Twenty-Five Things

This is a "meme" (in the colloquial definition) that's been going around Facebook. It has grown a bit over time - when I was originally tagged here last October it was just seven things. I am including the Facebook header since this will be cross-posted on Facebook. I won't tag anybody, not really, but I will flag the people I especially want to notice this.


Create your own note, list 25 things about you that others might not know about and then tag your friends (in the upper right corner). You must tag me in it too.

1. I have (as of this writing) nearly 1,800 posts on my blog, Another Monkey.
2. If there's something I haven't told you about myself there, it's probably because I don't want you to know.
3. I drive a 1996 Toyota Tercel 4-door DX with over 300,000 miles on it.
4. My daily commute is 66.6 miles, round-trip.
5. I don't believe in killing unnecessarily, even insects. I have captured and released bees, wasps, and hornets that have been inside buildings, and I know how to lead a housefly out of a house. (They're photophilic* - they move towards light. Darken the room the fly is in and use a flashlight to lead it towards an outside door. Then let it out of the house.)
6. I double-majored in Physics and Philosophy at a Jesuit liberal arts college (the University of Scranton.)
7. I planned to get my graduate degree in Physics at Bryn Mawr, where they specialized in Non-Linear Dynamics, but Bryn Mawr put ALL graduate programs on hold for incoming students that year.
8. I knew this before the head of the Physics department at Bryn Mawr did.
9. I did one semester of grad work at the University of Delaware, but washed out very quickly.
10. I broke two cars while learning to drive.
11. I have been described as being "too intense."
12. I consider myself unintense to the point of being nearly catatonic at times.
13. I believe I have lost at least one longtime friend because of my blog.
14. I believe this is because she thought I had said something terrible about her.
15. I was actually referring to her mother.
16. I have been to Ireland three times, with a side trip to London once.
17. I have "contact memory". By touching an object, I can remember everything I have ever associated with that object. Well, almost everything.
18. This is very useful when I am trying to remember something I read in a book. I only have to touch the book, and I can (usually) remember (almost) everything I have ever read in it.
19. I use a related skill to encode memories of vacations into books that I read while I am on vacation. As I re-read the book I re-experience the events of the vacation.
20. I bought my grandmother's old house in 2006.
21. I still haven't moved in.
22. I can communicate with dogs, cats, pre-verbal children, and at least one rhinoceros.
23. My hearing is least sensitive in the range of most human voices.
24. I have mild prospagnosia prosopagnosia. I have tremendous difficulty recognizing and reconstructing faces.
25. I don't do memes. Most of the time.
    

*I think I should have said "phototropic" which can mean "tends to move towards light" as well as "tends to grow towards light."