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| Mahalo, Amanda! |
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| Thanks to both Amanda & mNg for this one! |
Amanda passed me both The Stylish Blogger Award and Versatile Blogger Award, and mNg tagged me with The Stylish Blogger Award for good measure--and in true mNg style offered the following encouragement when I whined on FB that I was gonna have to dig up an awful lot of random factoids to fulfill the rules of these peer awards:
"You're an interesting person so I'm sure you've got a lot to share :D"So here's 21 bits of trivia about me, for Amanda & mNg, who were curious ;)
1. I earned my BA in Psychology from UC Berkeley, after which I went to work in an outpatient mental health clinic and learned all about Tarasoff warnings, 5150 holds, and clients that bust out the windows in your waiting room.
2. My father believes having a POS for your first car is a rite of passage; mine was an ancient-looking (and smelling! ugh...) 1985 Dodge Omni. It had no functioning A/C, old-as-dirt radio (stereo? are you kidding??), and was so beat down that I could park it at the Coliseum BART station for the maximum 72 hours (while out of town visiting family) and NO ONE ever broke into that thing. Anyone familiar with Oakland knows your car has to be pretty junk for it not to get broken into in that part of town LMAO!
3. I traveled through Russian and Belarus for about two weeks during the summer between my Freshman and Sophomore years in high school as part of a "student ambassador" program. I have never appreciated all I have at home more than when I returned from that trip.
4. I attribute most of my cooking mojo to inherited talent and "lessons" learned helping my dad in the kitchen (sorry Mama!)
5. I'm the oldest child and grandchild (on both sides of my family) and I went and married a youngest child. Eek. But I figure it's practice for when we have kids ;p
6. I was raised on Macs even though in the nonprofit world the PC is king >.<
7. I have three vegetable planting beds in my yard: two boxes in the back and one big crescent-shaped bed in the front. This summer, I'm growing squash, corn, pole beans, cucumbers, basil, sage, spearmint, chamomile, cherry & slicer tomatoes, sweet & chili peppers, chard, and eggplant. There's also a rockin' blackberry bush in the backyard that is covered in green berries right now.
8. When the above mentioned blackberries are ripe, some will be made into cobbler and some frozen to be made into cordials in the fall for holiday gift-giving (one of my Mama's favorites is a cordial I make with blackberries from the yard, elderberries, star anise, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, and ginger). I do not do pie.
9. It was such a long, cold, wet winter here that I had to break down and get a humidifier. After doing a little research online, I settled on a model that was pretty highly rated by customers--it is designed for a baby nursery and is shaped like a penguin (that was the least cutesy one I could find).
10. I've been a member of the National Geographic Society since I was 17--initially, it was a gift from my dad, who had long since given up trying to curb my know-it-all-ness.
11. I read Tarot cards but do not tell fortunes. Fortunes are for cookies, Tarot is for knowing yourself better.
12. My sister does massage therapy and gets most of her supplies--oils, creams, candles, aromatherapy blends--from me. I try to find something non-massage-related to give her along with these items for her birthday and other gifty holidays.
13. The original meaning of my family name is along the lines of "Holly grove." I used to think this was a bit silly since the only holly I'd ever seen were scrubby little bushes in some folks' yards. Then I went to Portland and happened to see an actual holly tree. That was some powerful stuff. My family name is much more dignified now.
14. The worst roommate I ever had as a minor was my sister. The best roommate I ever had as an adult was my sister.
15. I conducted my first crisis intervention when I was around 7 or 8 years old--a friend of mine, whose parents were divorced and who fought constantly with her mother, with whom she lived full-time, called me to say she'd had it and was going to run away. I talked with her on the phone for a solid 30 minutes, then asked her to call me back with her decision either way. Then I negotiated with my parents to let me take the late night call. She called back to say she'd worked things out with her mom and wasn't going to hit the streets.
16. I love snakes. In high school, I used to practice with my academic decathlon teammates in our bio-sci classroom with a live snake wrapped around one wrist and another curled up in my lap.
17. My secret vice is the F/X show Archer. It's hysterical and I adore how they manage to spoof both old school spy movies/shows and more modern elements of pop culture. I recently discovered that my mother is also hooked on Archer, which astounded me because she's so prim-and-proper; just goes to show I'm not the only crazy out there.
18. One paradox about me is that I generally cannot stand horror flicks (there are rare exceptions but most of them literally make me sick to my stomach) but I love novellas and short-stories by Stephen King. Related to this paradox: there's a part of me that wishes Shark Week ran 52 weeks a year. I guess I'm sensitive to the difference between predation and gore for gore's sake.
19. Joss Whedon makes the best stuff on earth.
20. I still have the decoupage wish box my best friend from middle school made for me, and rather than tuck it away in a forgotten box somewhere, I have it in plain sight in my bedroom. In fact, it's in my field of vision whenever I look up from the laptop I'm using to compose this post.
21. I live in the only house in my neighborhood with absolutely no lawn, front or back. I have no lawn because I tore them out. I tore them out because lawn is not natural in the area where I live; it sucks up water like Hummers suck up gas, plus lawn gives me hives. I replaced it with native and drought-tolerant plants. My neighbors used to give me funny looks but now that our city has started metering water they are asking me where to buy the plants I have in my yard. I guess one person really can make a difference ;)
Whew!! Can't believe I managed to come up with 20-something items! Hope that satisfies your curiosity where I'm concerned ;) Now for some new tags:
I am only a small amount of evil Because Andrea is made of awesome and honestly, where else are you gonna see a modern-day travel journal with retro-Hipstamatic pics taken on an iPhone??
Confessions of a Glitterholic Christina has some absolutely gorgeous EOTD looks, plus she swatched every single Antionette's Revolution Cosmetics shade released.
Mama Loves Makeup Just because Elyse is lovely and I'd like to know more about her ;)
Pretty unDead Kayla is a fairly new blogger (not that I'm a veteran by any means lol), a recent convert to indie makeup, and very cool on top of it all. Go check out her blog and give her a hug on your way out <3
To these wonderful people I pass along BOTH the Stylish Blogger and Versatile Blogger awards! Mwahhhahahahahahahaaa!!
General rules of the award(s):
1. Thank the person who gave you the award(s) and link back to them in your blog.
2. Tell everyone 7 things about yourself (per award).
3. Tag more bloggers for the award(s).
4. Contact those bloggers to let them know they've been tagged.
Anything you're burning to confess, good and patient readers? Do tell!
MKA,
Lizzy
