25 things

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

***** Disclaimer... I didn't make it to 25 people ******

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

1. I am married going on 9 years this year – could’ve done a much better job of being a husband (and trying to fix that).
2. I am amazed every day at how cool my son is.
3. I’ve moved 32 times in 36 years. I attended 11 schools in 13 years, from K-12, including 4 high schools in 3 years.
********** edit: 33 times. I was looking at my notes on my desk from yesterday when I was counting the moves, and I missed one. This also doesn't count times I moved *back* to somewhere I'd lived, like moving home for the summer from campus during undergrad.
4. My parents met in the Army, and my mom outranked my dad.
5. I can often narrow down a song’s year of release/popularity to within a few months because I can often remember where I was living when it was released.
6. I wrote my first computer program in BASIC in 1981 on a Commodore PET computer. I wrote my most recent one about two years after that.
7. After 9+ years of college, 4 years in the Army, and 4 years working at Kinko’s, I still can’t stand coffee.
8. I am conversant in German. I don’t claim fluency because I can’t write it very well and my grammar is atrocious. But I have no problem traveling around and carrying on conversations.
9. I’ve been playing soccer since age 6. I’ve played 2 seasons of baseball, and was pretty bad both times. I’ve played 1 season of basketball and was the high scorer for the league that year.
10. I was a DJ in college for a radio station, and had a ton of fun my senior year on the Friday afternoon show.
11. In high school, Dartmouth was my dream school.
12. I can’t ever remember playing more than 1 gig with the exact same band lineup while I was in college.
13. I’ve traveled all over Europe, and lived there 8.5 years. But it’s the only continent outside of North America I’ve traveled to (I’m 2 continents behind my wife).
14. I’ve only had 1 team of which I’m a fan win a championship while I was cheering for them, and that was this year’s Columbus Crew. I can’t really count the Carolina Hurricanes because I’m not a big hockey fan. NC State won their hoops titles before I cared. LSU winning BCS titles is great, but my primary NCAAF loyalty is NC State.
15. My family used to have a reading night once a week where my dad would read a chapter of a story to us (I specifically remember Swiss Family Robinson, and The Phantom Tollbooth). I want to start that with my family now that Kieran’s old enough.
16. My favorite cities to visit are San Francisco and London.
17. I visited Budapest, Hungary for Spring Break in 1985, while the Iron Curtain was still up. The thing I remember most was the small local restaurant where we ate for many of our meals.
18. I went to Prom three of my four years in high school. One of those years was before I was even attending *that* particular high school.
19. My grandmother’s youngest brother was KIA in Italy in WWII, and at one point there was a building at Ft Knox named after him.
20. I am a pack rat about certain things – games, music, books – but I lack sentimentality about clothes. They don’t fit, they get donated.
21. My favorite bands are Triumph, Thin Lizzy, Seven Nations, Mother Love Bone, and Van Morrison. With Van Morrison gaining as I get older. That said, I’ve seen The Black Crowes live 3 times and they’ve been fantastic every time.
22. I earned more high school varsity letters for Cross Country (2) than Soccer (1).
23. I once had a driver’s license that was legally valid without a photo or signature.
24. I grew up with cats, and the first dogs I ever had were when I moved in with my wife; the dogs were awesome and I miss them.
25. I enjoy candlelight and have resolved to light more candles around the house from now on.


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