:52 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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I've been enjoying re-reading 1984, and I have found lots of stuff that I want to say about it, but that will have to wait. Briefly though, last night I found the Newspeak word for how I've been feeling lately: ownlife. Being alone, "individualism and eccentricity". That's how I've felt since my two best friends left for Iraq...up until the other day when I was talking to an acquaintance. Somehow the conversation twisted and turned until we were both nodding our heads that we support President Bush in the war on terror but think the Marriage Amendment is a bad idea. I think my jaw hit the floor. Someone to talk to...

Posted by: Sarah at 02:40 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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The husband asked me last year if I had thought 1984 or Brave New World was scarier. He was appalled when I said Brave New World. But I read them in high school, and I didn't grok anything when I was 18, so I'm reading both again to see if I feel differently about them.

I started 1984 last night and had a little chuckle in chapter one: I imagined Lefties reacting to the new Bush campaign ads much like the Two Minutes Hate. Ha.

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I am a horrible person.
I found that out today, and it's been eating at me all evening.

There's something about the uniform that makes all soldiers look upstanding and dignified. The uniform is the great equalizer, and all soldiers who come in my office are treated the same. But on a training holiday, like today was, we often help soldiers in civilian clothes.

A soldier came in the office today dressed straight out of 8 Mile who wanted to sign up for my English class. My gut reaction as he said this was that he was never going to pass the grammar placement test to make it into the class. I handed him the test, and he brought it back to me with a nice side order of humble pie.

He got the highest score I've ever seen. And he wanted to look back over the ones he'd missed and try to figure out why he missed them. He shocked the hell out of me. We had a great discussion about grammar as we corrected his mistakes, and I told him I'd be incredibly happy to have him in my class. He shook my hand as he left, and I felt like a complete jerk on the inside.

I consider myself an open person. I actually loved 8 Mile. I even went through a stage when I was 18 where I dressed a bit "alternative", so I should be the last person to judge someone based on how he's dressed. But I did it without thinking today, and I'm ashamed of myself, especially since I was so obviously wrong about this soldier. I really don't feel good about my gut reaction today, but how do you change your instinct?

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Tonight was Bingo night for the wives from our Battalion. I haven't played Bingo since high school French class, so I wasn't sure if I was going to go. I decided to at the last minute, and it was a good decision: I won the last game (blackout) and got a $50 gift certificate to the PX. Sweet.

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I love my brother to death. He's always good for an entertaining story or a little excitement. I called him last night and spent a whirlwind ten minutes hearing about his recent trip to Vegas.

My brother is a gambler. A good one. He paid for his senior year of college by playing poker; he developed a reputation at his school until no one would play him after a while. So he had to go online; he plays Texas Hold 'Em night and day. My mom is less than thrilled that her son's part-time job is online gaming, but she's trying to deal with it. I was leery until I watched him play over Christmas: he plays three hands at a time and is able to keep track of all the cards and bring in the money. It's damn impressive, I must say, though the miser in me fears it could all go terribly wrong someday.

He had never been to Vegas before, so he and some friends went down for Spring Break. He went smart, though: he took a set amount of cash and left the ATM card at home. And my brother, balls of brass, walked into the Bellagio, sauntered up to the $200 minimum table, and played his heart out. He was up a lot, he was down a little, he told a great story of his 3 kings getting beat by 3 aces and missing out on a $1200 pot, and the thrill of his life was earning the respect of the other players at the table.

He also got to meet and get his photo taken with such poker greats as Doyle Brunson and Johnny Chan. I wouldn't recognize these men if they knocked on my door, but my brother couldn't have sounded more thrilled. I told him to write all this up in a letter to send to my husband because it's a great story. He brought a huge smile to my face and then hurried me off the phone because he was on the way to a job interview to work for an online gaming company.

He's a trip; I love him to pieces.

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I have some closing thoughts on the end of The Gulag Archipelago. I have finished Book I, and I think I need to move on to something a little cheerier for a while before I tackle Book II. But I'll be back.

Overall, I agree with Bunker that it's a book that should be read. I considered myself a pretty good student in school, and I never heard anything about the atrocities committed in Stalin's Russia. And I even took a Russian literature class in college! This stuff was horrifying, and I wish more people were aware of just what happened during those "glorious" Communist years.

If one takes the view that Latsis is not deliberately understating the real figures but simply lacks complete information, and that the Revtribunals carried on approximately the same amount of judicial work as the Cheka performed in an extrajudicial way, one concluded that in the twenty central provinces of Russia in a period of sixteen months (June, 1918 to October, 1919) more than sixteen thousand persons were shot, which is to say more than one thousand a month.

This passage is highlighted with a revealing footnote:

Now that we have started to make comparisons, here is another: during the eighty years of the Inquisition's peak effort (1420 to 149 , in all of Spain ten thousand persons were condemned to be burned to death at the stake -- in other words, about ten a month.

People were put to death for as little as shaking a fist at a Communist, or as vague as "wrecking", the simple charge of doing anything that might hurt the Soviet Union. And anything could be twisted into wrecking. An engineer suggests that they could research a way to save fuel: wrecking -- reducing resources. They would increase the size of train cars to make them more efficient: wrecking -- tying up funds. Suggesting that they buy cheap train cars now and then replace them later when the technology is better: wrecking -- suggesting the Soviet Union not have the best type of machinery. And so on. And all these charges of wrecking, twisted around no matter what you did or said, brought you a death sentence. Unbelieveable.

There was a great anecdote at the end of the book that made me laugh out loud. There are some who will just never grok when someone stands up for what he believes in:

When, in 1960, Gennady Smelov, a nonpolitical offender, declared a lengthy hunger strike in the Leningrad prison, the prosecutor went to his cell for some reason (perhaps he was making his regular rounds) and asked him: "Why are you torturing yourself?"
And Smelov replied: "Justice is more precious to me than life."
This phrase so astonished the prosecutor with its irrelevance that the very next day Smelov was taken to Leningrad Special Hospital (i.e., the insane asylum) for prisoners. And the doctor there told him:
"We suspect you may be a schizophrenic."

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I've decided the best part about a deployment is the way you rearrange your priorities. My husband is the only person who knows my cell phone number, so when it rang Friday at work, I grabbed it and ran out of the office. Work wasn't important, being polite wasn't important, all that mattered was contact with a loved one. It's funny because my husband used to call me at work all the time before he left, usually to arrange a time to pick me up at the end of the day. I often hurried him off the phone or hung up with him when a student came in the door. But now, the student can wait.

And the thing is that you never know when you'll have your last phone call. Tragedies occur every day, and my husband had just as much chance of dying in garrison as he does in Iraq. But I cherish him all the more now that he's gone. I write him long letters every day, explaining every detail of Reservists who bug me or a funny incident in class. When mortality is staring you in the face, you cherish what you've got. I encourage all of you to cherish your relationships as well, especially the ones who aren't deployed. They're the ones we tend to put on the backburner.

I also was thinking yesterday about how lucky I am that my husband is merely deployed. Last night I watched the movie Amistad and then read more Gulag Archipelago before bed; oh how much worse life could be. If you choose to look at life through the right lens, then deployment seems like a trifle. If fate had treated me differently, my husband could've been sold into slavery and taken from me for forever. Or he could've been put in a Stalinist prison for ten years simply for "failing to turn in a radio receiver" to the government. There are much worse things I could be facing right now, and the thought of that gives me strength to endure the simple one-year deployment we now face.

Posted by: Sarah at 04:50 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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My husband had to run an errand in Iraq today to the F.O.B., so he got to use the phone. He sounds great, optimistic and ready for a challenge. It was so nice to hear from him and know that he thinks things are going to be OK. If he thinks so, then I feel good too.

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I played volleyball in high school with a girl who had wanted to be a gymnast. I guess she had shown a lot of promise as a child and had the potential to be quite a gymnast until she hit her growth spurt and topped out at 5'11". She had to give up gymnastics and instead started playing volleyball. She was a good player; she was very strong and her height was certainly an advantage. I think she might've even gone on to play in college. But you could always tell her heart was never in it; in her heart she was a gymnast. She never let go of the gymnast she could have been, and it must've killed her to see others do the one thing she wanted to do.

Tonight as I was working at a college fair, a female soldier came to find out information about classes and started telling us stories about Iraq. She just got back on Saturday, and she captivated the librarians and counselors with her tales from down range. The other civilians seemed horrified at the life she was describing, but all I felt was jealousy. I wanted to have her job so badly. Listening to her, I felt a sadness in my heart that I cannot explain; my heart was mourning the soldier I would never become. Everything this 21-year-old girl described was a reminder of how meaningless my life seems, a reminder that I have to watch others do the one thing I wish I could do.

Here on post, surrounded by camouflage, I feel like a gambling addict in Vegas, like an alcoholic in a bar, like a thirsty man in a lifeboat. Everyone I see is a constant reminder of what I will never be: the soldier in my heart. And it hurts in a way that most of you will never understand.

But god how it hurts.

Posted by: Sarah at 02:58 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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If you're me, you still call your daddy any time you have a car problem. I can explain the trouble to him in moron-ese over the phone (what does it mean when the car sounds like a Model T / smells like formaldehyde / idles like a vibrating chair / makes that grrraaarrrr noise...) and then he can troubleshoot for me so that when I finally call the mechanic, I can all nonchalantly say, "Uh, yeah, I think it's the timing belt" and act like I know what I'm talking about. It's also a good idea to get daddy to give me a price range, so that I know about what to expect.

So what's worse than feeling like a moron with the mechanic? Feeling like a moron mit dem Mechaniker. No matter how much/little I know about cars, I can't do any of it in German. I'm completely at their mercy here.

That may be why I just got a $157 oil change. Ouch.

Posted by: Sarah at 12:21 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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1 My brother does all my car work now. But he taught me a trick that works in the US, i think. Wear a "Pep Boys" t-shirt when you go to the mechanic! It makes em think you know the lingo.

Posted by: annika at March 08, 2004 07:51 PM (FFy2M)

2 Yeah, annika, but what happens when you DON'T know the lingo? I actually used to know something about car engineering once upon a time. Constantly read and reread a book on the subject for laypeople (with tons of helpful pictures). But I never learned to drive. I use my two legs instead, and if I ever got injured or sick in a foreign country, I'd be "completely at their mercy."

Posted by: Amritas at March 08, 2004 08:45 PM (L0cGq)

3 I can relate....something about a blond, female college student with liscense plates from 10 states away makes mechanics see dollar signs. Fortunately I have good friends with exceptional mechanical skills....but I still call my Papa.

Posted by: Beth at March 09, 2004 12:25 AM (S4qEY)

4 Doesn't matter even if you do know what your talking about. I'm a female Automotive Engineer and they still treat me like an idiot every time I walked into a repair shop. They think: breasts=car idiot

Posted by: Machelle at March 09, 2004 10:52 AM (W/eGG)

5 Europeans can be mean in that way: I've never seen so many swindlers. Maybe I'm naive, but I can't even imagine an American doing that. Indeed and ironically, I remember a oil change place in Victoria, Texas actually giving a German family a *discount* because they were so distressed over problems with their rental car. I would have thought all this would have stopped with the introduction of the Euro. Back when I was in Italy for the first time, I paid some Roman cabbie the equivalent of 50 dollars for a 6 block cab ride because I didn't understand lire at the time.

Posted by: Jeremiah (Esotericus) at March 09, 2004 11:39 AM (MKfKi)

6 Heh, I must also add this: even though I love Europe deeply (I study the Italian Renaissance for a living), I always have to fight an urge to fall to my knees and kiss the ground when I get off the plane after arriving home.

Posted by: Jeremiah (Esotericus) at March 09, 2004 11:46 AM (MKfKi)

7 I just got a great deal on used cars that I wanted. It was tough making a choice which of the used cars to buy, but I did it.

Posted by: Marcy Frye at April 26, 2005 07:16 PM (eSYGp)

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Friend comes over for dinner last night. Friend brings huge Akita dog. Sarah's house is not puppy-proof. Dog decides he wants to chew on Sarah's deceased grandma's teddy bear. We take it away. Dog decides yarn also makes a fun toy and tears apart two skeins, one of which is very expensive. Friend leaves for the night. Dog may not be invited back...

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In an age where we can take a photograph on a cell phone and mail it to a friend instantly, I'm getting frustrated with not being able to contact my husband. I'm printing out these letters I've been writing for him, and they're long and outdated. When one letter spans a month, it's hard to stay relevant and interesting. Oh look, Ralph Nader's running. Oh wait, you already know that by now. Um, how 'bout I tell you how much soup I have left over. What's that? You managed to read my blog in Kuwait? OK, I have nothing interesting to say that will still sound good when you read my letter in three weeks.

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Things to do today:

1. File taxes
2. Bake peanut butter cookies
3. Bake two loaves of "freedom" bread
4. Make a salad
5. Dust, vacuum, and tidy up the house
6. Make tortellini soup for 15
7. Have a party where I teach everyone to knit

My schedule's full today, folks! Check back tomorrow.

MORE:

The bread's rising, and I started thinking of a funny story to tell. When we first got married, I knew my husband really liked breads, so one Saturday I worked all day baking him loaves for dinner. We sat down to eat and I asked him how the bread tasted. He said it was good, and after a few seconds' pause, he said, "You know what else is good? Grands biscuits. Those are great!" I cracked up. I'd spent about five hours baking for him, and all he really wanted was a tube of ready-made Pilsbury! He still says that he didn't mean it the way it sounded, but I don't usually take the time to bake fresh bread anymore!

UPDATE:

Oh my gosh, I have so much soup left over. If I ate soup for both lunch and dinner, it would take me 12 days to finish it all. Please send me your addresses so I can mail everyone some soup...

Posted by: Sarah at 05:22 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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1 " 'Freedom' bread"!? Never heard of that before. What was your major in college? "Freedomese"?

Posted by: Amritas at March 04, 2004 06:50 AM (g4OZS)

2 Just a little joke for us francophobes

Posted by: Sarah at March 04, 2004 07:16 AM (aQeaY)

3 "I have so much soup left over." Don't drown in it. I know the feeling in miniature - I just bought a half gallon of cooked rice which is more than I need for this week, and usually I go out to eat on the weekends, so I'm trying to finish it off as quickly as possible. In my experience, it will go bad even after a few days in the refrigerator. "Please send me your addresses so I can mail everyone some soup..." If everyone did, the combined air mail charges might bankrupt you ... A

Posted by: Amritas at March 04, 2004 05:28 PM (PUjKD)

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When I'm bored at work and I can't take any more gore from LGF, I like to cycle through knitting blogs and find patterns and tips and look at the photos of what everyone else is knitting. My co-worker thinks it's hysterical that I'm constantly ohhing and ahhing at other people's knitting online. But I've never actually written about my own knitting. If Bunker Mulligan gets to write about golf and Charles Johnson gets to write about cycling, then may I be permitted a tangent into handicrafts?

Last night though I faced a knitter's dilemma. I'm making this sweater, and I've finished the back and had about 8 inches done on the front. And then I realized I'd made a mistake at about inch 5. I struggled with my two choices while the sweater sat on the coffeetable for three days: leave it as it was with a mistake in the pattern or try to rip it out to inch 5 and risk not being able to put it back on the needles. Last night I finally decided I had to face the music; since the mistake was on the front and not the back, it would be best to rip it out. I unraveled it back to inch 5 and tried to put everything back on the needles. Unsuccessfully. So I had to rip the whole thing out and start over again. It takes a long time to knit 8 inches of cables, but I think I did the right thing. I feel better knowing that it won't have a mistake, because it bothers me to look at every other project I've done where I've left a little flaw.

Plus it's not like I'm in a hurry. I've got 14 months to kill and lots of projects in mind. Like a sweater for the husband; he's got two so far from me: one that doesn't fit and one that he doesn't really like. He needs another.

MORE TO GROK:

Tim got a little stressed out yesterday about the state of the world, and he asked me how I cope. "Have you ever tried knitting?" I asked him. "Knitting?" he replied. "No...I've tried drinking though...." Ha.

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I've been trying to hang a shelf in our living room for weeks now. I'd guess it's a 30-lb shelf, which is hard to hang by yourself. Plus the walls are made of saltines, so the first time I got it up, it just pulled two big chunks of plaster out and came right back down. I finally got some toggle bolts and spent the morning struggling with the stupid thing. But when I got it up, I felt a sense of elation. I think I even did that Tiger Woods arm thing. I went upstairs to get dressed, and then I heard a crashing noise. "Oh no!" I said aloud and went racing down the stairs, expecting the worst. I rounded the corner, and there was the shelf, hanging right where I'd left it. I cautiously looked around the house, and I can't figure out what that noise was. But now I'm spooked; I'm sure the shelf is going to come crashing down any moment now.

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Tim graciously emailed me information about how to forward my home phone to my cell phone, and another German friend translated a brochure for me so I could get call-waiting here at home. Now I shouldnÂ’t have to miss a call from Iraq. Friday night I told someone that I wouldnÂ’t miss a call from my husband for anything in the world. And later I started thinking about that hyperbole.

What is my husbandÂ’s call worth?

I know I exaggerate when I say I wouldnÂ’t miss it for the world or for a million dollars, which are common expressions, but something morbid inside of me pushed to find out what I would give to hear his voice. A hundred bucks? Probably not. I know my husband loves me and misses me, and I donÂ’t need to pay a hundred bucks to hear that. Twenty bucks? Perhaps. Definitely ten.

The husband and I have a running gag where we measure money in terms of DVDs. Since weÂ’re movie nuts (well, OK, IÂ’m a bigger nut than he isÂ…), we often measure somethingÂ’s worth by how many DVDs weÂ’d have to give up to have it. (Is a German cellphone worth six DVDs? So far IÂ’d say no.) We measure my overtime at work as an extra DVD. And we even joked that his hazardous duty and separation pay from a year in Iraq would buy a heckuva lot of movies. ItÂ’s a funny increment of measurement, but it sometimes puts money in perspective for us.

I can safely say that IÂ’d give a DVD to talk to him on the phone.

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I was driving home from the grocery store yesterday thinking about how I should put up a sort of "introductory post" for my new site, just in case I have new readers. And at that same moment, Johnny Cash's "Song of the Patriot" came on. Coincidence? Maybe. But it fit the moment nicely.

IÂ’m a flag waving, patriotic nephew of my Uncle Sam
A rough riding fighting Yankee man
I love mom and applie pie,
And the freedoms that we all enjoy across this beautiful land
I work hard and I fight hard for the old Red, White, and Blue
And IÂ’ll die a whole lot harder if it comes to where I have to

IÂ’m a flag waving, patriotic nephew of my Uncle Sam
A rough riding fighting Yankee man
And when I see old Glory waving
I think of all the brave men who have fought and died for what is right and wrong
And when I see old Glory burnin, my blood begins to churnin
And I could do some fightinÂ’ of my own
I donÂ’t believe in violence, IÂ’m a God fearing man
Bul IÂ’ll stand up for my country just as long as I can stand

Cause IÂ’m a flag waving, patriotic nephew of my Uncle Sam
A rough riding fighting Yankee man
IÂ’m a flag waving, patriotic nephew of my Uncle Sam
A rough riding fighting Yankee man

And I enjoy the liberty of being what I want to be and achieve any goals that I can
I was taught to turn the other cheeck, but daddy used to say
Walk soft and pack a big stick, but never walk away
IÂ’m a flag waving, patriotic nephew of my Uncle Sam
A rough riding fighting Yankee man
And When I see old Glory waving
I think of all the brave men who have fought and died for what is right and wrong
And when I see old Glory burnin, my blood begins to churnin
And I could do some fightinÂ’ of my own

Cause I love all my brothers and we're proud of our group
WeÂ’ve got the greenest country here on GodÂ’s green earth
IÂ’m a flag waving, patriotic nephew of my Uncle Sam
A rough riding fighting Yankee man

It fits me like a glove. Well, except that I'm a girl.

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FACTS

1. I've never been to heaven
But I've been to Oklahoma
Well, they tell me I was born there
But I really don't rememberÂ…

2. Since the day I was born, I've had 22 addresses. And we've only been in the military for six years.

3. I'm 30 years old. I have a BA in French and an MA in ESL. I don't really use either of them.

4. I speak French. Well, not very often anymore. But I'm saving that skill for the day when we invade. Then I'll enlist as a translator or interrogator or something.

5. I speak Swedish. It's a relatively useless talent, except that I can eavesdrop on people standing in the buffet line in front of me in Las Vegas. But they never say anything interesting anyway.

6. I learned a little German when we lived there. I have a limited vocabulary, but I do in fact know the words for timing belt and pulley. Car trouble.

7. I've been to 16 countries.

8. I've never been to San Francisco or to New York City, but somehow I've spent two weeks in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria.

9. I wish I were in the Army. My dream job is a 19K.

10. I'm a knitter. I've been knitting for ten years. My most exciting project was a DNA scarf for a geneticist friend I like to call "science dorky."

11. I have a cool birthmark on my face. There's no color to it, just texture; it simply looks like I got a smallpox vaccination on my left cheek. Once a doctor told me I could probably get it smoothed over by a dermatologist, and I cringed. I'd never even thought about getting rid of it before. I love it.

12. My best feature is my feet. They're a little big (size 9 ½), but they're nice feet.

13. I wanted to be 5'11" when I was a kid. I drew a mark on the wall at that height and couldn't wait to get there. I only made it to 5'6".

14. Considering that my mom is 4'11" and my dad is 6'3", I didn't do too bad.

15. My first grade teacher reads my blog.

16. When I was six, a neighbor boy dared me to jump off the top of my dad's van for a Showbiz token. I did.

17. I've never had a speeding ticket. My philosophy can be summed up as this: If someone offered you $200 to arrive at your destination ten minutes later than scheduled, you'd be a fool not to take it. But you'll risk a $200 ticket to arrive ten minutes earlier.

18. I've been known to swear like a sailor. But not when I write.

19. I think factories and old stockyards are beautiful. They're classic quality.

20. I can sing all the words to "It's the End of the World As We Know It." Useless.

21. When I went to my brother's 8th grade graduation, some woman asked me if I was excited about graduating that day. I was in college at the time. I'm three years older than my husband, and I'm the one who always gets carded.

22. I've seen an intact dissected human nervous system. It was awesome.

23. My parents are Catholic. My dad's the oldest of thirteen kids. I have 26 cousins.

24. My grandfather was in the Air Force in WWII, in the same squadron as Chuck Yeager.

25. I've never smoked. Anything. Alcohol, pills, I understand all that. But I will never grok why someone would intentionally suck smoke into his lungs.

26. In fact, I once turned down the opportunity to meet Snoop Dogg because I assumed he'd be smoking weed and I didn't want to look like a dork.

27. I was the high school valedictorian.

QUIRKS

28. I love the smell of skunk.

29. I'm allergic to water. No one believes me on this one, but whenever I shower, swim, or wash my face before bed, I sneeze uncontrollably. I'm sure it has something to do with my sinuses, but I hate water.

30. Thus I hate swimming. I haven't been swimming in years.

31. I'm mildly claustrophobic. I'm fine in crowded rooms and stuff, but zip up the sleeping bag on me and I'll panic.

32. I'm an obsessive hand-washer. It drives me nuts that my husband isn't.

33. I think all medicine is a placebo. I take Ny-Quil during the day and sleeping pills at night with no effect. One time I tried to recreationally take my friend's Vicadin. I felt nothing. Eminem is a wuss.

34. Since sleeping pills and Ny-Quil never work, I often have trouble sleeping. I have since I was a kid. I used to read whole novels at night when I was in middle school; now I just talk my husband to death.

35. I can't sit in high-backed chairs. I must have very sensitive vestibular nuclei, because any pressure on the base of my skull makes me nauseated. I am extremely uncomfortable sitting in buses or planes or recliners, where the chair back touches the back of my head.

36. I didn't have a security blanket or stuffed animal as a child. I slept with my books. All of them. Under my pillow. Dork.

37. I was paranoid about fire as a kid. My friend's dad was a fireman, another friend's house burned down, and a neighbor's house got struck by lightning. I was convinced that every person's house burned down at least once in their life, so I was just waiting for my family's turn. I planned my escape routes from my house and visualized throwing my dollhouse through the window to break the glass.

38. I also collected crayon shavings when I was a kid. You know, the wax that comes off when you sharpen a crayon. I've gotten rid of nearly everything from my childhood except for the butter tub full of crayon shavings. For some reason, I just can't part with that.

39. Most adult women collect china or teapots or art or Hummels or something classy. I collect buttons, bottlecaps, coasters, and matchbooks.

40. Yes, I know I'm weird.

LOVE

41. My husband and I met when he injured me during an ROTC soccer match. I couldn't walk for three days; he was somehow oblivious to the fact that the game stopped and they had to carry me off the field. Weeks later when I pointed it out to him, he had no idea what I was talking about.

42. I cut my hair really short (like two inches long) right when my husband and I started dating, and the disappointment on his face was priceless. I didn't cut my hair for five years after that; it was nearly to my waist. We started a joke that by the time Return of the King came out, I would look like an elf. We were right.

43. When I finally told my husband I liked him and asked him if he liked me, his surprised response was, "Well, of course I like you, but I'm not going to marry you or anything."

44. I don't have any sort of engagement story. We just went and bought the ring. I wore it for a day before I demanded my husband at least ask me to marry him. He's not one for ceremony...

45. When we got engaged, I got an engagement ring and my husband got an engagement foosball table. For my husband's Christmas present in 2001 I commissioned a cartoon based on the foosball table from Shachar Meron, creator of the comic strip Blue Rice. He ran the cartoon in the newspaper and gave us the original. It's framed in our home.

46. I nearly died on June 15, 1999 when someone put something in my drink in a bar in Glasgow. Apparently when you're unconscious on the sidewalk in Scotland and your friend calls an ambulance, they'll come to the scene but they won't do anything to help because "just being drunk" does not warrant medical attention. Never mind the fact that I only had two rum and cokes, and that my friend kept slapping me in the face to keep me conscious. Socialized medicine, indeed.

47. I got married three years later to the day. Death and new life, all with one date.

48. My wedding dress cost me $30.

49. And our maid of honor married our groomsman two years later. They met through us.

50. We went to Washington D.C. for our honeymoon. More than anywhere in the world, that was where I wanted to go. I'd never been, and I'm so glad we went.

ENTERTAINMENT

51. The first movie I remember seeing in the movie theater was Wrath of Khan. I was five years old, and it scared the crap out of me.

52. My favorite quote from Kid Rock: "We got to kill that motherfucker Saddam. Slit his throat. Kill him and the guy in North Korea."

58. No matter how many times I've watched, I still cry at the end of both It's a Wonderful Life and Raising Arizona. I also cry at several episodes of Futurama, any Wes Anderson movie, and the song "A Better Place To Be".

59. I love rappers. As a language buff, I think rappers have the most phenomenal language skills of any English speakers. When Jay-Z can make a rhyme like this "I box leftier often / My pops left me an orphan," you have to admit that's a beautiful use of English.

60. I'd love to be on that MTV show Fanatic and meet Dr. Dre, just to see the look on his face when some white girl starts talking about how much she loves his alliteration.

61. I even went to see Ice T give a lecture on racism at the University of Illinois.

62. So I think I'm the only American in the world who thinks the British accent is ugly. Not sexy, not refined, not sophisticated. Grating.

FOOD

63. I love chili dogs. There's a hot dog shack in downtown Peoria that has the best chili dogs in the world. In fact, when I lived in MO, my mom once bought me one, wrapped it in foil, and brought it to me in the car. They're that delicious.

64. Before I got to Germany, I only ate big pretzels at baseball games. My German co-worker brought me one every single day for over a year, and now I can't stand the sight of them.

65. I make a really mean brownie and cake, but I can't make chocolate chip cookies to save my life. They always turn out disgusting. My friend makes really good cookies, and I've followed her recipe to the letter, but they still suck. (Update: I've gotten better at this. The key is shortening.)

66. My drink of choice is a Tom Collins. Or bourbon slush.

67. I go out of my way to eat weird foods; I've eaten stomach, tongue, brain, testicles, ostrich, kangaroo, crocodile, and reindeer, to name a few. My husband also thinks I'm a horrible person because I say that if we ever go to Korea, I'd eat dog.

68. But I can't eat anything spicier than mild sauce. I can do weird, but not spicy.

69. Speaking of weird, I believe that applesauce is a condiment. Best eaten on top of macaroni and cheese or pizza.

70. I eat and enjoy salad, but I hate lettuce on top of other foods, like on hamburgers or tacos. I refer to the lettuce at Taco Bell as "shredded paper."

71. I don't enjoy eating in restaurants. I'm too stingy. Usually I sit there calculating how much it would have cost to make the meal myself.

72. I hate all licorice. Red and black.

73. I can't really tell a difference between the different percentages of milk, nor do I care at all about the differences between cheeses.

RANDOM

74. I've met the President of Bulgaria. In St. Louis. In a room, surrounded by Bulgarians. And I spoke Bulgarian to him. Freaked him out.

75. I had a goldfish for three years in college that used to wake me up in the mornings by sucking the little blue rocks into his mouth and then spitting them at the glass bowl. When he got sick for weeks and slowly started to die, I knew I couldn't save him. I cupped him in my hands and took him out of the water until he stopped breathing. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. (Update: Well, until now.)

76. I once stopped my car in the middle of the highway to rescue a turtle who was trying to cross the road.

77. I absolutely hate the expression "it's not a fishy fish." That doesn't make any sense to me at all. All fish taste like fish. Please don't write and try to explain it; my husband's been trying for years.

78. This guy in college tried to date-rape me once, but I verbally humiliated him so badly that he left the room in shame. I rule.

79. I was in Goteborg, Sweden in the summer of 2001 during the riots. I saw President Bush papermache puppets and everything. And cops getting nailed with cobblestones.

80. I'm a fanatic about thank-you cards. They should be sent on every occasion, and a phone call or email does not substitute. My husband thinks I'm brainwashed by my southern upbringing. I think it's just good manners.

81. I was a volunteer scorekeeper for the University of Illinois champion wheelchair basketball team in 2001.

82. I think President Bush is really handsome. With or without the flight suit.

83. I think I'm the only person on earth who feels sorry for Humbert Humbert.

84. I have a dishwasher that I've only used once. On Thanksgiving. I hate the dishwasher. (Update: I have since learned to appreciate this appliance.)

85. Butters is my favorite South Park character too. The husband and I have a goldfish named after him. We also have one named after J. Robert Oppenheimer. I'd love to have a tank full of fish named after physicists. But the next two fish I get will be named Bunker and Mulligan, after my late friend Mike Reed. (Update: It's only one fish, named Bunker Mulligan.)

86. My younger brother is a week older than my husband's older brother. In other words, we have two siblings between us in age.

87. I got bit by a brown recluse in the summer of 2002. I have a cool scar.

88. I love scars; they are great intros into stories. I always ask people about the stories behind their scars. In fact, I'm surprised people don't ask me about the birthmark on my face (they have to notice it), but maybe they think I'm sensitive about it. I haven't had anyone comment on it since high school.

89. I don't tan. When your mother has Lupus and your father has skin cancer, you avoid the sun like the plague. I'm pasty white year round.

90. I taught myself to sew when I lived in Sweden. I sewed the curtains and pillows in our living room. I've also sewn on military insignia when the alterations shop was backed up. I think I did a better job than they do.

91. My brother basically paid his way through college by playing poker. I personally hate playing cards.

92. But video poker is a whole different story. Addictive as crack. When I was in Vegas, I got four aces on one of those. Unfortunately, it was a nickel machine; I think I won four bucks.

93. I've never broken any bones in my body. But I did break someone else's finger once during flag football.

94. When I was a kid, I heard my voice on a tape recorder and vowed never to speak again. I think I went a few days without talking.

95. When I was in France, we had no TV or phone. I had to come up with many things to amuse myself. One was memorizing "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock".

96. I also took lots of photos while I was there. I even won a photography contest with one of them.

97. I used to hate waking up early, but now I really enjoy it. The earlier the better. It gets me to the blogosphere sooner.

98. I dry my hair and eat breakfast in front of the computer. No sense in wasting time.

99. I'm an obsessive list-maker.

100. Last but not least, here's a picture of me.

Posted by: Sarah at 03:00 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 2799 words, total size 16 kb.

1 Great site, Interesting viewpoints, Thanks for sharing with us all. RajKumar

Posted by: Rajkumar at January 21, 2005 11:32 AM (Vy3tS)

2 Read them all! Great. Nice photo. Here is a quote for you: "Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory." General George S. Patton Good luck.

Posted by: Paul at January 24, 2005 01:29 AM (scKOR)

3 very nice Sarah. I enjoyed reading it. Makes me want to do something similar. Although I'm not sure I could get up to 20. Oh wait. I can list each of my broken bones once and get about 6 right there. ) hmmm, maybe it's seven. I know, I'll just count the pains before the next time it rains. David Phoenix AZ

Posted by: David at February 14, 2005 05:25 PM (Vd3f5)

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