Saturday, March 12, 2011

Stylish?

Since I appear to be the last guy on these here Interwebs who hasn't done this, and Snarky asked nicely, here we go:


  1. My last name isn't my real last name.  When my mother remarried, she told me to start using my step-father's name, thinking that if the oldest kid did it, the others would fall in line.  So I did.  One school move later, and my real name was a memory.  No adoption or anything like that.  We couldn't have the money flow of child support messed up, after all.  I traded my original name, which was so Scandinavian that other Norwegians had to ask how to spell it, for something so bland you can't tell what part of the old world it comes from.  By the time I was an adult and had figured out how screwed up telling a kid to stop using his real name is, I had a wife, a kid, and a security clearance with the new name, so I never traded it back.  Lawyers tell me that there's nothing illegal about it as long as I don't lie if ever asked about it and stick with the name on all of my documentation except for my birth certificate.  Ironic thing is that I'm the only kid who used my step-dad's name, and I'm the only one who has nothing to do with him these days.
  2. I love to travel, but I don't want to go to any country where I don't speak at least a bit of their language.  I hate going overseas and seeing English speakers, both American and British, getting mad at the locals for not speaking English.  Irish Woman said it was funny watching me talk to the people in Ireland and fall into their accent after a few sentences.
  3. My special talent appears to be taking work from someone else that's completely messed up, giving it a good look over, and straightening it out.  I've been doing that in one form or another for my entire adult life.
  4. I used to go to a rock shelf up in a canyon in Arizona to read for a few hours every time I could get away.  Stretching out on a hot rock in the sun was the most luxurious thing I ever did for myself.  It was light colored limestone, so I was basically would have to slather myself in SPF 50000 before climbing out there or I would roast like a hot dog on a roller.  My final bucket list item is to go back there someday just to sit and listen to the wind.
  5.  I got a reputation during language school of being a really good babysitter because I would volunteer to watch people's kids on Sunday afternoons and take them to the beach.  To be honest, I did enjoy playing with the kids, but my ulterior motive was to meet girls who noticed me because I "liked children". It was a winning strategy.
  6. My guilty pleasure is watching Clint Eastwood westerns.  I'll re-schedule a lot of stuff to sit and watch "High Plains Drifter".
  7. When I lived in a German neighborhood in Augsburg, we had beer delivery in the same way we used to have milk delivery.  I would leave a few marks and the rack of empties on the steps at bedtime, and be rewarded when I woke up with a rack of 24 1 liter bottles of beer just in time for breakfast.

So there you go.  Hope nothing there's nothing to shocking in all of this.

1 comment:

Old NFO said...

LOL- Love the kids ploy... :-)

Creative Commons License
DaddyBear's Den by DaddyBear is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at daddybearden.blogspot.com.