Tagged and Quirky

Yikes! I’ve been tagged, which means I need to get my shit together and figure out how to embed a link into my post. Shinejil tagged me (see the pretty link?), so now I have to expose my quirkiness for all.

Here are the rules:

1) Link to the person who tagged you.

2) Post the rules.

3) Share six non-important things / habits / quirks about yourself.

4) Tag at least three people.

5) Make sure the people you tagged KNOW you tagged them by commenting what you did.

Things that make my strange, odd, different, quirky:

1. When I’m depressed I like to eat ramen noodles raw. I mean dry. I mean whatever it is you call it when they’re straight out of the bag. I break up the square and dip the pieces in the spice packet first. Mmm… salty…. Add Gatorade and it’s the ultimate hangover cure. (Gatorade and French fries works pretty good, too.)

2. I love girly TV shows. My guiltiest of guilty pleasures is America’s Next Top Model, but I’m also going nuts for Gossip Girl right now. Period romances also totally do it for me. Like the BBC's Pride and Prejudice miniseries (mentally drooling over Colin Firth right now). And I’m really not a girly-girl, which makes my girl-TV obsession that much stranger.

3. I know I just said I'm not a girly-girl, so this will sound funny. I was in a couple of beauty pageants when I was a young teen. (Don’t get excited, ladies. Believe me, you do not have to be beautiful to be in a pageant. You just have to pay the entry fee.) After that, my BFF and I made a pact that we would do the “city” level of Miss America when we turned 18. By the time that happened, we were living in different cities, but we still both did it. So I have, indeed, participated in the lowest level of the plasticine machine that is the Miss America Pageant, even though in two months I was getting the hell out of my ass-backwards state to go to college. No, of course I didn’t win. But I did look fabulous in a size-7 (sigh) gold lamé (without the accent mark that comes out “lame”) floor-length evening gown. (And I actually learned something, too. I was a kind of punked-out goth-ish chick in HS, who I hung with the debate/drama crowd or the science nerds. Before the Miss [City] Pageant I had never hung out with—or maybe even spoken to—a cheerleader or dance team girl. But when I did the pageant with them, I found out they were really sweet girls. A bit of a Breakfast-Club-in-reverse kind of experience, you know?)

4. I am addicted to nature documentaries. Planet Earth is, of course, the greatest ever, but I've made my way through the entire Ocean Blue, Life of Birds, and now the creepy-crawly Life in the Undergrowth. I've been jonesing so bad lately I've started Tivoing Nova. Something about science and nature is just so soothing right now. Like even though that mean fox is eating that tiny chickie, it's okay, because the fox is doing is to feed her babies, and all is right with the world. Hmmm... Whatever could this mean?

5. When I was in college I slept with a guy that is now a really successful author, especially in the comic-book world. I was a freshman, and he was a senior, and it was, in fact, the week before graduation. Can it get any more cliché? Not only do I take great pride in this brush with fame, my husband does as well. He’ll be showing one of this guy’s comic books to a friend, and say, “you know, H slept with the guy that wrote this.”

6. I have four tattoos on my back. I haven’t had a new one in 8 or 9 years. But I still fantasize about what the new one will look like. When I get really depressed, or bored, or stressed, I try to figure out what my next tattoo design will be.

Most of my "regulars" have already done this, so I'm going to tag a couple of long-shots. Come out and play, Jen, who writes "Maybe If You Just Relax" (best blog name EVER), Malloryn at "Quest for a Lifetime", and Working Girl, over at "Barren by the Bay".