25 Other Things About Me

Okay that was fun, but kind of boring. So let me try this again:

1. I cannot roll my tongue or raise one eyebrow. This annoys me. Particularly the eyebrow.
2. Every car I have owned has been a Mazda. One 323, two Proteges, and now a Miata. My next car will be another Miata.
3. There is nothing better than laughing.
4. I met my first best friend when I was four. We still talk, we still laugh together, nearly 40 years later.
5. Michelle (see #4) and I spent longer than most kids living in a fantasy world. We had a lengthy backstory and returned to these characters each time we played together for at least a year. She was named Icabod. I was twins named Dooditch (the good one) and Doolitch (the bad one).
6. My father was an editor for Merriam-Webster - he is the first Assistant Editor listed in the 1955 edition of the Unabridged Dictionary. I used to put an asterisk by his name in every edition I came across. I am a dictionary vandal.
7. Mother is a coloratura soprano and was a librarian. I am a 1st Alto but my mother swears to this day that I am a 2nd Soprano. I'm not a librarian but love to sort, categorize and organize things.
8. I have a birthmark on my right thigh that is shaped exactly like the top part of an exclamation point. I have another on my side that is shaped exactly like the bottom part of an exclamation point.
9. Ask me at nearly any time where I'd like to be, and I will tell you I want to be standing in the Pacific Ocean off a Hawaiian beach, jumping in the waves.
10. My shoe, hat and ring size are all the same - size 7.
11. I will stop and watch the last 1/2 hour of The Shawshank Redemption every time I come across it. And I have and will cry each time I see Morgan Freeman walk down that beach.
12. During the 1977-78 seasons, I spent each Trailblazers game in front of the tv keeping track of all the stats. I had a HUGE crush on Dave Twardzik.
13. My lab partner and I kept our pigeon when we finished "Pigeon Lab" (Behavioral Psychology) in college. His name was Roger-Charley because we could not agree on a name.
14. I am waiting for David James Duncan to write something (fiction) as wonderful as The Brothers K or The River Why.
15. Piglet and I go way back. I am known by some as a Piglet, though I am much more assertive and outspoken than Piglet. Read the Tao of Pooh - it seriously changed my life.
16. I believe in Reincarnation and the Rainbow Bridge. They are not mutually exclusive.
17. I wish I had turn signals
18. I have a soundtrack. I wish you could hear it.
19. The absolute highlight of my 30th birthday party was a very aggressive game of Spoons.
20. Between the ages of 12 and 21, I intended to work with Autistic Children.
21. INFJ. Strategic-Input-Achiever-Communication-Intellection. Cancer. 9.
22. I love river otters. I do not think sea otters are quite as cute.
23. As I type this, both dogs are farting. I have moved around the living room 3 times now. Damn you Alpo!!!
24. I had a boss tell me once that I was like Mary Tyler Moore - or like a big glass of milk. Good girl.... me?
25. I swear like a sailor. It is a chore for me to NOT swear most of the time.

25 Things

There's this task rolling around Facebook - 25 random things about you. I've looked at this thing for weeks - every day two or three people I know post their things, and I generally read them. I find out interesting tidbits that I would not have otherwise known. I mean that's the point, right?

Being "tagged" means I am supposed to reciprocate with my own list of 25. I am never sure if people tag me because they are interested, because they want me to suffer, or because I might be one of the 10 people on the entire Intertubez that has not completed the task.

So here's what I'm thinking. I may as well use my little blog here to see if there is any chance I can find 25 things to report. This may take a while.

1. On my first day of Kindergarten, I wore a dress that matched exactly the dress my mother made for my beloved Raggedy Ann doll. Having red hair myself, the resemblance was uncanny.
2. I was supposed to wear corrective shoes as a child. I threw them out the window every morning (an idea my brother put in my head) until my mother finally gave up. I am still knock-kneed and pigeon-toed.
3. I have been acting for nearly 30 years. Longer if you count the maid I played in some elementary school production of some sort when I was in the 5th grade. I remember the outfit but nothing else. Who put the 5th grader in the French Maid outfit??
4. I believe Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare's plays. But everyone needs a little creative help sometimes.
5. Yes, my hair is naturally red. No, I will not prove it to you.
6. I have been married three times. The first time I was too young. The second time I was too old. The third time is just right.
7. On the day of my second wedding, I totalled my car driving to the church, we had a fire during the ceremony, and I spent my wedding night in the emergency room. But by god it was a hell of a wedding.
8. I used to work at Lewis & Clark College. I had a number of different jobs, and for most of my 10 years there I had an office in the Library. My best friend (who was the Library's Circulation Manager) and I would walk around the library building as she opened up in the morning, doing The Ministry of Silly Walks and/or speaking in Mister Rogers' Miss Kitty language (Meow Meow Dorks Meow Meow).
9. We also discovered an electrical fire in the media services area one morning. Much excitement, no injuries, lots of damage to computers and other assorted electronics.
10. During one performance of Mousetrap (I was playing Mollie, the female lead), I made a quick exit at the beginning of the show, ran my eye socket into the corner of a shelf, and played the rest of the show with a rapidly swelling black eye. Kept the black eye for 6 weeks, and now the shelf has foam on it in honor of my infinite grace.
11. I have an inner Latina. My husband (who is Puerto Rican) does his best to teach me to Salsa and I do pretty well for a woman of Scottish decent.
12. I can do a mean Axl Rose impression. Or at least I could in the late '80's. Once again, a bit of alcohol, fire up Welcome to the Jungle on your iPod, and something disturbing is bound to happen.
13. When I was in the 7th grade, I ran track. No one told me that the 440 (as it was known back in the dark ages) was not a sprint. I won every race I ran... or rather sprinted. So as not to continue the race/throw up cycle, The following year I switched to basketball, and played Center. I was allowed to play only because I was about 6 inches taller than all the other girls. I am not athletic, nor terribly graceful (see #10).
14. I believe that acting is a profound art, and that the process of coming together with other actors to produce a show is a sacred event. So don't f**k it up.
15. I started my job at Intel on December 1, 1997. Two months later - nearly to the day - I was rear ended by a log truck on the freeway. While I waited for the ambulance/police etc., multiple people driving by actually flipped me off for being in the way. Commuters suck.
16. When I started kindergarten, I was able to read well enough that they sent me up a grade or two just for the reading portion of the day. However, I was so socially shy that when asked to read aloud to the class, I crawled under the teachers desk and hyperventilated. Today, not only do I act, but I thoroughly enjoy presenting at large conferences. Go figure.
17. I lived in New York briefly during college. I would move back in a heartbeat.
18. I threw up AND passed out at a David Cassidy concert in 1972. I was 7. When I saw him live 30 years later, I nearly did the same thing. First love dies hard.
19. I can recite a great deal of Eddie Izzard's Dress to Kill performance by heart. And Glorious. And Definite Article. And.....
20. My second husband, Joshua Westhaver, was an incredible man. Goofy, funny, intelligent, beautiful, kind, and a fantastic soul. He died on December 11, 2008. I found out on Facebook. Someday that will make an interesting story. Right now it's still sad.
21. I grew up in the largest town on the Oregon Coast - Coos Bay. For years (since high school) I have visited an uprooted tree that sits on an amazing trail along the cliffs, overlooking the ocean. When I first started visiting the tree, the roots spanned over 20 feet. When I visited last August, it was gone. Time does that.
22. I sing, okay? People ask me and I say no. But I had many years of voice lessons and I sang in various types of choirs for years. So ya, I sing.
23. I played Joan of Arc once. Learned some stage combat - god did I LOVE fighting with a sword. Why won't anyone let me do stage combat anymore? (see #10)
24. I played Lady Macbeth. Stage blood. Mmmmm. All time favorite role.
25. My very first boyfriend was named Bruce Lee. I kid you not.

Okay, so there it my first attempt. Nothing on this list is at all interesting. But I'll look at it for a while and then perhaps I'll post it on FB and be done with that exercise.

And now down to business

So what's the real reason I'm doing this? What is the Siren singing about?

The real point is that I've been reading and once in a while posting to a particular blog:

http://memoriesofjoshuawesthaver.blogspot.com/

This is a fantastic blog, created by a great man who loved a great man as his best friend for 20 years. Josh Westhaver - Joshua - was a wonderful man. Not just a great man, but a great human. He passed away on December 11, 2008. The blog is a wonderful way to honor Josh (I guess he's always going to be Josh to me), and I read it regularly. There are many contributors - friends from the distant past and friends from the immediate past.

And me. The ex-wife.

My stories are all weird. My photos are of Josh and I together. Wedding photos. Just generally having fun and holding on to each other. Life as a married couple. So while I try to dig up stories appropriate for a blog that friends near and far would want to read, I have this little side project where I can submit my thoughts to the great Ethosphere Gods.

That and the fact that I need a place for randomness. For whatever the Siren's song is today. Less formal than my other blog: http://allisonanderson.wordpress.com/. That one has been idle for a long time, waiting for me to come up with something intelligent to discuss. I have a plan to get that back on track. I have a lot of plans.

Plans are a way to cope with grief.

And now my break is over and I'm back to work.

How many sirens does it take to write a blog?

Sirens on the Rocks. It *could* be a drink. But it is not. I had another blog with the same name:

http://sirensrock.blogspot.com/

But the account was somehow lost in some sort of Blogger Google shuffle. So it sits there and I cannot access it without ending up in Intertubez Hell. It's there (look at the link) but it isn't on my dashboard anymore. So now I have the exact same blog, except that it's not.

I want to write, but as it turns out, getting up at 3am to watch the Innauguration of Barack Hussein Obama it beginning to catch up with me. So this is another test, that will lead to the other blog that started out as Sirens on the Rocks.

May I have another Siren on the Rocks, bartender?

Does the siren still sing?

This is just a test. I'm recreating my Sirens on the Rocks blog, a little-bitty secret blog that no one will find.