100 Things About Me - Round 2

Time to do a second "100 Things About Me" list. You can find the first 100 from August, 2006 over here. No guarantee that there's not a repeat or two, but I hope not!

1. I am the oldest of 4 children, the only son. I’m also the only one not married. Never married, no kids, no pets.
2. I have taught almost all grades from 1st through college.
3. I tend to be possessive of my friends. I don’t like sharing much. Regardless of their gender. I’ve been known to be jealous, but not to the degree that I’d embarrass myself.
4. What you see in my blog is pretty much who I am. I’ve considered starting a blog under a different name, but my personality would just come through anyway.
5. I am usually pretty good with dates. I will mark dates on a calendar and refer to it semi-regularly. I still know birthdays of friends from my Idaho days.
6. I find it difficult to talk about sex. I am as rude, crude and socially unacceptable as the worst of them. I can tell dirty jokes all night. I can be totally inappropriate at all the wrong times. But between my parents and my good Catholic upbringing, I’ve been instilled with a strong sense of respect towards women. Maybe too strong at times.
7. I have an outgoing personality, and I am often the center of attention with a group of people, but that hides the fact that I’m actually fairly shy.
8. If I’ve had a few beers, that shyness seems to disappear, and I can be quite direct.
9. I tend to get very involved with my friends’ problems. I have the unfortunate trait that I honestly care about people. Especially my close friends.
   
10. I am not happy with my current employment situation over the past 17 years. In spite of the fact that it’s allowed me to do the music things that I do. I’ve been stuck in a rut and am not sure how to get out. Or if I really want to.
11. I rarely eat breakfast.
12. Unless it’s at night.
13. Over the past 20 years, I’ve found that I can tear up to just about anything on TV. Same with a lot of movies. Didn’t used to be like that.
14. I watched both the Challenger and Columbia disasters on TV as they were happening. I also watched the second jet hit the WTC live on TV. I watched Lee Harvey Oswald get shot live on TV.
    
15. I took my GREs on my 25th birthday.
16. I smoked pot once just before my freshman year of high school and got sicker than a dog. I’ve never touched it since.
17. I’ve never bothered trying any other illegal drugs.
    
18. I’ve been a beer drinker since I was 16, but got a head start on that when my dad would have me grab him a beer from the fridge in the garage. I’d open it and take a couple of swigs before giving it to him. I thought I was getting away with something, but I’m sure he knew full well what was going on.
    
19. My sisters used to do the same thing.
20. The only other cocktail I might order anymore is gin & tonic. Tanqueray, if possible.
21. Tequila and I parted ways permanently the day after my 19th birthday.
22. In my prime, I could do shots of just about anything and drink everyone under the table. Now I just shake my head at those who think that’s the way to enjoy drinking.
23. I’ve seen all three of my sisters naked in at least their mid-teens. Nothing weird or kinky. Just a fact.
24. I can’t think of anything that really terrifies me. In a scary way.
25. I’ve never had a family member die in a war. I had a great-uncle who spent 3 years as a POW in WWII before he was released.
    
26. I saved a girl from drowning on an afternoon float trip. She was trapped under a beaver dam, and I pulled her out.
27. I’ve broken my nose, both thumbs, my right ankle, right elbow, left wrist, back (twice), both little toes, one big toe and once dislocated my jaw. I’ve also sprained both my ankles and my left knee.
28. I’ve never been in a fist fight.
29. It’s been years ago, but I’ve skinny-dipped with strangers.
30. It’s also been years ago, but I’ve skinny-dipped with friends.
31. The closest thing I’ve had to group sex is waking up with my girlfriend and finding my college roommate having sex with his girfriend. They both looked at us and didn’t miss a beat (so to speak), so we decided we could too!
32. My time in jail was a joke. Certainly did nothing for me other than have total contempt for the legal system.
    
33. I found out that I could arrange music while in jail. Without a piano in front of me! My first piece—re-writing my high school’s song at the request of their band director (a friend of mine). Did it all from my jail bed, and in my head.
34. While I can arrange music, I couldn’t write a song to save my soul. I don’t have a creative bone in my body. Arranging music is nothing more than an accepted style of plagiarism, and I’m very good that.
35. Despite all my years of living in Montana, I don’t hunt, fish, skate or ski.
36. I prefer taking pictures with my old camera, and would continue using it if film costs/developing were free!
37. I have well over 1000 LPs in storage that I haven’t listened to in over 17 years.
38. I don’t generally rent DVDs or watch movies. Either at home or at the theater.
39. As much as I enjoy listening to or playing classical music, attending an orchestra concert usually bores me, unless it’s a REALLY good orchestra or REALLY good program.
40. I have a bad habit of correcting things. Grammar, spelling, procedures, etc.
41. I also have a bad habit of critiquing other musical events, particularly if I’m in the audience.
42. As a bachelor, I have found that I don’t necessarily need to have matching furniture or a lot of knick-knacks. I use the same headboard that I had in junior high.
43. I have no tattoos, though I’ve given a little bit of thought to getting one. Nothing obnoxious.
44. I have no piercings, and doubt that I ever will.
45. I am fairly self-ridiculing. I can laugh at myself, and often do. It’s allowed me to deal with those who feel they have to do the same thing to me.
46. I’m generally non-confrontational. But I often play the devil’s advocate. And I will look for all the loopholes in things.
47. I learned from my time in jail that I can’t worry about the past. You can’t change it. You have to always look ahead. Trying to avoid getting into the pitfalls that caught you in the past.
    
48. I have also learned that shit happens that you have no control over, so wasting one’s energies over stewing about it accomplishes nothing. Others who know me mistake that as apathy. I look at it as a chance to look at alternatives.
49. I’m at the point in my life that I can just say, “Hey, this is me and who I am. Deal with it.”
50. I still want people to like me.
51. I don’t want to like certain people, so I don’t, and they rarely can get onto my good side.
52. Going back to the early days, there are people involved with HNT that I wish never would have found it.
53. I am a little uncomfortable with the celebrity that has attached itself to “Os”. Make no mistake—it’s helped me to make some great friends, and I like all the compliments and heaps of praise. But please…I’m just not that important!
54. My preference for birthday cake is German chocolate.
55. My favorite pizza would be pepperoni & sausage.
    
56. I don't particularly like vanilla ice cream, unless it's topping a root beer float.
57. I'm not a fan of dark chocolate. Or peanut butter. Unless part of a PB&J sandwich.
    
58. Deep-fat fried chicken gizzards with hot sauce are to die for!
59. I've never eaten oyster off the half shell, and don't care if I ever do.
60. I've never eaten caviar, and don't care if I ever do.
61. I have eaten escargot, and don't care if I ever do again.
62. I have eaten Rocky Mountain oysters (look it up if you need to), and would do it again.
63. I have eaten calf brains (mixed in with scrambled eggs...yum!) and would do it again.
64. I tend to salt everything, but not to excess.
65. Ketchup is acceptable to add to just about anything. But not to the point that the food is swimming in it.
    
66. I have a great deal of admiration for people who know the music of Tom Lehrer. Even moreso if they can recite his lyrics.
67. I pronounce the word creek as "crick", because that's the correct pronunciation.
68. My favorite color would be blue.
69. I don't particularly like listening to the blues.
70. I don't mind playing the blues.
71. My grandfather was a funeral director. I once slapped a guy who was "sleeping" in one of the caskets. I was about 6 or 7.
72. But I knew that you had to be quiet in the chapel, where there was always a body laying in wait.
73. I ventured down to the forbidden basement once and opened the door. It only took once.
74. I think I would have enjoyed being mortician, and probably disappointed my grandfather that I didn't ever express that to him.
75. But I don't think I could deal well with the huge amount of grief on a daily basis.
76. When push comes to shove, I prefer symmetry.
77. It might not be PC, but I secretly laugh at the pratfalls of others.
    
78. I openly laugh at my own.
79. It took me days before I could get one of those 3-D posters to work. Now I can do it in the blink of an eye.
80. I still have "the" Farrah Fawcett poster somewhere. I wish it were 3-D...
81. I never thought of her as the hottest of the Angels.
82. I used to have to drive the school bus when the band went anywhere when I taught in Idaho.
83. I was pulled over for suspicion of driving while intoxicated while driving the bus home after an away game (absolutely no basis for it. a funny story, actually. 27 years later...)
84. I have never owned a house.
85. I've never flown in a helicopter.
86. I've never jumped out of a plane.
87. I have hopped a freight train, but then was stuck on it for 100 miles. Oops...
88. My first hospital stay was for a tonsillectomy when I was in the 3rd grade, I believe.
89. One of my first TV obsessions was "Dark Shadows", or "The Monkees". I'm not sure which was first...
90. My second toe is longer than my big toe. That's supposed to mean I'm going to be rich, but I haven't seen it happen yet...
91. I often wonder what sort of a father I might have made, but also how my life would be so different than it is if I had been.
    
92. I used to open beer bottles with my teeth at parties, just because I could.
93. Until the day I chipped a tooth. My dad, the dentist, was somewhat disappointed in me.
94. I was an altar boy in my youth.
95. Fr. Kingston used to take us out for burgers after getting us out of class (Catholic grade school) to serve at funerals.
96. Sister Eucharista (really!) taught me how to play "Chopsticks" in any key on the piano in the 5th grade. One of the most important musical lessons I ever learned.
97. In the day, I used to be a fairly decent water skier.
98. But my family didn't own a boat. I had to ski with friends who did.
99. I wish my parents would have bought a cabin on the lake, rather than in the mountains. I would have (and still would) embraced the "lake mentality" in an instant!
100. I had many "guests" up to the mountain cabin anyway.

I can't imagine doing another 100 after this. There's just not that much more to know about me!