Well, technically no one picked me to do the Ten Odd Things About Me meme, but a couple people tagged “everyone” so I’m claiming those. Here are some random things you may or may not know about me. I’m also not tagging anyone, because I’m pretty sure everyone’s been tagged by now. But if you haven’t been tagged, feel free to use me as your excuse.
1. I have some odd eating habits. I love to eat kiwis with the skins still on - I like the fuzzyness. I also like to eat the tails of cocktail shrimp. Nice and crunchy. I also have to thank The Parent Trap remake for introducing me to Oreos and peanut butter and I owe my obsession with ketchup and Ranch dressing to my best friend K.
2. I sleep with a sound machine. Between the weird noises my apartment makes and the footsteps and television blaring from the apartments around me, the only way I can fall asleep is with a sound machine to give me something to focus on. I have it set to “rain,” which is a sound I got used to falling asleep to after growing up in rain-soaked Oregon.
3. I really like popcorn. I have a bit of an unusual passion for popcorn. Movie theater popcorn, air-popped popcorn, kettle corn, low-fat. I’ll even eat stale popcorn. I’ll eat pretty much any kind of popcorn, though I’m not a huge fan of white cheddar popcorn, the kind that comes in those air-filled black bags at the check-out counter at grocery stores. You know the ones. They make me ridiculously thirsty and they make my fingers sticky. So I try to avoid it.
4. I’m five foot eight. Apparently this is tall, as I’ve had a few people remark to me how tall I am. I am also, for the record, twenty-two (almost twenty-three!) as several people have also remarked to me how I seem older. I used to think that was really cool, but I think this summer might be the summer when I stop thinking that looking older is cool and start thinking that looking older kinda sucks.
5. I hate having my knees touched. I know that posting this on the Internet is a very, very dangerous thing and I swear to God I have no qualms with kicking you in the balls and screaming if you even pretend to touch them. But this list is supposed to be about weird or unusual things about me, so there you go.
6. I named my first car Buffy. True story. When I bought my car, I thought about naming it because we had christened my dad’s car the Groovy Mobile. My dad suggested naming my car Hal, but I thought naming it after a psychopathic computer that killed the crew might be sending the wrong message. So I went with Buffy, because my mom and I both thought Sarah Michelle Gellar was adorable.
7. I’m a Trekkie. Hardcore. Conventions, dressing up as characters (I was Captain Janeway for Halloween when I was 12 years old) and I even collected autographs. I know a ridiculous amount of Star Trek trivia, bought Star Trek books and went to the opening day showing of Star Trek: First Contact, which I have seen about twenty times.
8. I don’t like shoe-shopping. I’ve never been the kind of girl that has a “thing” for shoes. I find most cute looking shoes to be terribly uncomfortable, and it’s hard to find cute shoes that don’t make me come home with red welts and tears.
9. I took French for six years. I started when I was in seventh grade and went all the way up to my senior year in high school. Despite all that, I speak French very, very poorly. Reading is not too hard, but I’m terrible at speaking. It would probably take me five minutes to pull together a simple phrase.
10. The alternate choice to “Allison” was “Kirsten.” My parents still have the list of possible names for me in my baby book. My middle name, in case anyone is wondering what the “m” in my email address stands for, is Michelle.
