G. Knerd

This, Dear Readers, just happens to be my 100th post, and I thought it would be fun to give you a list of 100 things about me that you may not have known before.

1. I’m a Gemini
2. I don’t believe in astrology, unless it says good things about me
3. I am amazing at procrastination
4. Even though I always hate the rush and stress of doing something right up against the deadline I never seem to learn to plan ahead in any meaningful way
5. I love doing home improvement
6. Home improvement always takes at least 3 times longer and costs twice as much as I thought it would
7. I still believe that I could reasonably knit a sweater in a weekend given enough downtime
8. I love cooking, especially for large groups of people
9. I prefer doing things by hand rather than using a machine in the kitchen
10. My dream life involves a house with a yard, several fruit trees, and plenty of time to garden, cook, and knit – not necessarily in that order
11. I’m going to start canning things soon
12. I’ve vowed not to own sheep unless there is a massive spike in the price of wool
13. Ditto for alpacas and any other fiber animal
14. I have not ruled out fiber producing plants however
15. I also dream of having a garden of dye plants
16. I’m worse at sticking to my yarn diet when there are people with me on my trip to the store (even if they’re not enabling me)
17. I think the Kinect is a viable gym membership replacement
18. Based on how winded I get after playing a few rounds I’m not in great shape
19. I love to ski
20. When I started 20 years ago I hated skiing and tried to quit for a few years
21. I had the same response to knitting when I first started at 5
22. When I picked up knitting again when I was 12, I couldn’t remember how to cast on so I just tied a slip knot for each stitch
23. I also didn’t cast on enough stitches or knit long enough before decreasing so that project (which was supposed to be a hat) became a hot pink mottled yarmulke
24. I still do not know anyone who wants a hot pink mottled yarmulke
25. I used to know every line in Romeo and Juliet
26. That was because I was in love with Leonardo di Caprio and I watched the Baz Luhrmann movie more than was strictly healthy
27. I also had a period where I watched She’s All That every day
28. I hate it when movies or books have sad endings and often rewrite them for myself
29. When I watch Moulin Rouge I stop the movie when the theater curtain goes down on their performance and tell myself that she gets better and they both live long and happy lives together
30. I’m totally fine with twisting someone else’s artistic vision with my own interpretation if it makes me happier
31. When I graduated high school, I was convinced that I was going to be a famous actress, to the point that I moved to LA for a year
32. While in LA, I didn’t actually do much to get “noticed”, although I did get “scouted” once
33. By the time I left LA to come home to the Seattle area, I had decided that I was going to be a chemist instead
34. A random elective class at the end of my third year of college convinced me to double major in computer science as well
35. It only took me an extra year to graduate with the two degrees, one in CS and one in American Cancer Society certified chemistry
36. I can’t talk about what a chemist can do with 3 oz of liquid, especially while I’m waiting in line to go through security at the airport
37. I went to college at the University of Washington, but I’ve never attended a Husky game
38. In high school, I did work concessions at a couple Husky games to raise money for the Speech and Debate team
39. You would not believe how incredibly gross your hands smell after working concessions at a football game for a few hours.  Don’t even get me started on cleaning out the hotdog cooker.
40. In my life, I’ve been vegetarian for three separate periods of varying lengths.  The last period was my senior year of high school, and only ended when I ran out of money to pay for college and the Korean restaurant I worked at gave me a bowl of something to eat.  I didn’t ask questions about what was in it, and I don’t think they would have understood me if I’d tried anyway.
41. I still feel morally superior if I choose not to eat meat at a particular meal
42. This is complicated by the fact that I think steak, bacon, and corned beef are the best things ever
43. My favorite color is green (which you probably did know), and I’ve memorized the hex code for my particular shade: #7dd01a
44. I’ve never actually knit a pattern without changing something
45. Someday I want to write knitting patterns
46. I worry that people will change them
47. I nicknamed the kitties Monkey Kitty and Bear Kitty because I think they resemble those animals.  At some angles I also sometimes think that Bear Kitty looks like a snake or a dinosaur.  It rarely occurs to me that they’re just cats.
48. I drink a lot of water in the average day – usually around 4-5 liters
49. I don’t like drinking soda at all – the bubbles hurt
50. If I have to drink a soda, I’ll try to “flatten” it first – this habit made a few of my college professors very nervous when I did it in a lecture with a bottle of Pepsi
51. I consider caffeine to be a medicinal drug, at least when I’m using it.  Nothing else is as effective at getting rid of my headaches.
52. If I have caffeine without having a headache, I act like I’ve just had crack
53. I swear a lot and I’m somewhat vulgar when I’m bored
54. When I was a kid, I was the person my friends’ parents said they should try to emulate
55. I thought that was a good sign that parents had no idea what was really going on
56. I once tried to spin cat hair (note: not a great idea, although I still think it would totally work actually)
57. At one point in college I had a bad bout of insomnia and ended up unable to sleep for three nights
58. By the end of the fourth day with no sleep, I started imagining that there was something scritching on the inside of my backpack.  The only coherent thought I could string together about it was, “That can’t possibly be real, but I’m not going to check because that’s how horror movies start.”
59. That was the point that I decided I was no longer capable of taking care of myself and went to a friend’s house to have them babysit me
60. They waited until I fell asleep watching a movie and then tricked me into thinking I’d slept past the departure time for my flight in the morning.  I was halfway out the door before they stopped laughing enough to stop me from running into the street.
61. I like practical jokes, but I’m not very good at playing them
62. I hate getting up in the morning, but I do my best work before 10AM
63. In college I would wake up at 3AM to write my papers, because I couldn’t focus at any other time
64. When I was very little, I used to wake up before anyone else and fill the morning hours where I was alone with “experiments”
65. Those “experiments” directly led to me stapling my own finger and cutting the webbing between my fingers with a pair of safety scissors, within a couple weeks of each other, on purpose, to “see if it would do it”
66. I’m willing to sacrifice a lot in the pursuit of science
67. Sometimes I find myself over-thinking things in dangerous ways, like when I think that I’ll pour the noodle water through a strainer back into the same pot because it’s exactly the right size to hold the water after the noodles are in the strainer and that way I don’t need to get another pot dirty.  There’s really only one problem with that plan, though…
68. I also dabble with the idea that someday I’ll be a writer of books of fiction.  This is somewhat hampered by my habit of starting a story because I’ve got an idea for a really good scene without having much of a feeling for how the plot will tie itself up.
69. I have finished one novel-length manuscript, but it was terrible and I’m glad no one actually published it
70. That particular book was started as a way to “fix” the ending of a series that my then-favorite author LJ Smith had written where the guy sacrifices himself in the end to save the girl (see #30), but it veered off in its own direction pretty quickly
71. There have been three aborted attempts to re-write that book, but I never seem to get past the 30% mark before I decide it’s not good enough and start over again
72. In my head, there are also three sequels to that book with relatively fleshed out plots (or, at least, they used to be fleshed out…now they’re a little fuzzy)
73. I tend to do laundry every 3-4 weeks, which means I own a lot of underwear and socks (and various other clothing)
74. Once I started doing the Blanket Thief’s laundry, it was clear that we needed to buy him more clothes, since what he had really couldn’t last more than a week and a half without running out of something
75. Washing and folding 4 weeks worth of laundry gives me a big sense of accomplishment, like I’ve personally battled entropy and won
76. I really love chemistry jokes, and I think Chemistry Cat is the awesomest thing ever since it’s LOLcats + using my chemistry degree.  The Blanket Thief was super impressed when I predicted the punch line to this one.
77. If you want to get on my good side, ask me something that I can answer with chemistry
78. I get a huge kick out of helping people and generally doing “good”, but I think altruism is a bad practice
79. I used to be a bit of a Randroid, but have since decided that the system isn’t fair enough to just say everyone is on their own
80. I’ve never affiliated with a particular political party
81. I like to calculate how many stitches are in a project, but I’ve discovered that most other people don’t want me to tell them that information
82. I always sleep on my stomach, face turned to the right, left arm under my sternum and right arm curled around me and locking the blankets in place
83. Now that I’ve learned to lock the blankets in place, the Blanket Thief is much less likely to be successful when attempting to steal the covers.  I have, however, woken up a few times to have him tugging at them hard enough to partially roll me over.
84. I almost never move in my sleep, although I will toss around a lot trying to get to sleep
85. I’m not sure why I move so much trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in, when there’s only one position I ever do sleep in
86. My thought processes aren’t great when tired.  My response to being told to go to bed late at night is usually, “No!  I’m too tired to go to bed!”
87. It’s almost impossible for me to fall asleep when I’m reading a book, and I get sucked into books really easily.  This has caused me to see the wrong side of the sunrise on more than one occasion.
88. I like to think that I’m a go-getter and that I need purpose in my life, but I have a sneaky suspicion that if I had #s 10, 11, 14, and 15 that I would not actually need anything else to fill my time
89. I avoid “queue”ing programs (Ravelry, Netflix) because I’ve realized that the world can produce things I want to do faster than I can do them, and if I have a list of things I know I’ll never finish it just stresses me out
90. I like closure and completing things
91. The number of unfinished objects in my house and the length of time they’ve been in that state seem to be a direct contradiction to #90, but I still stand by it
92. I believe life is easier if you recognize that there are a lot of situations where you can be right, or you can get what you want, but you can’t have both
93. Sometimes, though, what I want is to be right, so it’s win-win for me
94. I’ve put a moratorium on acquiring new hobbies and largely stuck to it, despite being exposed to hand quilting, tatting, and glassblowing all in the last couple months
95. I can sing along to almost anything, even if I haven’t heard it before
96. That makes me top pick for vocals when playing Rock Band with a bunch of my friends
97. On the other hand, being a high soprano makes singing rock music somewhat difficult, as most of it is in an alto-tenor range
98. Right now, I’m really looking forward to knitting myself some lacy scarves and maybe a sweater or three
99. I still have to finish the Wedding Blanket II and the cARGHdigan before doing so, which means I don’t think I’ll be getting woolies for myself anytime soon (socks don’t count)
100. The last person for whom I would knit a blanket just got engaged, so we’re going to be looking at Wedding Blanket III soon…