Author’s Note – I pulled a notebook out of my bag at lunch today that I haven’t used in a while and I found a rough draft of this post that Ihad forgotten about. I thought it would be fun to give you an idea of the person behind the words that pop up on your screen every so often. Please feel free to share a random fact about yourself if you’re so inclined – I’d love to know a little more about you too!
1. My favorite artists are Georgia O’Keeffe and Salvador Dali and my favorite photographer is Ansel Adams.
2. I am passionately in love with all things Russian and it’s my dream to someday see St. Basil’s Cathedral in person.
3. I am the only person I know who is a Gilbert and Sullivan fan. HMS Pinafore is my favorite operetta and I know a few people who make The Mikado’s Lord High Executioner look like a saint.
4. I read War and Peace in ninth grade and it’s still one of my favorite books ever.
5. My dream job is playing with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra or any group conducted by John Williams.
6. Robert Frost and Emily Dickenson are my favorite poets.
7. I’m not sure if reincarnation exists, but I get the feeling that if it does, I lived before in World War II era France or Russia.
8. I will never, under any circumstances – including imminent starvation eat a peach from a can.
9. I eat plantains but not bananas.
10. Until this year, I didn’t eat fish but now I’m a big fan of haddock, tilapia and salmon.
11. Stupidity, ignorance, arrogance and self-centeredness are my four biggest pet peeves.
12. I have played piano since I was six, flute since I was twelve and since 1999, I’ve been singing in church choirs and playing handbells. I took a year of classical guitar lessons, but gave up on that when my teacher insisted on teaching me jazz chords instead of Spanish classical music.
13. I seriously considered a career as a print journalist when I was a teenager.
14. My husband calls me the human jukebox because I have a song for every occasion.
15. I’ve been cross stitching for over twenty years and I still can’t make a damn French knot.
16. I grew up in Richmond, Virginia, lived in Memphis, Tennessee for a year and have been in Sunderland, Massachusetts for twelve years. I’ve been happily married to my college sweetheart, Bill for 13 years and we were married on my Gran’s sixty-second anniversary.
17. I get Madeline Stowe and Mary Louise Parker confused. Of course, I used to get Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro confused back in the day, too – the movie Heat gave me issues.
18. One of the first poems I ever wrote was called “The World’s First Outer Space Ballad” and I’m pretty sure that my mother still has it somewhere at her house.
19. Over the past twelve years, I’ve kept 22 journals.
20. My collecting addictions include dragons, flute player figurines, fountain pens and notebooks.
21. My husband and I think every movie ever made would be infinitely better if Samuel L. Jackson was in it.
So how about y’all? What are some random cool facts you’d like to share?
Jen's Rambling Thoughts... 
Nice list of random facts I don’t know why, but I had to laugh at the not eating canned peaches. Samuel L. Jackson is a good actor. I also find it interesting that your southern roots show, even after so many years in MA. (Referring to the “y’all” at the end of your post :))
I’m glad you enjoyed my post — just a couple of weeks ago a cashier at our local farmer’s market commented on my accent, and honestly I’m glad to know i still have one. I don’t know why I have such a thing against canned peaches – I love peaches but only when they’re fresh from a farm stand. I won’t even eat the flavorless softballs they call peaches at the grocery store anymore either. I guess that’s the price you pay when you live in a rural area that has a lot of fantastic farm stands during the summer. Thanks for stopping by!
I have a copy of War and Peace on the shelf, that I bought myself the year before children arrived in our lives. I still haven’t started on it… It sits there, on the shelf, mocking me.
Well you’ll just have to save it for when the children are grown and you’re retired;) Seriously though it is a wonderful story. Don’t feel bad though, I have a copy of The Brothers Karamazov and every time I look at it, it tells me it wants to stay on the shelf:D
I lov ur blog
Thank you! I appreciate the support! It’s funny, when I started this thing, it was only to share my writing with my family and the few friends who knew about my writing hobby, but now it’s gotten bigger than I ever imagined. Twenty years ago if someone had told me my writing would reach around the world and back, I would have laughed, but now I feel very humbled. Thanks for stopping by!
I thnk I’m going to try this type of writing randomness, as I have recently written about Random Acts Of Kindness.
Hi hula~la! Welcome to my corner of the web. I appreciate your support and look forward to reading your blog as well. I don’t remember what inspired this, but I had fun putting it together.
Thanks for the random facts, Jen. Much fun, and they help me “see” you much better. About the plantain…how do you prepare it? When I lived in Bolivia, we either baked or fried it in strips. Delicious! As for Russia and Russians, there was a time in my youth that I was on a Russian literary binge: Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Solzhenitsyn, Turgenev, Gogol, Chekhov, Gorky, Pasternak, Nabokov, Brodsky. Whew! Wore myself out finally. Ha!
I like fried plantains. I think I like them because you can’t eat them raw, unlike a squishy overly-sweet nasty banana. I can see that list wearing you out – I’ve read Volume One of The Gulag Archipelago and A Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich – guess which one I liked better;) I’ve read War and Peace, plan to read Anna Karinina again after I see the movie, I’ve got a short story collection by Chekov (I read Easter Eve every Easter weekend) and I have a copy of The Brothers Karamazov which will stay on my bookshelf indefinitely. I also love Russian music – Shostakovich and Tschaikovsky are my favorite composers – can’t quite believe they were listening to The Nutcracker during the Trinity test, but that’s for another post. Thanks for commenting my friend:)
One of the typical Bolivian dishes that uses fried plantain is “majao”, which is quite tasty. You can find several different recipes on the Internet. Below is a link to one. The photo shown is awful; there are better ones elsewhere, but the recipe works fine. Charqui is beef jerky, but shredded. A bit of trivia: our word “jerky” actually comes from the Quechua word “ch’arqui”, which means shredded meat which is dried. http://www.boliviabella.com/bolivian-majao.html
I got through two volumes of “The Gulag Archipelago”, but after reading so much of the horrible atrocities, I became psychologically ill and couldn’t go on. Solzhenitsyn’s novels (One Day in the Life…, The First Circle, etc.) are far more palatable, as are his short stories and poems. I really liked his “August 1914”, which I guess you could call an historical novel.
Cool, thanks for the link! I’ll check it out. I feel like I always learn a lot from your posts and fiction. I love Spanish/Central American food so I’ll check out the link. I’ll keep August 1914 on my reading list. His writing can be tragic, but then again, much of Russian history is. I learned on History Channel that the Vikings actually founded Moscow and gave Russia its name – they called themselves the Russ, which meant “people who row” and referred to their longboats. Fascinating stuff to be sure.
Didn’t know that about the Vikings. Very interesting. By the way, if you haven’t read Solzhenitsyn’s “Matryona’s House and Other Stories,” by all means add it to your list. Matryona’s House is a novella; wonderful. Also loved the other short stories in the book.