Five Fun Facts

I got tagged for this meme by my sister Rachel. I'm supposed to write five things that my vast blogging audience doesn't know about me. Seeing as the majority of my audience is family, this is going to be nearly impossible. So instead I'll try for things that they knew but may have forgotten about me.

1. I have perfect pitch. No, not baseball. If you sing or play a note, I know what pitch it is. It's a fun parlor trick and comes in handy when you find yourself without a pitchpipe or other source of tuning, but mostly it's a royal pain for a variety of reasons. First of all, listening to someone singing or playing off key can be excrutiatingly painful. Secondly, it means that I am unable to read music and transpose it. So if there's a song that's too high for me, too bad; I have to sight-read it in that key or not at all. This also means that I can't play any instrument that is not tuned to the key of C, such as a clarinet or trumpet.

2. I once convinced a bunch of people that I was French. It was my freshman year of college, and I had just gotten back from France. I spoke French a lot better than I do now, and I did a really good French accent too. Whenever I would visit Jeff in his dorm across campus from where I lived (he lived on South Campus, I lived on North Campus), I would speak to the person at the desk in my faux French accent and pretend to be from France. I was masquerading as a foreigner before Borat even thought of it! But I did not incite anyone with misogynistic or anti-Semitic remarks. I was always very polite and everyone liked me. I ran into trouble though when I ran into a person that the French me knew, hanging out with a person that the American me knew.

3. I have this recurring dream about owning a historical site. Every so often, I dream about this historical home I inherited from someone-or-another. I don't actually own a historical site, but in this dream I have inherited the former home of an obscure poet. There's some sort of a trust that runs the historical site and I don't have to do anything but own the place. In addition to giving tours, they periodically host special weekends like "Christmas with Obscure Poet," depicting how he celebrated Christmas or whatever. The last time I had this dream, I was explaining to my sister Laura that I inherited this historical house. I had invited her along to the special Christmas celebration with me. I got free admission since I owned the place. I have no idea why I have this dream.

4.When I was a kid, I used to pick my nose at night and wipe it on the back of my headboard. This caused the headboard to become kind of crusty. When my parents got divorced, my mom took my bedroom furniture. I take a certain passive-aggressive delight in knowing that (at least according to my scouts' reports) the headboard is still booger-encrusted. Yes, that was gross. That's why I haven't exactly broadcast this humorous tidbit.

5. I love to bake rolls. It is one of my favorite activities. I especially enjoy dividing the dough into parts. I think this is my inner mathematician.

Now I'm supposed to tag others to do this meme. Well, of course I'm going to tag Ginger and Jeff. And anybody else who wants to do it. Post a link to it here, or if you'd like, do your list in the comments section.